UK Large business & public sector
There’s a basic fact behind every purchase you make – you want it to work.
Whether it’s a washing machine, a car or a broadband service, you want it to work.
And the effort you have to put in to making your purchase work will influence how you feel about the company that sold it to you. [Read more...]
It’s a tough time for traditional retailers – as the number of prominent casualties on the UK high street in recent weeks testifies. However, the National Retail Federation show in New York last week showed how retailers could fight back using a combination of design, innovation and showmanship.
It is very apparent that online retailers are out innovating the conventional high street. Companies like Amazon, eBay and Apple are setting the benchmark for both price and service – with 78% of customers expecting the same level of online service from older brands as new online players, according to BT’s new Autonomous Customer research. The same survey also tells us that convenience is more important than price for 1 in 3 customers. For traditional brands to survive, they need to be as, if not more, innovative using the one advantage that they have over online – their physical presence. [Read more...]
In recent years the attention for the use of content in business has grown significantly. The main part of that attention goes to content as it is used in a marketing context, one of the reasons why Joe Pulizzi called it content marketing. As marketing touches many disciplines, channels and tactics, the term sometimes leads to confusion. However, the main criterion to define the value of content is the customer need it fulfills in combination with the business goals it serves. In this sense, content plays a crucial role in customer service and the contact center.
Organizations often sit on a mountain of content, including informational, educational, and promotional content. In fact, businesses are full of great stories and content, sometimes hidden in the heads of the people that make the company: everyone working for it and everyone connected with it. [Read more...]
We’ve recently written a white paper on social media, Serving the social customer. How to look good on the social dance floor. It highlighted three things that could and should affect what you do on social media.
1. Facebook is the ‘friendliest’ of the social media channels
It’s where we all go to interact with our friends and family, it’s not really where we go to seek out brands and speak to them. But when we do, we tend to be nice about it. Out of the 2,986 interactions we looked at in our study, the highest proportion of compliments was on Facebook (out of Twitter, Facebook, forums and YouTube). [Read more...]
I will admit that for many years I dreamt of being Maggie Philbin or Philippa Forrester and present TV science programmes. So I leapt at the chance when I was asked to appear with Dr Michael Mosely on a BBC programme celebrating the invention of the telephone, ‘The Genius of Invention’ (BBC Two).
On arrival “on set” it was fabulous to see BT’s network control centre in Oswestry, Shropshire, looking so 007-ish, having had a makeover from the BBC lighting team. Oswestry is both the eyes and the ears of the UK’s communications network. It ensures every one of the five billion calls passing over BT’s “core” network every month gets through to their intended destinations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – whether you are ringing your aunt in Sydney or a contact centre in Sidcup. [Read more...]
The last blog looked at channel shift from the perspective of making channels “useful, usable and used”. This blog takes a wider look at why people choose the channels that they choose.
Where the customer is, how much time they have and what channels are accessible to them at any one time will inevitably determine their choice of channel. Some customers may not be able to access the Internet because they lack physical access to it, or they lack the confidence to use it. [Read more...]
The holy grail of customer experience strategy at the moment is to move customers from expensive human channels to cheaper self-service channels. Call it channel shift, digital by default or zero people intensity – the intention is to get more people to embrace self-service and do more things themselves.
However, the first question to ask, in order to create an effective digital channel mix, is why people use the channels that they do now. [Read more...]
While many businesses are still experimenting with social media for marketing and customer service purposes, social media for businesses today is like the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Many executives don’t see what’s under the surface: social business. But it’s there and if you don’t know it, your ship might run into – serious – problems. The way we work – and increasingly will work – is certainly a crucial aspect of what we now call social business.
There are debates regarding the definition of social business and some claim businesses can’t be social, only people can. True. However, that’s just a small part of what social business means and the discussions are most of all among ‘experts’. Social business is not a replacement of social media marketing. And managers should ask themselves where technologies, including social, can improve business functions, whatever they are and certainly beyond marketing, including work. [Read more...]
I will maintain to my last breath that I’m an iPhone user because it’s the best technology out there and the only smartphone that does absolutely everything I need. Really I will.
If I was talking about someone else however, I’d point out the extremely high likelihood that the iPhone buyer had bought into the whole apple status thing, because ‘everything they needed’ (and maybe more) was available from other suppliers, potentially at lower cost. [Read more...]
Head to any of the ancient cities of Europe and you can spend peaceful hours wandering in circles down winding, rabbit-warren streets. Around every corner is a new, unexpected marvel; a relic from the chequered pasts these places tend to have. Old, very old, not-so-old and new, all jumbled up on top of each other in a charming medley
As a tourist such strolls are a lovely way to spend an afternoon, but try and drive a truck down the Via Guelfa in Florence (a city once at the heart of world trade) and you’ll soon find you’ve lost your paddle. [Read more...]
