Don’t Let This Happen To You!

I was going to post an article this week on the seemingly lack of motivation on the part of many companies to implement an integrated mobile solution. If the mindset of these companies continues and if they neglect to give this the proper attention it will be at a cost much like not having an integrated customer relationship management solution.

After reading the following story I am going to share with you written by Wendy Victora, Managing Editor at nwfdailynews.com, entitled “This penny wasn’t worth the trouble it caused”, I decided to write about another critical issue confronting companies in today’s marketplace and that is Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

This story points out how a mismanaged series of events can expose significant problems and result in a less than desirable outcome.

For the Cost of a Penny

“Last week, my daughter spotted a penny in the parking lot and bent to pick it up.

She had trouble prying it off the ground, coated as it was with disinterest and unknown fluids. After a brief struggle, she gave up and reached for the hand sanitizer.

She’s been collecting loose change lately, mostly from our kitchen counter, and has filled a decent sized jar.

But a penny isn’t worth much anymore, even to scavengers.

I dropped one while paying for breakfast at a drive-through this morning and the cashier told me not to worry about it – she had plenty.

We all do, most of the time.

Last month, I was one short, apparently.

And I didn’t know it until I got a disconnect notice from a local utility company. I knew it wasn’t a normal bill by the angry-colored orange box visible through the window of the envelope.

My service would be shut off Feb. 26, the notice informed me, unless I paid my overdue amount of 1 cent.

I am not making this up.

I had apparently written the check for the wrong amount and triggered the alarm system for being a deadbeat customer.

I was irate and went to bed that night fantasizing about driving to Valparaiso – the nearest customer service center – and handing them the nastiest penny I could find.

When I called the next day, a bored customer service rep told me they wouldn’t cut off my service for a penny.

She said the computer automatically generates those notices.

When I pointed out that, from a customer service perspective, that was a huge fail, she was uninterested.

There was a time when common sense would have kept that notice from being launched.

There was a time when an apology would have been issued.

There was a time when a penny was worth something, when it was a respectable little coin.

But I can’t remember a time when it was worth more than good customer relations.”

You would think that with the technology available to companies today, especially companies that have the resources to break down silos in their customer relationship marketing, would be taking the necessary steps to update their CRM processes.

With the enormous power customers have today to make impact on a brand’s reputation it is imperative to have the right people in front of the customer and the right processes in place to deal with and detect issues across the organization.

Each department and its employees must have access to the information available on its customers, if not each time a customer interacts with the company, that department has to provide the same information over and over again, duplicating effort and wasting time. This is not good customer relationship management is inefficient and frustrating for both customers and employees.

You must also have employees who are motivated to help customers when they call with a problem, not employees who act “uninterested”.

Empower you people to make decisions.

Customers don’t care who they are talking to only that they have a problem that needs to be solved. If they are not connected with the right person and are passed around, customers get the feeling that your business is not organized, no one wants to help them or both.

I am sure that you have all had these feelings trying to solve an issue that is important to you. Require your customer service reps or anyone who deals with customers to treat the people they communicate with in a way that they themselves would want to be treated. Empower your reps to solve the problem in the shortest amount of time possible and everyone will feel better for having found a solution and possibly create some good will.

The Wrong Message

Wendy should have never been sent a bill for one penny. First of all, it probably cost the company more to process that penny they might receive and secondly you don’t want to send customers messages that are going to upset or scare them and then just tell them you were just kidding.

There is only one outcome and that is a lost customer, in most cases, and all the negative word of mouth the customer can communicate to friends, family and across their social channels. Multiplied you can understand that this could have a devastating impact on your business.

And take notice! Marketing automation technology today is evolving but still finds it difficult, especially in B2C, to be able to recognize that people are complex humans that have many different reasons for any particular action they perform online or offline.

Every customer’s experience is different and to think that you can assume or generalize what a customer’s intentions are can be an ill-advised and hazardous undertaking.

Community

You first need to understand that communities should exist to serve the people in it but the residual benefits to your company can be substantial. Companies that understand and respect this can successfully leverage this asset.

Cultivating the customer experience through a Customer Relationship Management Community is a mutually beneficial way to foster communication and trust between you and your existing customers, potential customers and employees through a central hub, your website, which will emanate your customer centric culture across all your social channels and magnify your organic SEO and social reach to increase not only your inbound lead generation to gain new members but benefit all aspects of your marketing strategies.

In fact, many successful brands are successful because consumers organized around them through brand communities and defined what the brand meant. Today, consumers have the power. They can define the meaning of your brand regardless of how you may want to define it. They can also rally around your brand and to become advocates and influencers.

The benefit of having community members is that you can actually understand their wants, needs and concerns through “one on one” communication that is worth far more than assuming or guessing at their intentions and/or pursuing consumers you don’t know around the internet trying to entice them into to doing something they may not have any intention of doing at the risk of alienating them.

Consumers are inundated with all the ways that exist today to get in front of them and others are developing technology to counter this with technology like ad blockers that according to a recent article at Chief Marketer by Zach Schapira, “In the long-term if pervasive ad blocking shrinks the supply of sellable inventory, publishers may try to make up for the lost revenue by raising CPMs for advertisers.”

Why keep spending more and money on ways to figure out how to get in front of consumers that are trying to avoid you when you can, for a fraction of the cost, create a CRM Community to engage and communicate with them on their terms.

Customer Relationship Management Communities act as a portal to gain valuable information through interaction with your customers who will welcome your contact, to enhance and target your marketing initiatives more effectively by knowing your customers and discovering patterns through interaction to build buyer personas to personalize your marketing messages in the most transparent and effective way available today.

The benefits that these communities will bring are the most cost effective way inwhich to engage, retain, manage, nurture and form alliances with your community members, employees and potential customers that will not only foster loyalty and retention but promote your business in the most positive ways imaginable- all combining to raise the bar in defining personalization and customer relations.

Companies with onsite customized CRM Communities can experience better employee relations, customer service, reduced customer complaints and higher brand loyalty. Think of having a central place in which to connect with and understand your customer’s and potential customer’s concerns, wants and needs without assuming or generalizing their intentions.

Oliver Jaeger, Vice President Global Marketing & Communications for e-Spirit Inc. in North America, states in his article How to create a strong customer experience engine, “With so many different ways to communicate with customers, companies have to work harder and smarter to build and maintain strong relationships. And that engagement must span not just the buying phase, but the entire customer journey -- from awareness to purchase to implementation and support -- to create an outstanding customer experience at all touch points and channels.”

Forrester Research also points out that the three most important measurements of satisfaction are:

1. Effectiveness-The value the customer perceives they are getting.
2. Ease-The effort the customer must put in.
3. Emotion- How customer feels about the overall experience.

All of which a properly customized and executed onsite Customer Relationship community can nurture.

A CRM community offers the engine that can pull all of this together onto one central platform located on your website for your business emanating with brand loyalty, influencers and devoted customers.

Don’t forget to let me know your thoughts-go here for more in-depth information on CRM Communities. Then let’s schedule a time to have a “one on one” discussion about customizing a CRM Community for your company.

William Cosgrove

I would like to thank Wendy Victora for allowing me to reprint her story for this post.

And one of the nine things every marketing leader should do to get the most from social media according to Forrester’s playbook of predictions for 2015 so read on…

First And Goal

Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIX, featuring the Patriots’ wild, down-to-the-wire 28-24 win over the Seahawks, scored a 49.7 household rating and a 72 share — besting the 48.1 rating set two years ago when Baltimore triumphed over San Francisco. The final viewer tally for that game was 108 million.

Last year’s Super Bowl of course stands as the most-watched U.S. television event of all-time, having averaged 112.2 million viewers.

The Patriots, who just happen to be my favorite team, became the sixth team with at least four Super Bowl wins. They are tied with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys for most Super Bowl appearances, with eight. Pretty impressive statistics.

If you imagine the Super Bowl as a website with people from all over the world clicking through to engaged a piece of quality content, online event or special offer it then becomes essential to find ways to keep them wanting to return.

One thing I am sure of is that the accomplishments of these teams and this event were achieved through hard work, experimentation and by constantly moving forward to find the right mixture of plays, players, coaches and marketing strategies to consistently drive their success.

Scoring Points With Your Audience

This is what you need to accomplish in marketing your website. Do you think that the Super Bowl or any major event would be as successful if they didn’t use every play in their playbook to engage their audience?

You need to give people a reason to want to visit and keep coming back to you website whether they are a lead (perspective customer) or an existing customer.

When events like this occur the social channels light up with a frenzy of activity including commenting, sharing and newsjacking which I am guilty of here but it is a common and can often be a beneficial tactic.

According to Hubspot, the article I linked to here, I am a little late to the party but I don’t do this full time so I guess I can be forgiven. But if it helps to get my point across, an important one- I think, and one that works and has been gaining traction plus a subject that I have been writing about for years.

Calling The Right Plays

If you have been following my articles you might have a good idea what my point is but if not it is creating an Onsite Social or branded community depending what the trending term may be and there are others.

In fact this strategy has been included in Forrester’s playbook of predictions for 2015 as one if the nine things every marketing leader should do to get the most from social media.

Nate Elliott’s favorite prediction , Nate Elliott is a quarterback of Marketing Leadership Professionals, and my favorite from the report is that as social media matures, branded communities will make a comeback. According to Nate, “It makes sense: Marketing leaders report they’re significantly less satisfied with Facebook and Twitter marketing than with branded forums. But nearly twice as many marketers run Twitter and Facebook accounts as host to their own communities.”

It’s time for marketers to focus their efforts on the social tactics that actually work, can play well over the long term and contribute to all your team strategies- meaning brand-hosted forums within communities can help you all the way across the customer life cycle:

• “They can drive greater brand reach. Many brands try to garner word of mouth by posting content on Facebook and hoping it goes viral. But this “post and pray” method rarely works. The right way to create word of mouth? Advocate communities. Invite a few hundred of your most satisfied customers into an exclusive forum, issue them word-of-mouth challenges, rank them on a leaderboard, and watch your reach multiply. It worked for B2B vendor Bomgar.”
• ” They can convert prospects into customers. When people are researching and considering their product options, they usually end up visiting your brand site. You already know that adding ratings and reviews to your site can drive more sales — and so can a branded community. Adding a Q&A feature or a forum to your site will both convert more prospects and lead to more satisfied customers. It worked for the Milwaukee School of Engineering.”
• ” They can cement existing customer relationships. Some marketers turn to Facebook and Twitter to engage existing customers. But US online adults who want to stay in touch with your brand are three times more likely to visit your site than to engage you on Facebook. Both B2B and B2C marketers have found branded communities create more loyalty and lifetime value than Facebook and Twitter marketing. It worked for semiconductor maker Analog Devices.”

“Onsite Communities are HERE, they are REAL, AVAILABLE and currently providing enormous BENEFITS to businesses across the Industry horizontal.”

Scoring Touchdowns through Great Customer Relationship Management

Get out in front and open up opportunities! Great Customer Relationship Management equals delighted customers, loyal customers, attracts influencers, fosters word of mouth advertising, testimonials and provides brand reach that together can turn your site into a virtual ecosystem of engagement that will drive traffic to your site and broadcast your message across the digital spectrum unlike any other form of paid, organic or earned media can offer. See Press Release

Social Community Playbook Strategies Include:

In addition to establishing a forum including an Onsite Social Community will anchor your customer centric culture by offering a permanent and centralized platform for communicating and engaging with your present and future customers and keep them coming back.

Benefits (permanent and specials/offers) and much more can be offered to existing and to sign up potential customers to gain important information to create buyer personas that can all be managed from one central location-Your website (Your owned real estate)

1. Discounts on purchases

2. Discounts on Warranties

3. Discounts on Maintenance Contracts

4. Discounts on Services

5. Discounts on financing

This includes permanent discounts for community members as well as special discounts offered on a timely basis. Put your marketing dollars where they will offer the highest ROI by directly benefiting your members the ones who are going to pay you back over and over through loyalty.

6.An Onsite Customer Care Center

With direct access to Customer Care representatives with knowledge and authority to answer questions, solve issues and make appointments

7.Drawings (To keep them coming back)

Have a monthly drawing for $$$ In free services and or product discounts that broadly cover individuals current needs that members can enter every month with their e-mail to keep members engaged and visiting your site.

8. Contests

There are countless ways to engage your audience by sponsoring contests within your onsite community and across your social channels and are only limited to your creative ideas.

9. Special Offers

Have special offers for community members and site visitors (who join) for doing something that will extend your brand.

10. Onsite community Testimonial Page

Take a picture of winners of contests, customers satisfied with service or at time of purchases that you, your employyes and customers can automatically and easily post to the Community Testimonial Page (See PhotoRep) and their Social Media channels.

11. Social casting for on and offline events in “real time”

Events anchor any business to their community. You can take advantage of and encourage your community members to participate in all your real-time event ‘live’ media marketing to help you broadcast it across every online digital and traditional marketing channel.

Imagine blog casting, social casting, and mobile applications all working together to engage and draw potential viewers and fans to the event both during and after it’s over.

Events marketing can also be used as a multichannel online sales or advertising event tool to enhance your inbound leads and including community members can add invaluable authenticity to all your campaigns.

I have listed 11 Plays here to put in your playbook of marketing strategies utilizing your onsite community and there are many more that you can add to keep driving down the field to keep scoring goals.

Onsite Communities are HERE, they are REAL, AVAILABLE and currently providing enormous BENEFITS to businesses across the Industry horizontal. Businesses are driving leads through Inbound and Digital Marketing strategies utilizing their onsite communities to broadcast their customer centric culture across their social channels and organically across the internet.

The upside potential of having and utilizing an onsite community to engage and interact with your audience and customers is enormous. Showing your existing and potential customers that you will be there before and after the sale to reward and take care of them will create a customer centric culture that will foster customer loyalty that will extend across all your earned, owned and social media to benefit you and your customers each and every day. This is customer care at its finest and what will drive your success for years to come.

Give me a call to show you how we can get you across the finish line time and time again.

William Cosgrove

Most sources say that the cost of acquiring a new customer compared to the cost of keeping an existing customer is between 4 to 10 times higher. Some sources say the cost of acquiring a new customer is over 30 times that of keeping an existing one.

A key element in the cost is probably the industry or market you are in and other factors like those pointed out in this Aria infographic from a post at Hubspot entitled A Visual Introduction to Customer Lifetime Value written by Emma Snider that points out that on average, 80% of a company’s future profits come from 20% of its existing customers and that totally satisfied customers contribute over twice as much revenue as a customer who is not making customer relationship management and the best ways to accomplish it a critical consideration for any company.

Cultivating customer satisfaction through community is a mutually beneficial way to foster communication and trust between you and your existing customers, potential customers and employees through a central hub, your website, which will emanate your customer centric culture across all your social channels and magnify your organic reach through SEO to increase your inbound lead generation.

Social CRM Communities act as a portal to gain valuable information through in-depth analytics to enhance and target your marketing initiatives more effectively by knowing your customers, discovering patterns through interaction to build buyer personas to personalize your marketing messages in the most effective way available today.


 

Websites Need to Evolve. Websites need to be engaging and interactive. Visit any website today and they're much the same as they were 20 years ago: they're entirely one way for the most part.

Ownership of social media is shifting away from Marketing and Communication as engagement increasingly relates to inbound customerservice-based topics. Rather than social being seen purely as a space for companies to deliver outbound marketing messages, it is the inbound customer queries that allow for meaningful points of engagement and the building of brand advocacy

Social CRM Community tools allow businesses to better engage with their customers by, for example, listening to their opinions about their
products and services.
 

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