Just a Great Idea!

The Alarm Clock: has a really nice post on how and where to get those manuals, for all those damn gadgets and appliances you have, and you know you've got that manual somewhere right? OwnerIQ. Brilliant. Ah, the business model? Well if you know that people are looking for the manual, either the thing in question is broken, or the owner doesn't know how to use it. Knowing that, is a great way to make new offers to the browser and suggest other substitute products that have been highly rated by other users, even from other sites. This site should be "mashed" with GetSatisfaction and LouderVoice to make this a reality. Remember, uSwitch went for nearly £210m or $433m.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Microsoft Live Maps Actually Pretty Good?

I am not usually a big Microsoft fan boy, but I have to admit with being impressed by the news developments on Live Maps. Techcrunch gives a few really good reasons why its worth a look at. The two that get my attention are: —Landmarks are now given in driving directions that indicate you’ve gone too far. —Black is the new red. Traffic speed is now shown with four colours (green, yellow, red, and black). Black means total standstill, versus red, which means creeping logjam. - They have simplified directions so that you don't get "overly complicated instructions", which is pretty much the way most of us remember stuff. I like these developments because they focus on simplifying the user experience and making it more meaningful. It's interesting because of the messaging and interactions that will be required around these "Live!" services. Booked to go on a car journey across town or further afield? How about getting an sms to tell you that a certain intersection is now closed, and have a new map pushed to your phone, or dash? Perhaps you have booked an appointment with a doctor at 12.00 in the city centre. At the moment you could see a Google embedded map on the doctors site, and perhaps got some driving instructions on how to get there. But what if you could subscribe to get a live update from the "map" courtesy of the doctor to let you know that traffic was busy on that route and you might want to leave earlier or book another route? Its not a huge leap to say that this could be integrated and synchronised with a group calender function or deliveries software either. There are going to be huge process benefits to be reaped by closer co-ordination and synchronisation of people, assets, and places.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

SMS In Financial Services: Where to Use?

Javelin report that two way sms is definitely on the way, and has many benefits for financial services. I agree, as I am sure our friends in ClairMail would too. The problem I have with these kinds of reports is how singular the focus tends to be. Taking the solution and examining the problem. People don't want text alerts per say, they want "to know", "to be alerted", to "be able to..." etc. etc. Absolutely SMS has a place in alerting, hell that's why we provide it, but to not even mention that Interactive Voice Messaging is making an impact on many of these areas is to do their readers a disservice, I think. Why do I think? Well, VoiceSage is delivering combinations of text and voice alerts for a number of retail banks and we get extraordinary results by brining voice interaction into the alerting strategy. If you want to know more about it, call our Director of Sales, Mark Oppermann. His contact details are on our website at www.voicesage.com

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Sparks Crossing the Chasm?

Just as the sparks have stopped leaping across the gorges and canyons of California, home of lead users, I wonder will this be the year of "messaging 2.0"? People, individual users, have seen the power of micro-messaging, of geo-tagged-messages, and know it now as "better information and stuff about what is going on around me, because hell, fox news doesn't know", and this is going to leap into mainstream. Companies will want a bit more power and control, to begin with. VoiceSage is ready for this with SMS, Voice, Premium SMS, and a full XML API. Jaiku for the Enterprise anyone?

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

The Spoils of Data Are Assets About Assets....

Two Sneaky end of day posts:) and a forbidding title to lure you in ! Paul Kedrosky's presentation on predictability and interdependence in markets:(notes on link through to actual slideshare site).

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Jeff Nolan's point that the price of property is related to the reputation of its local school. So why isn't that on every property site? In even a very decent and 2.0 site like www.nestoria.co.uk, all they show is the location and name of the nearest school. From Paul Kedrosky's view, all asset classes are interconnected in a social network (of assets). The spoils go to those services that surface the interconnected data.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Mashing The Phone Network for Value

The popular lifehacker site shows you (in the US) how to get free incoming calls. Basically its a hack between Grand Central and Gizmo. Then there is another announcement that you can get a desktop alert to let you know that the price of the amazon book/film/game you wanted to buy has dropped to a price you are interested in. Now how about a meta-hack that let you get alerted when the price fell, and made your phone ring, so you could confirm and order. Something VoiceSage could do in a hack. If I were a company looking to undersell Amazon on the basis that most people go to Amazon for convenience and reliability, I'd be worred right about now.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

California Fires & Mashup's

I've been thinking that mashups will break through in some way, and was positing that it would have something to do with property and real estate. Well, maybe the fires of California might be a turning point. ProgrammableWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb and The Official Google blog, all have lists of different mashup's that are helpful during this emergency. Marshall points out TwitterWhere which presents all the "Twitter messages" from a particular location and pushes them as an xml feed. Again, what is particularly good about these kinds of solutions is that they can be accessed from any browser, and can send sms updates when the network is jammed. I have to raise some concern around the delivery of such messages via sms however. I have personally experienced these kinds of messages coming in a full day late, not something you would like to contemplate in an emergency. Not all phones will be Instant Messaging enabled, and there are issues around prioritising call channels during an emergency, so at best, these unofficial alerting systems have to be strongly overlaid with the "official messaging systems" of the municipality. I thin we are going to see a little bit more data being used as well. By overlaying these kinds of maps with data such as prevailing wind direction and speed, level of traffic on the highways, further predictions can be made about the risk of staying in certain areas and the need to re-allocate resources. For early adopters and technically literate people, these mashups "seem easy to use", but for the man on the street, they are still just not easy enough for the mainstream. It may take someone like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to "push" relevant modules/gadgets/widgets to your front page for them to see true wide spread use.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Strange Little Communications Services Pt. 1?

Designing services a la Campbell's Soup matrix or Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, Communications Breakdown has a nice little list of services you may not have heard of. I should do one of these.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Availability versus Presence

Interesting to see EnThinnai (via NMSCommuncications )discuss the requirement for "availability status" as opposed to "presence status". It also has an interesting take on how you may, or may not, want to allow others to "ping your status". The other thing I find interesting (If I am understanding it correctly) is that due to a peer-to-peer network architecture, there is no central presence server required, and thus no server loads to be managed. Even better, they are using Amazon Web Services EC2 and S3 to give them scalability. EnThinnai will be interesting to watch, I must say, I like the approach but find the lack of company information and information on who has developed to the service a little off putting. Especially as this is a P2P play.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Lessons from San Diego Fire Alerting?

A great example of how messaging technologies are changing peoples capability of responding to external events. MobileMessaging2 shows how the state authorities are able to send out sms alerts to mobile phones on a geographical basis to alert people to the movement of fires in San Diego area. This is no small thing given that many of the networks tend to be jammed and thus near inoperable during crises times, as the first instinct for most people, is to phone loved ones. The piece also shows how individuals are using services such as twitter to keep each other updated directly about how things are going at the local or family unit level. The first solution is top down, and perhaps "official", the second is "edge, informal, and unofficial". By scanning the Twittersphere/ Jaikusphere for keywords, and geotags, the official central system could re-broadcast updates or advice around actions. Matching these two spheres could make for a compelling citizen action and co-ordination platform.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Build An Online Experience

Online advertising spend isn't online marketing spend. Many companies are looking to build better customer experiences for the consumer, to produce a "wow, you really made that easier for me" effect. One of these is Nike.

Digital media spending is doubling every year at many big companies, industry data indicate. But the research firm Outsell found this year that 58 percent of marketers’ online spending went to their own Web sites, rather than to paid ads. More than two million people visited Nike-owned Web sites in July, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

Source: Platformeconomics Of course I am thinking that social media will play a big part in that spend, as will creating better company-individual interactions, online and offline, and crossing both. The relationship has to become more fluid, and relevant.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Post Telco2.0 Thought: Jaiku is Gooju and PhoneBook 2.0

Nobody paid that much attention to Jaiku and Google at Telco2.0, there were some passing references, but no real Eurika moments. I'd just like to take a moment to say why I think this is going to be important. Jaiku and Gtalk are both built on Jabber, an instant messaging protocol. That means that anyone with gmail, or gtalk, could probably start using those services as jaiku-like, or jaiku-enabled services. I sent a gmail to your gmail address? bingo: your on my gtalk list, and I can see what updates you post about your location, your thoughts, your conferences etc. It will not be very long before Gooju (just made that up!) will be able to tell who your near and far friends are, and place them on your "buddy list" in a dynamic way, in terms of gooju's interpretation of what you might want to see, given your interpersonal context. So, would you rather that, or would you rather just have a brick there with a number on it? That's the fundamental difference between a "presence flow" and a "phone number". Now download the gooju client onto a mobile phone, and gooju knows where I am, who I am with, and who we want to talk to. Combine that with our use of maps, and gooju can make some pretty accurate assumptions about what we want to do. Oh come on man, nobody wants that? If his is your reaction your are thinking sequentially, not in parallel. I've seen what gtalk does when a group of friends puts it on blackberry. Weird things start to happen. People update their facebook profile with Jaiku and Plazes, they change the status bar on their Gtalk to be ironic about their availability, in short their phonebook becomes a social application. The phone company, (oops, the Telco), is thinking about location based services, is thinking about presence. Their is a world of opportunity out there for location based data that is available, mashable, and re-packagable. By trying to ring fence where the revenues are going to come from in the short term, they are removing themselves from the innovation that is occuring in the channel and at the edges. Its not data services as you know it fella's, its the data inside strategy....

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Late Appointment Thoughts

Again, Service Untitled with some thoughts on how to manage the late appointments issue. As a customer of many services I have to admit that the thing I hate most is turning up and waiting an hour or two because a service provider "stuffed the waiting list" in expectation of cancelled appointment times. Perhaps I am crazy, but a little analysis of common underlying trends in who is late, what time slots tend to be late, and time of year effects might yield further insights into why people are late. Such measures as "distance from the office/hospital", "previous arrival history", or "transportation mode" might act as predictors. Either way, I really appreciate it when people phone me and tell me "sorry, the office is running late your 4.00 appointment is likely to occur closer to 4.30, if you'd like to speak to our office receptionist please press one". When I get the update I can take more time to find a car parking space, grab a coffee, perhaps bring my book with me. If you don't call me it just feels like "yeah, we've loads of business, we really don't care if we waste your time, because its not as valuable as our time". Harsh?

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Inbound Calling Alert!

A post over at Service Untitled discusses how to avoid inbound calls. These are all pretty good ideas (1) better email support (2) better online self service (3) an easier to use product (4) alternatives such as click to call. I'd like to add a further spin to that: before you try to put in inbound call avoidance strategies think about why and when customers, or prospects, are phoning you in the first place. In a previous life I did some research on the reasons behind inbound calls and you know 75-80% of them had to do with order status, the "where's my stuff" question. Just by putting some customer self service checking into your extra-net companies could avoid all those calls. For particular sets of customers, or times, or late changes you might think of pro-actively calling customers to give them an update. UPS has done a wonderful job ot enabling companies to bring this capability to the desktop by enabling to get your alert to the desktop. The email company Zimbra had a nifty feature that allowed you to send an email with an "embedded live link" to data in the UPS systems so that when you checked an email that was send two hours ago, it contained Updated information on the product delivery status: i.e. it was live information. A neat solution. Could your outbound email system contain links to live order status and delivery information? could it contain click to call links to live operators available at that time?

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Cutomer Survey Around Specific Interactions for Results

Patty Seybold of the Seybold group is a clear advocate of 2.0 principles for the new services and products paradigm of "bringing the customer in", thus the name of her blog "outside in". So it may be a bit of a surprise to hear her say that a great way of findout out about deep customer issues is "to ask them". Yip, pick up the phone and interview them about their experience. But the key difference is that you might look at interviewing your clients around their experience around a specific process or transaction, not just the "overall relationship". That way you get specific recommendations. Great idea, and pretty easy to set up.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Reflecting on Telco2.0

Telco2.0 is brought to the industry by STL partners and its executive brainstorm is positioned as a genuinely open environment where industry people can challenge their own assumptions and gain insights. Let me boil it all down for you: (1) "if the browser is the gateway to the pipe, how in the world are telco's going to make some serious money"? (2) "is there anything in the mobile experience that can be tied to the telco network capabilities that delivers superior user experience" (3)"to get real breakthrough services, you need to have a deep understanding of the social-anthropological background that people use these services in: social networking is a result of peoples de-communitisation in the physical realm, that's why they play with age, identity, and relationships in the virtual realm". (4) "what's the point of innovating at the edge where even complete absorption of the online advertising industry would barely move the needle for the CEO of a major telco" (actually those figures are quite frightening). There is just so much money involved in network based investments that its hard to walk away from this kind of thinking. This is where Martin Geddes analogy of the experience of the shipping industry when it moved to the container based model had its real import: "the money was in shipping. with containers, it moved to the ports". I took this to mean "the edges". This is big strategic thinking here, and I am not sure how many people in the room really understood this. Sure, graphs and charts of value migration might have hammered the point home, but the overall narrative in the room was still rooted in "we have huge assets, how can we muscle in". Our CTO Graham Brierton had a clear idea of what the telco's needed to do to support innovation and companies like VoiceSage: hosted apps, hosted services, hosted data, common standards. Finally, I think that VoiceSage received a lot of very positive attention at the event as a great example of the "new thinking". We met a few people that very much "got it", and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Telco2.0 Innovating From The Edge

This thought may strike some people as a bit strange, but innovation is happening at the edge of networks, at the edge of social networks, and in the edges of the enterprise, and in short, at the edge of your business. Sick of waiting 12 months for an approval process, business process owners such as Customer Service Directors, and Logistics Managers, are making smaller below the radar adoptions of products and services. Customers are adopting new and innovative ways of interacting with you, through blog posts, wiki contributions, ratings, or even forming pressure groups on facebook. Companies like GetSatisfaction are doing a great job of inverting the customer service issue and making "problems" and "issues" public, and encouraging customers to help each other out, often called "crowdsourcing" customer service. These trends are a big deal. The same thing is happening from the Telco perspective. The big innovations aren't solely happening in the core of the network, in the network switches, and fibre optics. They are happening when customers decide to use a capability in a new way, that suits them and their particular sets of needs. A lot of people are calling this 2.0 Thinking. Here's an example I came across today, and already two people I know are using it. Damien Mulley pointed out that you can use Google Mail to filter spam from your eircom (or any other) account. eircom have a nice product in providing you with a hosted security service, but with google buying out postini how long before I can get a similar hack or mash up for this functionality? Now imagine that I am connected to a network of other people that can share tips such as these, and that I can share them, and adopt them easily. Yes, free voicemail. Yes, Free conference calling. Free wireless roaming. Free International calling. The only thing stopping this now are information asymmetries ( a fancy way of saying you just didn't hear about it because there are barriers to you hearing it). Well most of these functionalities are available on facebook, today, and as social networks open out to each other, pretty soon everyone else. Once your friends start using it, so will you. When you give customers access to your product, allow them change what they wish, recombine, customise, re-purpose, you open out a world of opportunity. One company might use VoiceSage for an appointment remindering service another might use a variation of this routine for soccer practice or event management. So far, so traditional. You sent messages, and take messages from the people that you know. However, more and more of our presence and friendships take place, or are mediated, by our internet participation. In a company, it might be ok to have a click to call button straight to my work number from the company website, but do I want that capability from my Facebook profile? The difference here is context, and context is everything. Do I want to hear from someone that knows someone that I know when I am in city I am travelling to? meetup, pairup. FOWA (Future of Web Apps) London was some fun, and from a 2.0 technical perspective, interesting. What was missing (besides the GetSatisfaction guys) was a clear sense of how 2.0 thinking was going to effect the enterprise space (or E2 as it's been monikered). Now comes the time for the Telco to think about its role in this whole emerging ecosystem. More interesting for us is that VoiceSage will now be presenting in the Innovators Zone of Telco 2.0 Brainstorm in London, Oct 16th to 18th. Not only is this a global forum on the future of the internet and telecommunications, but some of the true thought leaders in the space will also be there. Strong Irish contingent at the show, unsurprisingly, as Ireland has a cluster of telecommunications software and services companies. Acision, Aepona, Openet, as well as Google, Yahoo. One of the core themes in the show is Voice and Messaging, and what is next in that arena, because that is what is driving value today, and what will continue to drive value in the future, a future that is looking far from bright for traditional telcos. Wondering what is driving internet stocks up and telecoms stocks down? One word: Google. Its thus even more of an honour to be guest panelist speakers for this thread. Later in the day Thomas Howe, he of US Voice Mashup fame will be giving a presentation and we look forward to what Thomas has to say. For those of you interested in that kind of thing, you can see a presentation Thomas gave here. VoiceSage is invited to this kind of conference because we are not an ordinary company. The next six months will see a lot of interesting developments coming out of this company. How do you know you are doing something right? Key "2.0 questions" to ask yourself if you produce a product or service : - Am I doing everything I can to build applications that learn from your users? - Does my application get better with more users, or just more busy and more crowded? - If "Data is the Intel Inside" of Web 2.0, what data do I own? - What user-facing services can I build against it? - Does my platform give me and my users control, or take it away from us? Source:ReadWriteWeb. So, I'll put the offer out there again: "If you are a leading edge 2.0 Company, give me a call. I want to work with you". Simple message. Lets see what happens.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

McKinsey Study on Inbound Call Automation

Mckinsey Quarterly has a good article this month on Inbound Call Mangement. While its relatively easy (for the call centre operator) to see where there is value in turning inbound calls into an automatic voice response system, it is somethimes easy to loose sight of the fact that engaging with customers that have the right type of query can be very valuable. In the McKinsey study, they found that what we might regard as routine questions are actually customer signals that they are in a certain mode of thinking with regards your company. If I phone you about gaining clarity on my price package, I am not doing so in order to re-emphasise the feeling of fantastic value I am getting in this relationship. However, If I am phoning in to see if I am still booked for that appointment tomorrow, then that has a different motivation, and probably contains a low probability of cross and up selling opportunity. While the McKinsey analysis is a good analysis of inbound calling, dare I say its not a very good analysis of customer interation management. By pro-actively calling customers with approved upgrade offers, or better pricing tariffs, you can make a massive difference to measures of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. By thinking about the type of information a customer wants to be presented with and leaving it up to them whether they want to know more, confirm, buy etc. you can drive a range of other organisational measures other than "average operator time per call". Given that questions surrounding "bill payment" are key to overall profit contribution of the call, why is there not a recommendation to pro-actively call customers that have certain bill detail parameters? If a persons bill "varies by 25% from their last bill, call them, and give them this offer....", not very hard to do, and I for one would welcome such an intervention before I put my telecom bill down on my kitchen table, frown, and surf the net for better deals.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

What Are We Up To?

VoiceSage At Call Centre Expo 2007 VoiceSage team have been busy at Call Centre Expo 2007 this week. I don't know how, but we always seem to have fun at this exhibition, and the team just love it when they do a demo and see the customers eyes light up when their phone rings. I have been reading around for a few days now, and there are a lot of really good presentations out there on how to build a good customer offering, but it does boil down to a couple of clear things: (1) Can you communicate the benefit really quickly (2) Can the customer experience the benefit quickly (3) Can you put metrics on cost and benefits, roughly but yes, quickly Once these are in place, you can move to the next stage of the conversation. We've managed to do that quite well at tradeshows because we take your number, your voice, and deliver it right there and then as a customised interaction. That's why the eyes light up. VoiceSage In Irish Times Today In other news today, VoiceSage received a very decent write up in the Irish Times Business Section today. We love that, because we never talk technology, we talk business benefits and so many technology based companies can get lost in the technology section of the newspaper. A big thank you goes out to John Collins of the Irish Times for managing to get the message across. VoiceSage and FOWA (Future of Web Apps) and Telco2 Conference VoiceSage will be at FutureOfWebApps a leading 2.0 event in the UK. There are so many good speakers and companies there that we will have a hard time keeping up. If you are going to be there why not drop us a line and we can see if we can meet up. We will also be at STL Partners Telco2 Conference in the Innovators zone. Martin Geddes is one of the brightest analysts out there and we are looking forward to showing people Telco2.0 in action.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

WSJ Covers Debt Management for SME's

Short post: Wall Street Journal is covering collections and debt management for small business, perhaps sensing that this issue is going to become even more important over the coming year.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Its only a matter of time....(multiple issues)

Well some people must be reading this blog because we've had a number of enquiries about enabling web2.0, voice 2.0, and related services. Thanks for getting in touch and there are some interesting projects coming forward. We are also about to make a number of announcements about client wins with our enterprise offerings so stay tuned. We will also get to talk a little about the results our clients have been achieving through the service, and that will be good too.

Now some other notes:

(1) Mashups have begun in earnest, and I've liked to just keep an eye on one sector in particular and that's real estate. It ticks a number of boxes for me in terms of people cruise the internet looking at pricing of houses in their area, they compare other areas, and its fairly high involvment as a decision type. Maps has proved to be a very valuable baseline asset; now if you can get others to overlay their data assets you begin to get some serious analytical capabilities. For example see www.nestoria.co.uk which has built up a huge amount of interest through this kind of strategy. Now take something like a map of reported crime figures and overlay this data http://www.mibazaar.com/unsafecities/ overlay data relating to the rate of sickness in an area; and you begin to see that the next range of mashup services could very well be mashed-analyics. Why is this link to unsafecities interesting to me? well the video it chose to link to for it's number one ranked unsafe city, was a user generated review of a boating tourism attraction in the city. The review was largely possitive, but that will change with better faceted search. User reviews, and user commenting are powerfull because they are often returned first in search, and browsers trust reviews more than companies, and they trust reviews from friends more than all the rest. And by putting all of the above together, you can see why I am so interested in Nestoria and Facebook: (still my absolute favourite app is Plazes.com app on facebook: stunning). (2) No, we are not overcome with fb hysteria, but we do think that fb offers some genuine opportunities to develop and test applications ideas that may have broader applications. In short, its a great place to innovate. We do have a facebook application in alpha, and we are going to release an upgrade sometime next week. We are just fixing the sign up process, and some look and feel issues, so thanks to everyone for their feedback. (3) Looks like we are going to go to the FOWA London, so if anyone is planning on going let us know and we might meet up and have some conversations around the event. Looks like an interesting event. (4) Finally, the very best of luck to Pat Phelan, Sean O'Mahoney and the cubic telecom crew at Techcrunch40. They are in amoung the big boys of the Internet world and my guess is they will walk away the lions share of the news coverage.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Anyone Out There Have a Web 2.0 Service?

Well as you've probably noticed, posting has been slow here on the blog. There are many reasons for that, but one of them is that we've been working out how VoiceSage can adopt some of the principles of web 2.0 or as others call it, the live web. But we enable outbound calling and interactive notification right? Yes, we do. And we also enable SMS, and Premium SMS messaging. In fact, if you needed to create outbound alerts and notifications from your web2.0 service to the mobile phone, we would be an ideal solution for you. So in the interests of moving along to the next stage, if anyone out there has a web 2.0 service that might need to reach out to the mobile phone, let us know! We're looking to engage in conversation with people that are one step ahead in their thinking!!

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

The Marginal Pain Equation and Credit Cards

Again, superb find from the Social Customer Manifesto. Research is showing that customers weight up how much they want/desire/will derive pleasure from a purchase right now, and the pain it will cause them right now when it comes to handing over the money.

Loewenstein hopes to follow up his research regarding the "pain of paying" by exploring a growing and looming problem in the United States–why so many people run up so much credit card debt. Much like he did in the study with Knutson and Prelec, he wants to see what goes on in the brain when someone pulls out plastic instead of money when making purchases. His hypothesis is that credit cards numb the brain's pain center (i.e., reduce activity in the insular cortex) because no currency is exchanged and costs are postponed, thus weakening the body's built-in defence mechanism against unnecessary purchases. He believes that MRI testing could provide definitive answers."

It certainly is an interesting perspective on the traditional models of trying to understand the decision making process. Given that other books are saying that emotional connection plays a much larger part in any buying/voting decision than rational evaluations, it certainly plays into the idea that offering customers all the emotional support you can to overcome this "pain point" is important. Perhaps studies will show that talking to a customer service representative provides this, even through click-to-talk solutions.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Buzz Differential

The internet, and more recently, the "blogsphere" is supposed to be a great way of generating "buzz" about your product or service. I've never really bought into that line of thought. Personalities aside, not many companies are, or should be, willing to build their brand on the mugshot of their Head of Marketing. It might be more useful to think of the Blogs, feeds, and websites as a good way of building potential or opportunity for conversation. After all, the battle is for the customers attention, to attract feedback, and to be more agile than your competitors. Even the internet search engines are moving towards rankings based on "degree of conversation". In this respect, understanding which particular event signal the potential requirement for an interaction, is probably a good place to start from. Large enterprises with professionalised marketing follow such "event triggers". If you are looking for a mortgage you are probably also in the market for white goods (kitchen refits). If you are a company that is announcing a merger, you are probably soon in the market for an IT integration service. Nielson BuzzMetrics has released a report that I am sure will become a kind of bible for evaluating the use of "buzz marketing". It helps if your product or service is used "frequently" by the intended audience (i.e. daily if not weekly). But the report is still surprisingly shallow in its approach. What I took from this report is that companies need to build real product differentiation, support that with intelligent, if not outstanding communications strategies, and realise that "Internet Buzz" will not make an OK product sell any better. But we all knew that, didn't we. Gaining, or creating the opportunity for understanding your customers "event triggers" is probably a better starting point for building interaction potential, and thus overall "buzz" around your product or service.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Credit Cards and Culture

TheWiserMarketer.com reports on a CityBank Study on Credit Card Payments and Usage. Intrestingly, the real point here was that their are actual cultural differences in how people want to use their card, and what rewards they want to receive from them.

Culture's influence Citibank's report highlights the role culture plays when it comes to choosing a credit card. In some countries the appearance of a card is key and represents status, but in others discounts and rebates are the main attraction. In Australia the interest rate is the number one feature, in South Korea it's low fees and in Malaysia and China it's security features and fraud prevention that tops the list. The loyalty reward Cash rebates were the preferred type of reward in relation to loyalty and reward programmes with a 57% response. Second was discounts on products and services at 12%. Numerous questions were asked in relation to the future of credit cards. When asked if credit cards could double as a form of personal ID, India and China were most in favour, with "strongly agree" responses of 47% and 43% respectively. Australians and Malaysians were most opposed with 33% and 43% respectively saying they 'strongly disagreed'. The option of using a credit card to pay taxes was met with most enthusiasm in South Korea and China where 53% and 41% respectively said they strongly agreed. However, 38% of Australians said they strongly disagreed with the idea

It certainly opens out the potential to create niche cultural services based on the implicit value of the Credit Card as an ID Validation Mechanism. Of course the same thing could be said of PayPal and Google if they went that extra step to offer you a Payments Card valid at any store that used/integrated Google Checkout into their online/offline presence. Now what if, when you walked into a store, and Google Checkout/Analytics knew that "this store" had a "special offer on Nike", and you, the customer, had recently been browsing for new sneakers, would it not make sense to push an offer to you AND enable you to pay for it right there with Google Points?

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Liquid Services (and I don't mind drinking)

Blognation report the link up between ParkatmyHouse and Nestoria. A terrific example of where two services can combine for mutual benefit. I love these services because they also create market liquidity where there was none before: did you know you could make money by renting the space outside your door? I am sure this model is applicable to a whole range of services such as Holiday Home exchanges. By adding a few tweaks to the service moving forward you may even be able to receive offers on your car space only when it goes over a certain value, or track the open market value of car spaces so that you can price that into the sale of your home. Now that practically everyone carries a mobile phone its pretty easy to see how alert services are useful in this example. I wonder how much "a space" in a good local school would cost :)

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Do You Have A Phone Number On Your Site?

So, do you have a phone number on your site? with opening hours? and the ability to take orders there and then? Why not use a simple Click-To-Talk service like VoiceSage where you can specify all these elements, never miss a call, and take the friction out of your purchasing process. Its a simple thing to do. Hat Tip: Kelsey Group.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Stupid Scam That Misses Real Opportunity

Kelsey Group Blog reports on an absolute scam, and its more the pity, because there was an actually useful business service that could have been delivered. Apparently, Merchant circle were autodialling small businesses, telling them that there was an unfavorable review posted on them on the internet, and by going to the Merchant Circle address, and putting in their phone number, they would be able to see it. Of course, there was no review. Now talk about missing an opportunity. Besides the fact that it is easy enough to set up a Google alert on your company name, and have an sms sent to you, there is a fairly good service capable of being delivered if you offered to phone people and tell them there is a bad review of them somewhere. How hard would it be to create a service that called you when their was actually something negative written about your company, and would give you the opportunity to reply there and then? Not hard. Not hard at all. If this kind of thinking interests you drop me an email, and I'll tell you something.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Why do people drop out of online shopping?

Marketing Sherpa reports why: Many e-commerce checkouts are suffering from design problems which can be easily rectified. These include hidden charges, lack of clear delivery details, or poor usability. Business processes within the checkout area give customers problems User registration, shipping costs that customers consider too high, or overlong checkout processes. Some carts are abandoned for reasons beyond the control of the retailer. Some people will add items to their basket and reach the checkout when comparison shopping, with no intention of buying. Overall, some 60% of us abandon the process. Ultimately, you have to think that we are making the customer jump through hoops just to figure out if we are giving them value or not. At VoiceSage we made a decision early on: log on, use it, hear your phone ring, go wow! all functionality is clearly there, hopefully, easy to use. We can always make it better and if anyone has any comments on how we can improve this process, please let us know. Chances are, we can turn it around really fast.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Oh, Just Wow!

In the midst (mist?) of iPhone coverage, one piece on VentureBeati caught my attention. CellSwapper allows people to trade what's left of their phone contract. People can use it to get out of their old plan and jump into a 2 year exclusive voice contract (yikes). The implications of this are really quite significant. Take services such as USwitch that enable you to compare service prices, and then switch. Well, if you have a contract with about two months to go, but a great introductory offer comes up elsewhere, your barriers to exiting the relationship have just been removed. I am sure their are legal and regulatory issues in they way of such free-flowing contractual commitments, but the market will find a way. The concept is excellent and reminds me why I read Sean over at The Park Paradigm, Sean loves markets. Read him to see how you can insure your business against the effects of the weather! For me, Cellswapper just reinforces the mantra that value delivery is a continuous process, and that free market forces will have their way.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Lose A Credit Card Customer For $12?

The Social Customer Manifesto reports on a customer scenario where a credit card company levied a late payment against a good customer who had paid their bill a day late due to various circumstances involving a holiday weekend, and the length of time it takes a payment to move through the banking system. Bottom line was that the customer trust and the customer relationship is now broken. For $12. I wonder if companies should call the customer and offer to wipe this late payment fee if the customer will accept a conversation with a customer service representative to investigate how they can better manage this relationship? If I am right, customers that are willing to speak to the customer service people are probably not long term credit risks. Customers that don't accept the invitation to conversation, are even worse credit risks than your system is currently telling you. Just a thought, given the lifetime value of a credit card customer.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Where Do You Go To Research Your IT Decision?

It seems inevitable that Purchasing managers will look more and more to user generated content to get an idea of what the IT they buying is really likely to have in store for them (MarketingVox). Overall, vendor websites, followed by user-generated content and editorial websites and trade magazines, are the most referenced information sources for IT purchasing information. - Vendor websites are referenced often or very often by 61.5 percent of respondents. - User-generated content is referenced often or very often by 42.6 percent of respondents. - Editorial websites and trade magazines are referenced often or very often by 40.7 percent of respondents. - Paid analyst research, catalogs and buyer's guides are referenced often or very often by 24.75 percent of respondents. It would seem to me that there is a key challenge here of making your website connect better to user group communities including the overall blogsphere. For hosted services this is even more imperative. No doubt this will open up into a key market for companies like VoiceSage that can provide click-to-talk and interaction technologies.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Mortgage Payment Defaulting

The Irish Independent reports that late payments and bad debt rates are rising in the sub prime mortgage lending sector in the US. The Mortgage Bankers' Association, in its quarterly snapshot of the mortgage market released yesterday, reported that the percentage of payments that were 30 or more days past due for "sub-prime" adjustable-rate home mortgages jumped to 15.75pc in the January-to-March quarter. The percentage of sub-prime adjustable-rate mortgages that started the foreclosure process in the first quarter of this year climbed to 3.23pc.That was up from 2.70pc in the final quarter of 2006 and was the highest on record. The first quarter's increase in foreclosures was mostly driven by problems in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, said Duncan. Wow. I'm guessing (sic) that some of those people that are 30 days late, are about 25% likely to default on their mortgage. Wow. Many of the people that are caught in this trap were mis-sold from the get go. They were given the go ahead to buy properties they could never afford and teaser introductory rates. Given that the Irish paper also reports a doubling in the number of 100% Mortgages in the UK in an effort to bring first time buyers into the net, the underlying issue of affordability of the stock comes to the fore. Should you sell these products if the customer can't afford them? Who is doing the sanity & credit check here? This is a systems problem: sales executives were incentivised to sell to anybody. They were bad sales, and the companies were addicted to "bad profits". Poor credit management had its roots in poor sales processes, and bad marketing. Lenders are going to have to evolve the relationship with the at-risk-customer, re-invent the offer, and help them get to financial stability. If they do not, then the prices of the property will fall, speculators will have stood back as rental incomes fell in tandom, and the lender will be forced to sell the property for less than it was bought for. Some would say cut and cauterize. Why not get in front of the at-risk customer, and make an offer to pro-actively manage the problem, before the customer is labelled a defaulter, and the bank has bad debt on its books. Given that some people can now trade their good credit rating, (see Virtual Economics) why can't family and friends share their good credit rating to help out the one member of their Tribe that is trouble. Even getting a dig out on payments for the period that it takes to sell the house without before the sales process is "distressed", would deliver value. Sounds like an opportunity to me.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Referrals: Now 50% More Powerful !

Over the last number of posts, I have referred to the importance of customer reviews, and customer review sites (i.e. Bazzarvoice, Loudervoice,) They form an important part of the customers online search and evaluation strategy. Bazaarvoice claims that sales of a product go up from 16% to doubling just by adding customer reviews. The next stages are probably feature and price comparison and evaluation and customers are using tools for this as well, like Farecast. Going back to my old Marketing days, I'd say there is a great deal of brand-Halo effect going on, where we think we are getting good value, because the brand says so. With so much information, tools, and engines available, how on earth are we going to make decisions? It would seem to me that the overall Brand Reputation of a company will be paramount here, and Reputation will be driven by customer experience, the reporting of customer experience, and overall levels of customer advocacy. Customer advocacy is the result of customers getting exceptional service. 121media.com has a nice little piece on a US brokerage firm that uses direct personal contact to drive this sense of exceptional service. They don't have an IVR, or a cenralised customer service center. Calls are driven right through to the local branch where they are handled by trained and informed individuals. Now I am sure their are lots of infrastructure bells and whistles in the background to ensure that questions can be answered and clients serviced properly, but they key to the companies success is "driving contact", not "withdrawing from contact". So why do they want to draw the customers in?

financial services customers who make referrals tend to be worth 50 percent more than a typical customer, and a new referred customer is worth almost as twice much as a customer coming from other channels. Also, "advocates become more valuable and more loyal simply by making a referral, because they put their reputation on the line,"

Now back to some very old chestnuts: - how many of your customers would actively refer you to a friend? - do you know what interaction points provide the opportunity for exceptional customer service? - do you know how to identify, interact with, and leverage the power of advocacy? The Guys at BazaarVoice have a good entry on getting to grips with some of this stuff.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Dell To Storm Ahead?

It would seem that Dell are going to bring their mass customisation expertise a step forward. What am I talking about? Their ideastorm customer interaction space has thrown up two very "new to the company" ideas (1) open source operating system Ubuntu, and (2) environmentally friendly computers. Wait for this though: 100,000 people contributed to their Q&A on these decisions. Best quote for me in the article has to be Bob Pearson, VP-corporate group communications at Dell: "There's a big difference between pushing your story out vs. becoming relevant in customers' conversations." There is a lot in that quote. How do you create interaction opportunities that are relevant to your customer? Finally, if Dell could let people design how they wanted their MP3 player to interact with their Dell, they could launch a decent online alternative to iTunes. Crazy? Original Story on Advertising Age.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Data Will Present Itself - What Would Your Heat Map Look Like?

Well, I have to say, I saw this one coming. Having seen a sickness tracking mashup, to track how colds, flues and other illness are geographically dispersed, I thought that it was only a matter of time before people started adding crime related statistics onto real estate maps. These guys could get a double impact by tying into a Trulia API. Then you could track the effect of crime rate on house and commercial property prices. These kinds of statistics will become presented as easy to read Heat Maps. What's this got to do with customer service, and marketing? It has to do with information asymmetry, and the roles that people play in a service exchange. Can you imagine if your car owners network began posting data about parts failures? But this is far from being bad news for the enterprise. How many times have you spoken with someone about a restaurant they were at only to have them tell you "oh, actually, it wasn't that great, I felt kinda ripped off because the meat wasn't good", and when you ask them what did the restaurant do when you told them, they say "Oh, I didn't tell them, I just didn't tip that well!". Surfacing the customer issues and dealing with them well is what this new data availability will enable you to do. Imagine if your marketing person left a message on this car parts network with all the name and number of their local dealer, telling them that they are within warranty etc., or better still, with a click to call option that lets that network contributer contact the marketing person to resolve this issue to everyones benefit? If all the data you currently hold in your customer care system was available on the web how would that change the way you think about what the purpose of your customer service?

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

No, You actually do have to care about customer service transparency....

Damien Mulley, a popular Irish blogger, had a bad customer service experience. It's the usual thing, somebody didn't treat his concerns with respect, and now he is angry, and evangelical. He blogged the entirety of his experience, the outcomes, and how he felt about the whole thing. Then he set up his own moaning site for customer service failures www.iwillnothold.com For any (remaining)company out there that does not get this, this is not just some "crazy guy" setting up a website. He has readers, collaborators, family, friends. Now they will share the experience, gripe about their own experiences, and probably cause some significant brand damage. Now imagine that Damien was on line right now with a customer service team and "broadcasting the experience" to his network, LIVE! It is not farfetched. Customer service is not a set of metrics, it is an experience at each individuals level. When Paul Greenberg gets bad service, he posts up the entire interaction process online. Tom Raftery does this to a gut wrenching extent, but has become a reliable recorder of experience as a result. When performing an online check of companies and their reputation for service, all your Adwords will not negate the effect of a well written, and highly evidenced customer experience. Just to prove it, I googled the search term customer review sites and restricted the results to Ireland. The Result Damien Mulley » Blog Archive » An Irish Customer Care Portal? Wow Its like a circular argument, isn't it?

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Loyalty Schemes and Mobile Phones

The Wise Marketer has a piece this month on the integration of the mobile phone and loyalty programmes. Quite simply your phone is always with you and your loyalty card isn't. I find it baffling that companies don't think about using the mobile phone as a method of sending out personal invitations to events, redeemable coupons, and related money back offers. The quoted report from the Impaq Group: there are four key mechanics of a loyalty programme, all of which are well suited to the mobile phones that are already in the hands of more than 80% of consumers: - earning points - tracking points - spending points and - receiving information Clearly, loyalty programmes need to differentiate more. So there is a growing need to differentiate loyalty programmes - to build both engagement and participation - with the main areas of concern being: - Clear rules - An acceptable currency - Simple redemption - Relevant/valuable rewards - Achievable results - Flexibility And mobile phones may hold the key "Could the mobile phone actually replace the traditional plastic loyalty card? In practical terms it would be a relatively simple matter for almost any modern handset to display the customer's ID bar code (or other machine readable image) on-screen, either as wallpaper or as a saved image or MMS message. Even in more manual systems, the mobile phone number itself can be used as a unique identifier (although this has some potential problems in countries where prepaid cards are the norm). The consumer then only needs to show their phone (or quote their phone number) at the check-out. And it certainly would encourage interactivity, leading to additional engagement in the programme. And they could be reminded by SMS before Happy Hour promotions and other loyalty programme-related events. They can have their points balance available at all times, encouraging them to redeem more regularly. Already, mobile promotions from brands such as Heineken have shown that mobile voucher redemption is dramatically different to paper-based promotions: Heineken achieved a redemption rate of over 80% in one campaign". At VoiceSage have delivered quite simple campaigns for loyalty programmes. Send out the voice call with a personal invitation to an event at the store, follow up with an SMS with the details. They work. That's why the stores keep using them. But how much more powerful they are when the SMS is personalised with a relevant offer and when it is sent at the right time. So much so, that the stores that have used it, are now no longer sending out those expensive letter drops.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Social Networks: One Size Fits All?

An old Post by Caterina Fake nee Flickr Very interesting distinction between social networks in terms of how they accommodate different "friendship cultivation" styles (drawn from a Microsoft UK Study) Friendship Cultivators -- friends mean a lot to them and they spend a significant amount of their time nurturing friendships. They're always arranging get togethers and are in constant touch with friends online and on the phone Friendship Pruners -- make and drop friends quickly according to how useful they are. Friendship Pruners name drop a lot -- they like to be seen to be in social contact with the 'in crowd'. They hate 'dead wood' so frequently prune names from their diaries, online buddy lists and mobile phones Friendship Harvesters -- tend to have a very wide circle of friends that they get in touch with on a seasonal basis. They're happy to leave long periods without contact and typically dedicate a set period of time every few weeks or months to a flurry of contact to keep up to date with friends' news and gossip Friendship Gatherers -- are quick to make friends but the least proactive at maintaining friendships. They gather friends wherever they go but are socially lazy and once friendship has been established they rely on the other party to keep it going. They often seek out Friendship Cultivators so they can ride on the back of their frequent social contact and arrangements. Then, a commentator on her blog Don Ramsey says "I find that fascinating, but I'm particularly interested in how different web sites encourage different *kinds* of friendships. e.g. Facebook encourages you to keep in contact with people you already know, MySpace encourages you to add as many 'friends' as possible regardless of if you know (or want to know) them or not. Flickr is somewhere in the middle and encourages sharing with friends while making 'acquaintances' with similar interests. I don't think most sites even consider the kinds of relationships people form when using them - it's usually just a matter of "we need an 'add friend' function". In the end, there's a limit to the number of real friendships you can maintain before people start getting pi**ed off because you don't have time for them" Often the most powerful contacts in your network are those that have "break-out potential", those that span other networks. Given that some of your friends and business contacts will fall into the categories above, perhaps social networking, and how we manage and use them, requires different approaches. Just because someone bought a product from you three years ago does not mean that they want to get an sms update from you. But if you could push the message through a social network, perhaps the message will reach them in a way that is acceptable to them. Just a thought.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact