So What's The Big Idea? Be Meaningful.

I had caught this post by Francois at Emergence Marketing, basically saying that how a customer interacts with your brand or service is your "UI" (user interface). Its an idea picked up by Piaras Kelly this morning as well, as he explicates his experience at Dublin airport. He also connects to a great slideshow on the new approaches to marketing that is worth checking out here. If your product is really great, it will be remarkable. People will want to talk to others about it. Fortunately, the internet is a great way to share these experiences. Some friend on his myspace/ facebook presence line says "hey, about to go out and buy new sneakers", another friend emails/sms's/calls and recommends a new asics/ nike/ adidas. Some of the examples given in the slides I think are a bit "old school" in that they are really examples of conspicuous or public consumption (i.e. products that you consume in public and have a brand messaging element). See someone using a cool new iPhone, they are a "tech person", an "apple lover", a "tech hipster". The TRULY great examples of products that are their own marketing, are the products that significantly make your life better. Umair makes this point over and over again. Do something that is culturally and socially important, that removes an unbalance, a barrier, an injustice, and you will be rewarded. Weirdly, when I go to think what's an example here Paul, the idea that looms largest for me is the use of Technology and Communications in the Obama campaign. The ability to connect, communicate, and mobilise using community, technology, and meaning, could actually re-engineer how our leaders get elected, and from there, perhaps how our public service relates to its public. That could be a pretty big structural change in the years ahead. If anyone has any other big ideas, please, let me know, I'd be happy to post them here, and give you the citation! update 1: just remembered www.headshift.com, these guys are bring enterprise 2.0 to the NHS (UK Health Service). Here is a great slideshire from them on bringing 2.0 tools to one of the biggest public service blocks.

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Update 2: Via Venterprisey (enterprise 2.0 blog) the use of mashup's to bring citizen based reporting on exit poles, intimidation attempts, murders surrounding the Zimbabwe elections. This inability to control the media message, may actually free a nation.

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

Personality Not Included.

The Book Personality Not Included: I think there there is a strong trend towards Customer Interaction as Brand Experience. You might have noticed over the history of postings on this blog, that we think of customer interaction, and the management of customer interaction, will become more transparent, will be capturable, and publishable. Rohit Bhargava has been looking at these issues from the perspective of the advertising agency, and he extended the invitation to his readers to post in questions in relation to this topic, which in in turn would respond to in person. A great way of building engagement, and of course, gaining initial attention for te books release. Here are a few questions that he kindly undertook to answer for me an an email exchange. (1) Companies are short term in their outlook (lets face it) How Can companies overcome the initial "slump" in performance and motivation when they open up to transparency? Well, I'm not sure that there always needs to be a slump associated with opening up. For example, there was an online retailer I remember reading about that decided to add customer reviews to their site. Almost immediately after they added this feature, they saw a sales spike and that spike was sustained over a long period of time. Here's a link I managed to find about that story: http://www.internetretailer.com/internet/marketing-conference/65531-customer-reviews-spike-conversion-rates-at-overstock-bass-pro.html The point is, personality and transparency can be the best ways to add to the bottom line ... and the best part is that often they don't require the huge types of capital expenditures that can kill short term profits and be very unappealing to the many companies that operate focused from quarter to quarter. (2) Opening up will make you very dominant in the "commentsphere" and you will take a resultant leap in Google ranking. But now all the new prospects are seeing a lot of noise about "poor performance". Could this be actually damaging given the competition is presenting a "nothing wrong here" image? I think the idea that you can still present a "nothing wrong here" image is probably fading fast with the easy with which consumers can share negative opinions whether you provide a forum for them to do it or not ... which gets to the heart of your question. When it is so easy for people to talk about negative experiences with your brand, you have two options. You can either decide to open up, have a forum to address complaints and do it on your terms, or just let conversations happen online without being part of them. My argument is that it is far better to be part of the conversation and have your own platform than to be a spectator only reacting when a situation gets close to a crisis mode. (3) It seems to me that how employees respond to the commentsphere and the new community based support approaches are going to lean heavily on the individuals capacity to engage and solve, coupled with old fashioned great technology for content management etc. Have you seen anyone address this particularly well? You are very right to point out the importance of the team in building a personality for your brand. This is absolutely true. A few brands that do this particularly well are Google and Sun from the tech industry. Both have a relatively strong point of view on what their employees stand for and how they are able to speak on behalf of the company. The other example I would point to is Zappos, the online shoe retailer famous for their customer service. Thanks for taking the time to answer those questions: My final points here arethat where, when and how companies engage with their customers is completely changing. The conversation is not only occuring with your customer service representative, but also with on your customers blog, their myspace, their twitter stream. Granted, not everyone is "net native", but when they go to find out more about your companies, the places where these conversations are occuring, will have authority, and search ranking preference.

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

Nice Use of Recruitment Site Data

HT: Paul Kedrosky

Investing In Customers, Listening, and Loyalty.

Umair (no need for a second name, you know, a bit like Madonna), brings our attention back to the topic of brands, and brand building. The key question, IMHO, is "how can we meaningfully invest in our customers"? This is a very deep question. This question, in turn, is framed by the Purpose question, what are we about as a company? Umair gives the example of Google, and talks about how it is driven to "make the world a better place". I think that this goes fundamentally to the issue of developing products and services that address real substantive societal issues, not corporate ones. A key take away from the posting for me was that Nike was moving from advertising spend, to investing in customers services like work out advice, sports events, local sports competitions, communities etc. In another post, Bruce Tempkin of Customer Experience Matters points out some metrics relating to customer loyalty and great customer experience. It's worth a look over just to re-iterate that Great experience has a much higher impact on loyalty that Good experience. Perhaps Great Experience will morph into Authentic experience, i.e. a sense that you are interacting with real people, that can be like your best neighbour, you know, the one that offers to cut your lawn when you are on holiday, so your house doesn't look neglected. At VoiceSage we had our own mantra's that were based on "being fair" and "being different". We wanted to only charge for real, measurable benefits, that you could get quickly, and with no upfront investment. We didn't want integration costs, we didn't want hidden charges. We wanted simplicity, ease of use, flexibility. I think we've demonstrated this capability to our client base now. But I wonder what lessons we could draw from Umair's comments about Apple and Google? Its worth thinking about.

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

The Plastic Revolution

Paul Kedrosky points us towards an article on the global growth of credit cards. Last week, another newspaper pointed out that UK indebtedness is actually higher than US indebtedness on the level of the individual.

Sometimes you have to take functionality away to get breakthrough ideas....

Take away Garfield from the frames and you get the story of a really disturbed young man. This is going to be a huge hit on the web, but (and without forcing the point), it shows that by focusing on simplicity, and taking functionality, roles, etc. you can make a service that is so easy to use that it is hyper-simple. Also one of the www.springwise.com trends.

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

bear sterns .

Bear sterns go into receivership ? Need to be bailed out ? Asset backed securities a huge risk factor in overall env. What to do ? No joking , get in control of your credit process, and steamline cash and payments so you don't get credit crunched. Be in no doubt, this is serious stuff.

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

James Whatley On Customer Expectations of GREAT Customer Service.

Oh dear. Mr. James Whatley, esteemed mobile technology blogger, goes drops his Vodafone Nokia N95, which he loves, dearly, and calls Vodafone to get his fix (literally, the man loves his N95). So rather than replay the incident, why don't you just drop over here and have a read. Back? I didn't think so, but I will go on with a little Friday Quiz anyway: - James was transferred to another agent because it was felt that his claim was insurance related: was this good practice? (Yes, I know they are another company, but think about it, was it good practice?) - James was so infuriated with the Insurance Agent giggling (I jest not) at him when introducting herself and the company, that he hung up, and rang back (Given that the company deals with Insurance claims, I think it's pretty obvious that a lot of people are going to be wound up a bit emotionally when they ring); so, how can an agent "Get Away" with this? (cheat sheet: culture) - James Rang back to get a different agent. Had to give all his information again. Are their ways around this (cheat sheet: his phone number)Oh and to save time, in other calls, nobody knew what phone he had, his status as a customer, or pretty much anything else about him. - James said he dropped the phone, and this might have something to do with why its not working now. The Agent asked "Did it stop right after you dropped it"? To which he replied, No, but I think it probably has something to do with it. Stunningly, she says that "If the accident can't be directly linked to the phone not working, there and then, it becomes a warrantee issue". This is it. UNFAIR. You've just told me the expensive insurance I've taken out is useless, and that I have to go back to Telecom service provider, where the "device" warrantee is applicable. WOW. Probably will never take out a financial product with a Telecom provider again, hey James? - While "transferring him back to the Vodafone customer service", they dropped him. - So James re-phones the Telecoms company (call 4 or 5 now). They say, great fine. Bring it in to the store. JAMES IS TELEPHONE AND INTERNET GUY he never goes to the store (oops, didn't keep tabs of his channel interaction patterns?) Actually, he hates going to the store, it fills him with feelings of dread. - James is utterly utterly angry. You've made him feel fraudulent, betrayed, and now very very angry. UNREASONABLY SO. (after all, Vodafone are not the insurer, they didn't expect James to go throwing his phone around, they've been good to him before). BUT: he Admits that he got great great service from Vodafone before, he LOVES his N95, probably spends a packet on his packets. SO: one truly awful experience, fuelled by a mixture of bad practice and lack of customer experience focus, leads to one heavy user leaving, and one major online publication carrying the story, and probably hundreds of bloggers commenting. I am not saying "things like this don't happen all the time in companies". What I am saying is that how you deal with them is now part of your customer service because it will be broadcast. Peak Experience: James remembers the trough of his disappointment and the peak of his anger. It is his overwhelming memory of his entire relationship, over a few years, with Vodafone. Now compare that with yesterday's post about Russell's experience with returning an iPhone. The Difference is CULTURE in the Service Providers: The Difference is THE EXPECTATION of GREAT, not Good Service: The Difference is APPLE Want You To JOIN, Vodafone Wanted You To BUY: -

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

Russell Drops iPhone, Then Adopts iPhone !

Russell Beattie has a problem with iPhone, because he dropped it. Goes to the store, the lovely lady says "no problem, I'll replace that". Russell dumb struck. Great Support for what, maximum cost of $200. Russell's impact on the mobile developer community, $2m, I'd say. I must say I am seriously looking at an iPhone, but 3G is kind of essential to me.

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

Proactive and Personal

DestinationCRM's Editor has a good post this morning. The upshot is the assertion that even as people and companies move online, the interaction with the call centre will become even more important in developing your real brand identity. Quoting Genesys (a call centre solution provider), they propose 4 key components of delivering great customer experience in the contact centre: Convenience, Competency, Personalization, and Proactivity. He explain that there are nine ways to fulfil these requirements: * conduct real-time satisfaction surveys; * implement a customer front door; * increase first-contact resolution; * provide a consistent multichannel experience; * maximize resource availability; * communicate proactively; * manage callbacks effectively; * provide personalized services; and * apply innovative communication. The article goes on to say that "While many of these strategies may seem like common sense for the contact centre, two in particular -- communicating proactively and providing personalized services are often overlooked because of poor implementation". Proactivity in the context of the article refers to "popping information" so that the customer doesn't have to volunteer it, or repeat it. But there is no reason at all why it would not also apply to "outbound Interactive Voice Messaging". The additional wisdom I would look for in this kind of an article is to give practitioners some kind of a "map of concerns" beginning with short sharp interventions, while at the same time, developing a view on how to progress to more strategic approaches such as "building a data strategy", "actionable information", and "customer interaction context". The number one concern of CEO's to IT directors is "fast implementation" of the projects. Hosted players enable you to get quick, sharp projects going, prove the value and then fine tune or integrate.

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

Stop Mortgage Payment Defaults

From NYTimes Default rates are going up. Interestingly, the rate is higher for those moving from a fixed rate to a variable rate, one would suppose that people are moving from that early "promotional rate", to the "adjusted rate". This is what we call a context trigger. I know your postal code, I know you are on this threshold, you should get a call, and offers should be made to adjust payment schedules to stop defaulting before it begins.

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

If Interactions Were Free...

If interactions with, and between customers were free (and frictionless) what effect would this have on the value of brands? Looks like we may find out soon. Umair (now over on the HBS blog), is taking the fact that brands are "heuristics", i.e. short cuts, to evaluation. Brands, and prices, indicate value, belonging and a range of other elements. People can very quickly see, and share, if brands (information) lives up to its promise. This happily coincides with Conversations over on VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) with Doc Searls around the role of pricing in communicating within markets. In commercial B2B markets, price is also an "indicator of value". But is it a good one? Customers that buy your product promise, will test it, video it, and publish it to their friends. If your not thinking about how you can build "conversations, and experiences" into your "product or service", you have little chance of giving a customer a brand experience. A price is just a message around the value encapsulated. Not understanding how the customer got here, by what route, and with what context, is a sure way to lose them on price. By understanding what the customer truly values you have to understand the process by which they come to make a decision, and thus what they are seeking to value. You may actually end up being able to charge more for your service. Final Point: an old McKinsey paper said that if your marketing guy calls your product a commodity, fire them. No product is a commodity to ALL its customers. Even for rolled steel, some customers will value consistency in product or delivery, others in pricing, others in speed of cycle time. The challenge is to capture more and more data so you can generate the opportunity for insights around what customers actually value in their interaction with your company. So, if Interaction was free, what would people actually value, what is actually scarce? ah-hum. Yes. Attention.

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

VoiceSage In The News

TechCrunch UK Irish Times Silicon Replublic TechCrunch.com

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

Micro-Channel: CommuterFeeds

Know someone that takes the same route to work as you do? Try CommuterFeed powered by Twitter. (hat-tip RWW) This might be a "mirco-channel" with only 10 people in it, and only updated twice a day. But it is a channel, and people are going to create more and more of these things. They will be called "comment channels", "IM Sessions", etc. etc. They will not be launched by your IT department, they will be Enterprise Edge Services (Seriously thinking of patenting that phrase:)

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

Technology Populism or Enterprise Edge?

Edge Enterprise: ReadWriteWeb has a piece today on the rise of "consumer-employee" adopted software as services and the strategic integrity of in-house IT technology stack. So you want to find out if anyone knows someone working in Adobe, you check your LinkedIn or Facebook not your internal directory; you want to call long distance to the states and china you use skype, not your inhouse telephony system. Need to find out something in relation to your product, chances are you will consult a wiki not the official FAQ pages. The RWW article says that maybe people would not feel the need to use these technologies if they had better training and understood the features of enterprise softwares a bit better. Instead of a hosted wiki use sharepoint, from Microsoft. MMmmm. Perhaps its time to teach people "responsible adoption", or "how to understand potential implications" such as Data Privacy, Application Security, so they can make better decisions at their own level of the business. If circa 14% of your employees are early adopters perhaps you should be thinking more about how to harness the power of these collective experimenters. VoiceSage has literally Dozens of examples where someone adopted the service to do something relatively simple like stock availability updates and then found a few other things in their immediate environment that could also benefit from pro-active communications. Doing moves you towards knowing. The faster you Get Doing the faster you learn what works and doesn't work. What we have found is that people that understand how to pilot early, and often, inevitably get the better results. The people that can spin a problem on its side, and look at it a different way (i.e. innovators), and then craft a meaningful test of benefits, are a key part of any innovation competence. And that's the problem with lengthy cycles of adoption, learning, deployment and learning. It just takes too long to see what works. One final spin of the wheel on this topic: Its called "environmental fit". Where your external environment exhibits constant change and unpredictability the "edges" of your company need to exhibit some "porousness" and "flexibility". This was traditionally termed "organicity". And that's why inability to adopt, experiment and learn leads to lack of fitness at the edges of your company. I.e. the customer interface.

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

Google Talkback: Click-Cool :)

When Google bring out a new product, sometimes it sucks. This does not suck. Google Talkback enables you to put your TalkBack button on your blog or website. Since I have Google Talk already, and Google Talk on my Blackberry, it now means that as I change my mobile status, this will be reflected on my blogsite. Suddenly, I have very real mobile-internet presence. Now, before everyone goes APE (API) on me, I know that Twitter and Jaiku badges update my presence from my mobile all the time. Where Google Talk is different is that Talk is Integrated with Mail, and Mail is being sold instead of MS Exchange Server. So, how long before I can have a very low cost domain hosting, email hosting, and click to call service that can give me great stats on where my customers are coming from and who they are talking to? When Grand Central eventually enters the mix, well what can I say: Fred Wilson is already buying stock.

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

The Future Of Credit Scoring ?

Well, I have to hand it to Jim Bruene over at NetBanker, todays roundup of disruptive credit scoring services is a show stopper. You should stop over and have a look.

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

Ah, Forget to Pay Your Credit Card Bill?

Paul Kedrosky (PK) posted a link to this study on credit card late payment penalties. The bottom line is that people who forget to pay their credit card bills on time, and become subject to the pain of late payment fees, initially change their behaviour, but over time forget the effects of that late payment fee at a rage of 10% per month!. If you have to pay a late payment fee this month you are not very likely to forget to pay your bill next month. BUT: in 10 months time you will be back to exactly the same behaviour pattern as you were exhibiting a before any fee was applied to you. Late Fees Do Not Change Inherent Customer Behaviour, but they do adjust it in the short term. It might be a very useful experiment to pattern a series of Reminders to such late paying customers, in two or three month cycles to remind them that they paid a fee before, and to avoid doing so again they might want to take actions x, y, and z. With an interim messaging strategy it might be possible to stretch out the reinforcement effects of the original late fee, without damaging the customer relationship by applying another late payment fee, thus encouraging potential switching behaviour.

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

Just Three Points on A Friday

Confused of Calcutta has such a nice saying that I thought I'd bring it to you: " First Law of Benchmarks: If gains are so low that you need benchmarks to prove the existence of the gains, they’re probably not worth having in the first place". GetSatisfaction guys bring out a Full API (soon!). Marshall from ReadWriteWeb covers them here. I think these guys are going to radically change how customers manage their reputation: think "epinions for companies". These guys will end up with widgets on your home page publishing out to your audience the good, the bad, and the ugly. Mick Butcher over on Techcrunchuk has a nice piece that points out that not only are advertising only models in serious danger, but that what is needed is better ad targeting, and measures other than click through rates. Mobile phones and social newtworks might be better ways of collecting data at higher levels of granularity. The take away? Be better at collecting data and know how you can use that data to deliver better interactions with your customer base. How you interact with your customers, and well you manage those interactions, will be published. It will be published on Twitter, Jaiku, blog feeds, it will turn up on Techcunch. So get in front of the problem.

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

Letting People Innovate with Telecommunications

Helsingin Sanomat via Gizmodo Finnish public toilet opens when you send it a Text Message. Why? Because then we know your phone number if you vandalise this toilet. Brilliant. Oh but what if I am on pre-paid etc. etc. Yes, but there might be some psychology at work here as well. Would you "mindfully" weigh up the options of the likelihood of being caught vandalising with your pre-paid phone number, or would you just move on? I think you'd just move on.

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

Leaving Voice Messages

Conversationware makes a great point today about leaving voicemail. Matt makes the point that if you think about it before hand, write a few notes down, you can leave a message that has some real impact. He follows up by saying "I hate it when people leave a message that just says, Call me". Exactly, it says "hey guess what, my time is more valuable than yours, so why don't you waste more of your time ringing me back, trying to find me, and then finding out what I wanted to talk to you about in the first place. So, I have to agree with you there Matt. Here are a few rules I picked up a while ago about leaving good voicemail: - Start by saying who you are (no, I don't recognise your voice!) - Tell me what the message is in relation to (need to organise a meeting time) - Tell me what I am expected to do (decide, ring someone, suggest) One of the things VoiceSage does really well is to automatically detect whether you are about to leave a message with a live person or a machine. If you are getting through to a machine, we recommend that you leave a different message, structured as per points above. You don't have to leave a "teaser", leave a valuable message. If you are wondering how you might measure the effectiveness of your message, leave a different contact number or email address for the return enquiry. That way, you can track would called you back. Simple.

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

Billing, Billed, Bill: You Have To Get It Right.

Only yesterday I was speaking with an Analyst saying you know, Telco billing isn't easy to do. We were talking about how used strategically, the ability to create unique tariff structures, particularised the needs of each company, and person, creates powerful competitive advantages. We were building the metaphor out into Software-as-Service examples, seeing how some providers were emerging to provide this layer to other software-as-services on the Salesforce.com platform. Well, Pat Phelan at MaxRoam bounced me over an email to give me an update on their progress and what was the first thing on the agenda, yip, Live Billing. Being able to see what you are spending, in real time, is a real comfort. In other posts I've talked about the importance of "getting the bill right", and more importantly "the check out". Studies by McKinsey show that its the variability in the telecoms bill that causes customers to look around for other providers, and my guess is that people who made a lot of calls on their Christmas holidays are looking around. Maybe they should check out MAXroam at their nearest Maplin?

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

Perfect SEO Brand Advertising

Via John Batelle

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

Pay Attention To The Peak Experience and Sign Off.

Bruce Tempkin over at Customer Experience Matters makes a few interesting points about creating memorable customer service. There are two aspects he points to:(1) "peak experiences" and (2) sign off. I think some banks pay attention to this in that they are delighted to call you and tell you "that loan has been approved" etc. It's an opportunity to push the happy moment up a notch and make it memorable. The sign off to a job is akin to getting off the stage, having hit the last high note, but it is just so messed up in a lot of companies that I just can't understand what they are thinking. Perhaps people just don't understand that there will be an inevitable emotional experience involved in the interaction with your service. If you are handing over cash for any service, it is normal to feel a little hesitant to hand over cash, our instinct is to hold onto our resources. This is one of the psychological reasons that people pay on their credit card; it reduces feelings of guilt because their is no immediate experience of loss. I've mentioned this before, but my brother in law provided a service where he went over to the UK to pick up cars he had bought for clients, and then he would arrange all the paper work, number plates, and park it in your drive. Neat service. But what his clients commented on was that he would wash the car thoroughly inside and out in their driveway, and he left all their documents in a neat leather folder. I am sure that many organisations have empirical metrics that need to be managed day in day out in order to hit Customer Service targets, i.e. we will phone you within 12 hours of your application to let you know where it is in the process, but how many companies track the "emotional response" of customers, or take these measure around times/interactions where their is the opportunity to enable a peak experience? There are many instances where thinking about "leaning over to the customer" and asking a question, or making an offer would be welcome. Just received your credit card in the mail? Chances are you are happy to have it, so why not follow up with a call and ask is there anything more you need to know about the service, or posting them a parcel with a genuinely pleasing gift that is related to their specified interests? Here are some interesting articles on "happiness" and what delivers happiness....ah...mmmm.... "experiences deliver happiness"....

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

Sandy Is Getting Some Lovin.

Sandy is getting some lovin from Profy. :) It's great to see a simple productivity tool ring so many bells for people. I've been hearing nothin but good things about her.

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

Enabling Online Interactions: Yabb?

Techcrunch uk's Mick Butcher report on Yabb, a service that integrates with your Skype to make the call. You go to the Yabb site, find a topic of conversation that you are interested in, and then send them a voice message that you are interested in a conversion. It seems that you have to register for the beta and get an invite to see it in full swing but from Mike's description the fundamental flaw in this is that you don't send voice messages to people you don't know! Yes, its that simple. You don't even text them. People consider it an unforgivable violation of their mobile phone, a very personal object. If Yabb had considered using voice to "stay in touch with the conversation", of "extending the conversation", then they might have been on to something. Never the less, I wish them well, its never easy to start something new.

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

Another Headline Grabbing Number That Makes No Sense

Damovo and Ericsson are saying that "missed calls" and "phonetag" are costing business $700m a year. Not a bad figure for the global costs....oh.... wait, that's the estimated cost for the Irish marketplace? The average worker spent 73 minutes per week leaving voicemail? I know I talk to people on the phone, and waste that amount of time within the call itself. It's certainly not a case of stop leaving voicemail, get an IM, you will find yourself more efficient, because you will get interrupted. At its base level, what this should have been about, is that there are modes of synchronous and asynchronous interactions and requests for interactions that could be managed more effectively. The opportunity for time saving is of an order of magnitude higher than this piece of PR might suggest.

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

Radiohead: The Business Model

Free is not a business model. Some things occurred to me about the recent Radiohead experiment (nee "revolution").On TheDrama20Show there is a lengthy piece on "consumers are cheapskates" provoking comment on the model; one of the comments is very very telling, and very very important: "Cutting out the middlemen lowered the price that a Radiohead customer was willing to pay for Radiohead’s music. The loss of the middlemen did not entice non-customers into becoming customers. This makes sense since the loss of the middlemen did not make Radiohead’s music more valuable, it simply made it less expensive" The comment is unattributed but wow, nail-on-head. But it did not end there: oh no, Drama20 returns: "Do you really believe that the elimination of the middlemen factored into the customer’s evaluation of the value of the music? I personally doubt that the average customer calculated the costs eliminated by the removal of the middlemen and adjusted the price accordingly" I've also heard someone say this about their kids, i.e. that they knew what the royalty split was and just decided on a price point that gave more money to the artist (i.e. artist may have received $3 under old programme, so paying $4.50 seemed a good up to them). And kids talk, especially about music, and especially about their favourite band, so if this "fair price" got out there in circulation, I have no doubt that the "crowd" might set a price (not that it is one crowd). The argument goes that the "studio system" is required because it fosters bands brings bands to the attention of the audience, that only 5% of bands actually make money for the record company, i.e. most bands don't find an audience (product-market-fit failure), i.e. the company is a two sided platform that doesn't work very well. (hatip Umair ). Name-your-price/ priceline model is a great way of segregating customers; it's a great way of gaining attention by being viral. On my own Lastfm.com front page Radiohead own the chart; they are probably played 5 times as much as anyone else. Will that translate into more ticket sales to gigs? Absolutely. Will it sell more T-Shirts? Absolutely. i.e. the "profit pools" lie in ancillary services, attention is the razor, belonging is the blades. Given the moves by companies such as Newsgater to offer their products, once premium priced downloads, for free, is premised on the rationale that having experienced the products in a personal capacity, end users will understand how paid-for enterprise versions could be value adding to their companies ( i.e. Free in consumer to cross subsidise marketing to the enterprise). It's an interesting hypothesis, but essentially it is betting that "the ultimate customer", in this case the enterprise, is also willing to pay for your product, and that another competitor isn't cross subsidising entry into your market "for free" in order to gain access to their own "profit pools" (imagine IBM giving away free Publisher Manager in order to sell you business process improvement consulting?). So, not only is "Free" never "Free": sometimes Free might just be putting a time-delay between you and the realisation that some other bigger animals are slowly sauntering towards your profit pool. Of course, I could be way, way wrong....

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

Update: Travel Data

A few days ago I shared a story about how hard it was to get integrated information about transport systems, and that a "live ticket" might be very useful, i.e. a ticket that adapted my planned-schedule to my actual real-time schedule and pro-actively presenting me with options. The official Google blog today indicates that Google wants the public sector transportation agencies to upload their "feed/availability/presence-of-object" data via the Google Transit Feed Specification. With Railroad stock, and airline stock being easy to aggregate, it will be "the messy bit in-between" where the massive value will be created. Where is the local cab company, is there a local cab nearby (GPS), can I order it (one-click-order); etc. Google will allow everyone to upload their information for Free, and become yet another 2-sided platform matching supply of stock with a stock of customer intentions.

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

CyberSource UK Online Fraud Report

Cybersource UK Online Fraud Report. Some interesting points in there, worth a quick read.

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

Revealing Latent Potential: Incentivise Data Disclosure (Or, Let People Tell You Stuff So You Can Co-Create )

I've been following property sites for a while because I think they lead the way in business model development. The amounts of money to be made from Hot Leads, is akin to Hot Search results, or the database of intentions. But what if people don't declare their intention? Usually, your surmise their intention from context, and their history of interaction with you, and with others. Another way to surface intention is to pay: Techcrunch reports that a clever new company called Notchup will enable you to let companies bid for your time to interview. So, you are a competent, succeeding manager in financial services, happy with your employment and internal prospects? Surely you would be tempted to interview if someone was willing to pay you $500 for an hour of your time?

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

Interactions Build Trust: You Have The Data, You Should Know When To Call Me!

OnCustomer has a nice piece on customer service 2.0. How do you build "Trust and Credibility with Customers"? Well one thing you can do, is make your relationship a bit more "transparent" by letting the customer know where they are in your process. I for one really like it when Amazon tells me that my product is delayed, or that one half has shipped etc. But I would really like it if they told me "It should be with you tomorrow", because then I get a whole days anticipation, which is part of the pleasure of the purchase. There are practical implications as well, such as actually being there for the delivery. As other people were doing this January, I had a look at some Credit Card deals. I made an enquiry to one of the big ones, they asked me some questions there and then (note: have your bank details around you when you make this kind of call!), and then they told me that they would contact me soon to tell me if I was approved. Three days later, I get a call, a live call, telling me I had been approved and they would send out the forms. A full week later, those forms are on my kitchen table. That's one full week for me to change my mind, look at other card providers, or for me to just fall into apathy and stay with my current provider. Now as you can see this post has shifted towards a kind of "VoiceSage is great for form follow on's and turning prospects into customers", which is true: but why the hell hasn't my existing card company, who can see my spend pattern, and who no doubt know that I am shopping around, why don't they contact me and make me some offers? Frankly, because I haven't acted as if I am going to switch. The minute I pick up the phone and call them, only then will I appear on their radar. Silly silly. I am going because nobody bothered to contact me. They have done nothing to build my trust, they are obviously doing nothing to help me. UPDATE: as if by magic, the new credit card company just called me! So I will be returning those forms today, and I will overcome my inertia. I was feeling like someone should have called me, and someone DID call me, which probably means there is a predictable time within which customers expect to be reminded, even subconsciously.

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

The Price of Failure

Ok. Who thinks that their web site/web service will be up all the time? If you absolutely depend on online presence you have to go one step further for your users. 37 Signals, the leading 2.0 site, went down and Dreamhost went down as well. We deal with companies in the financial services sector that have extensive plans in place for such outages. Yes, I know most 2.0 firms and smaller hosting companies don't have the customer service staff to man the phones, but you don't always have to. A simple outbound message to the end users phone giving them the message, and a sense of how long the delay will be, would go a long way to alleviating anxiety. AND I suspect that showing that you are more than a web site by going "out of band" would go a long way towards increasing your brand equity with them (fancy way of saying, "everybody fears that the services they use will fail, but if you recover very strongly and with great integrity, you will not only win loyal customers, but advocates"). "Our agents await your call!"....

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

Phone's Produce Data: Now Go Forth and Multiply

When (note when) data becomes more open, public, and portable new information service opportunities will arise. Great article today from Brian McConnell guesting on Om's site. If phones produce "flow data" that is "location aware", anonymous data can be used to generate an analysis of everything from average Q lengths to data that can help design better people flow through shops, airports, and public transport systems. The guys over at Telco2 have been talking about this for ages and ages. How you expose your phone and identity data will become the issue, and how you tie this to your personal profile data, and not a la Beacon from Facebook, but more along the lines of Google, Jaiku and Google trends. Now here's the kicker: there is one level of service opportunity that the data aggregator can get (i.e. the Telco) and they can sell that on (or make it available for revenue share), and their is another level of data that is added to this (from other data pools) that match this meta-data against a particular individuals "profile" in the context of their relationship to your company. Thus building up your customer data is a strategy that is only going to become more and more important.

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

Co-ordinating Physical Resources: Some Thoughts

I was in the UK recently and needed to go from plane, to train, underground and taxi, all within a particular timeframe. Although I left home with a plan, inevitably something will change: a meeting is longer or shorter than expected, or an opportunity to take another meeting presents itself. Many 2.0 companies look at "cheapest ticket" solutions, (www.kayak.com www.skyscanner.com) but I think there is a whole other market out there. If I could buy a "Live Ticket", I would. It would tell me that "the next train is 2 miles from here, or 20 minutes by cab (do you want to book a cab, do you want to check train availability etc.). It would be linked between transport systems ("your train is on time"), it would push a text or call to me that allowed me query ( al la www.tellme.com, contained a weblink, or put me through to help desk). Even a simple 2.0 service that allowed me to set up my journey in advance (on Google Maps?) and then texted me with updates as to the current status of my plan, or "next train", "Next plane", and gave me "options" at the end, this would dramatically improve my current experience. If these options are push (appropriate time, place and mode of course), it would decrease the stress and pressure of travel, i.e. it would have strong psychological selling points. It could dynamically "suggest" that I "re-schedule outbound flight at this point in time", it might have learned that I do not like to have less than 45mins at the airport prior to flight time or base it on an evaluation of optimum price : value : risk profile that I have. To those that follow the online space, this all sounds pretty "semantic web". But it doesn't have to be that hard, I think. What would participating companies get for participating in opening up their data? Everything. I don't buy flights, I buy "on time attendance at meetings", (paying for predictable and reliable flights); I buy "ability to take a speculative meeting" (due to low price point); I buy the total cost of getting me to that meeting. A vendor like Blackberry/Nokia with a simple Google Maps application could be pretty much ready to go "out of the box". And it is very much in the telco's interest to enable this as volume of interactions would be exponential. I think we are going to see a lot more of this kind of thinking in the next two years as companies find their train times, flight times, reviews etc. mashed into other services. It will begin with simple outbound texting, but will quickly move to "intelligent co-ordination". And there are very few industries out there that couldn't benefit from thinking about how the confluence of low cost sensors, mashed data, and ubiquitous mobile phones will effect them.

Update: As if "by magic" Forbes Article on Semantic Web and Travel. Sramana Mitra is always a good commentator on the strategic thinking behind Semantic Web. Her thoughts on next generation 3.0 Enterprise can be found here.

AT&T Billing and Payments Issues

So, by any chance are you a telecom company finding that you have "sub prime" customers? AT&T seems to think so: AT&T's market capitalisation went down nearly 5% as they reported that people were not paying their phone bills on time. One way of looking at this is that billing and payments management are notoriously difficult to manage well. That's why when analysts look to the core competencies of large carriers, they rarely look at the access technologies, they always point to the billing and payments management. That's why when you declare that you are not "on top of it", you get hammered. You get hammered for "not managing cash flow" in every industry. I've been following Telco as a space for quite a while now, and it has always bugged me that Telco's can't seem to use the billing moment to declare value delivered, not minutes consumed. Of course their are also some customers that should just not be allowed run up a bill.

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

Mass Market Radio Online

Sometimes I listen to the radio, well, on the radio. Other times I like to listen online. I don't mind registering some basic info, or logging in with my OpenID. So why do radio stations play me stupid mass market advertising when I am online and so blatantly available for a more targeted, geo-specific direct offer?

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