Outside Innovation

Can IBM Deliver Customer Clouds?

We all walk around with the cloud in our pockets. Our mobile devices are our connection to the cloud. Computing resources, networking resources, storage, content, applications, and even business processes now run using cloud computing. That means that the actual data we’re accessing is sitting on one or more secure database arrays in one or more locations somewhere in the world. The computers whose cycles we’re accessing are spinning up and down in various server farms somewhere in the world. We don’t care where. We don’t need to care where. Except that, if the data we’re accessing includes personally identifiable information, we DO care. That’s information that we don’t want to cross borders. That’s information we want to know is encrypted. That’s information that we don’t want bad guys to steal or government spies to tap into.

So, the location(s) in which customer data resides does matter. But that doesn’t mean companies should eschew the use of cloud computing for their customer information. In fact, customers’ information is among the first information that belongs in the cloud because customers want access to their information 24x7 from anywhere in the world and from any device. Customers want their information and customer-impacting business process to be synchronized across all the devices they may use to complete actions and to monitor activity status.

How We Co-Design Customer Co-Design

Many of the articles we write and many of the consulting, training, and mentoring projects we do involve improving customer experience and/or designing new and/or improved products, services, and business models. Like all consultants, we have a set of methods and tools we use. We call ours Customer Co-Design, and it includes a method for facilitating workshops including customers and cross-functional stakeholders who co-design new experiences and/or products and services together. We call this workshop Customer Scenario^® Mapping. We use it within organizations to help internal employees build consensus about the ideal customer experience they want to deliver. When used in this way—Customer Scenario Mapping is most similar to the technique of Customer Journey Mapping. We also use this method to facilitate co-design workshops with end-customers (business and/or consumers), partners, internal stakeholders, and external stakeholders. What’s fun and useful about this approach is that it’s “customers all the way down” – you start with the customers designing their ideal way to “do their jobs” and then all the supporting layers and business processes neatly align around the customers’ key moments of truth and success metrics.  

This week, Ronni Marshak shares the stories of how our Customer Scenario Mapping technique has been co-designed with our clients and their customers for almost three decades now.

The History of Customer Scenario^® Design
Co-Designed and Evolved with Customers
By Ronni T. Marshak, EVP and Senior Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, March 20, 2014

 

 

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What Matters Most in Customer Self-Service?

Both consumer and business customers rely heavily on Web self-service channels when they have a problem. Recent surveys of customers engaged in self-service activities have surfaced some interesting results.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• Many customers have more than 11 different logins and passwords.
• Many customers change these frequently.
• Yet many other customers use the same ones for all their accounts.
• Customers will spend between 10 and 30 minutes trying to solve a problem or answer a question using self-service tools before they’ll call a person for help.
• Many customer service emails are not answered at all or take days to get an answer.
• 10% of Twitter queries are answered within an hour.
• Two-thirds of U.S. consumers have made a complaint in the last 3 years. Most people make six complaints per year and spend over an hour resolving each one.
• Two-thirds of U.S. consumers have had to repeat their “stories” over and over again when trying to solve a problem with customer service via the phone.

What’s the bottom line? Customers want to use self-service tools. Don’t make them log in to use them. Provide virtual assistants and other streamlined tools to help customers solve their problems. Don’t EVER ask a customer to repeat his/her story!

Read Mitch Kramer’s summary of recent customer service surveys:

Patterns from Customer Service Suppliers’ VOC
Customer Survey Results from KANA and Nuance about Customer Service Experiences
By Mitch Kramer, Senior Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, March 14, 2014

 

Edward Snowden’s Call to Action

Edward Snowden has mobilized the Tech and UX communities to improve and to rescue the Internet. This is a watershed event. It’s an irresistible and catalyzing challenge that I believe WILL produce results. This week, Snowden threw down a gauntlet: Save the Internet by designing easy-to-use end-to-end encryption.

I believe this challenge will not go unheeded. I expect thousands of motivated user experience professionals and cryptographers to partner in creating the next generation of communications tools for the Internet and for mobile devices. These tools will not only be more secure; they will also be easy to use. Today, if you want to keep from being surveilled, you have to become a techno-weenie. That’s not right, according to Snowden. We should all have the right to be protected against unlawful seizure and search.

Edward Snowden is, of course, the most famous whistle blower in history. He leaked documents from the NSA to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, documents which have proved that the U.S. “domestic” security agency has been collecting, seizing, storing, and analyzing all the email and phone traffic that takes place on the Internet. Snowden spoke at an ACLU-sponsored event at the South by Southwest SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas on March 10^th via Google+ video link through seven Internet proxies. You can watch the conversation between Ben Wizner and Chris Soghoian of the ACLU and Ed Snowden here:

Ten Years of Covering Customer Service Software Companies!

With this week’s report, the 4Q2013 Customer Service Update, Mitchell Kramer completes his tenth year of quarterly updates on the leading suppliers and products in customer service. That’s a pretty impressive accomplishment! What other analyst firm do you know that has provided the consistent, in-depth, objective analysis that Mitch Kramer has been doing for over a decade?

Of course, Mitch has covered many other technologies for us over his 25-year tenure with us, including relational and object-oriented databases, application development tools, business intelligence tools, campaign management, e-commerce platforms, and content and knowledge management solutions, but customer service is his first and most lasting passion.

Mitch has mastered the art of creating detailed frameworks for analyzing complex software products. He uses and evolves these frameworks to produce in-depth, objective analyses of competing products. His analysis saves decision-makers time and reduces their risk.

In addition to providing in-depth product reviews, Mitch decided over a decade ago that it would be useful to track the trajectory of each of the suppliers whose products he covers. How well are they doing? What new products have they announced? Are they gaining new customers? Are they hiring?

He does this every single quarter. And he’s been doing these quarterly updates in the customer service market for a decade. That’s a lot of monitoring and analysis!

Customer Clouds: The Next Big IT Battleground

“Best of” Customer Cloud Articles

We’ve been writing a lot recently about “Customer Clouds.” It’s a term we coined. And it’s a movement we’re fully behind. Most of you rely on us for thought leadership around customer-impacting technology trends. This time, we may be WAY out in front of the parade. But we don’t think so. What’s a “Customer Cloud”? It’s the on-demand computing and networking infrastructure that enables your customers to securely manage their information, their assets, their events, their stuff, and their projects from their mobile devices and/or from their computers.

To catch you up, here are our three best articles on Customer Clouds:

• What's Your Customer Cloud Strategy? Twelve Customer Requirements to Include as Your Firm Migrates to Cloud Computing

• Cloud Computing in 2015: End-Customers’ Priorities Will Drive Companies’ Customer Cloud Implementations

• Priorities for Microsoft’s New CEO: Focus on Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development & Customer Clouds

Mobile = Customer Clouds in Your Pocket

The fact is that mobile application development is driving most companies’ customer, brand, marketing, and IT strategies these days. Mobile and Cloud go together. They need each other. Mobile apps need secure access to customer data from anywhere. Clouds are a good way to provide that ubiquity. They aggregate customer data and keep customers’ information synchronized across all their devices.