Social CRM, customer engagement, and next gen call centers

February 5, 2012

Social Media Co-Opts the Super Bowl

by Pam Dyer with 13 views

Image courtesy of author's blog

With more than 100 million tuning in to watch each year, the Super Bowl has long been a mecca for advertisers. Brands have historically unveiled some of the best commercial spots of the year during the game, which they’ve kept under wraps... [read more]

February 4, 2012

More Social Customer Engagement Models That Don't Suck

by Adam Metz with 57 views

Ed. note: This is part of a series of excerpts from The Social Customer, the new guide to social customer acquisition, monetization, and retention by Adam Metz. For the first entry, go here. This installment continues Chapter 2: The “How” and “... [read more]

February 3, 2012

10 Top Sales Trends for 2012: Staying Humble and Hungry

by Josiane Feigon
with 35 views

EXCLUSIVE POST — Welcome survivors! Salespeople have made it through two years of the Great Recession, and another two years of one of the weakest “recoveries” in US economic history. In 2012, you will find that companies continue to sit on their cash reserves, and stressed-out... [read more]

Komen and Planned Parenthood: The Pace of Social Media Outrage

February 3, 2012 by Alyson Stone
with 60 views

Image: Mark HIllary/Flickr(creative commons)

When The Susan G. Komen Foundation took the unexpected action of cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood, they triggered an event that represents the power and reach of our increasingly social communication [read more]

Lessons Learned: Susan G Komen Vs Their Public

February 3, 2012 by Jon Burg
with 67 views

There has been a bit of a social media/public policy kerfuffle over the past week regarding the Susan G Komen non-profit. [read more]

Drink Up… This is How Listening Builds a Brand

February 3, 2012 by Keith Paul
with 35 views

When was the last time you acted upon recommendations from your customers? No, I mean you really acted. I like to make sport of calling out companies for botching their social media activities (see Chrysler and Starbucks). I seldom see awesome... [read more]

Selling to Sales People With War Stories

February 3, 2012 by Steve Reeves
with 15 views

Image: Courtesy of author blog

How do sales people sell to other sales guys? You might think they get very technical, preening themselves with demonstrations of their intellect. You might think they brag about past achievements and future opportunities. [read more]

8 Marketing Trends to Implement in Your 2012 Marketing Plan

February 2, 2012 by Yasmin Bendror
with 66 views

As I’ve said before, social media needs to be INTEGRATED into your overarching marketing plan. It’s not the magic pill. It’s not the hard sale, it’s the soft sell. It’s not going to blast your sales from $0 to $10,000 overnight. But social media is a powerful marketing tool that must be used in your marketing tactics today. And other important marketing tactics must not be ignored either. [read more]

What’s Love Got to Do with It? The 3P’s of Identity (guest post)

February 2, 2012 by Brian Solis
with 10 views

Image: Shutterstock.com

While we only get the chance to vote for President every four years, we cast thousands of votes each day in other ways. We vote with our time for leisure activities. We vote with our attention in the barrage of advertisements to which we are exposed. We certainly vote with our wallets on purchase decisions amidst a sea of competing options. [read more]

Social Customer Engagement Models That Don't Suck

February 2, 2012 by Adam Metz
with 37 views

Before we can examine the Four Social Customer Scenarios—where your brand is, currently, in relation to your social customers—we must look at the Social Customer Engagement Models, the “where” of the social customer, within your organization. [read more]

Facebook Files S-1 for $5 Billion IPO (Revealing Stats & Revenue)

February 2, 2012 by Brian Solis
with 82 views

Updating as this plays out with deeper analysis and links… Just a few moments ago, Facebook officially filed an S-1 for an initial public offering seeking to raise $5 billion. Here are a few key findings… - 845 million monthly active users, year over year growth of 39% - 483 million daily active users as of December, year over... [read more]

Just Like Mom Said: Keep Your Promises

February 2, 2012 by Kim Proctor
with 35 views

When a company makes a promise to its customers (via its website, via marketing, via policies or contracts) AND fulfills it – it builds trust. Makes sense right? You make a promise and the customer hopes you will live up to it. When you do fulfill your promises, it satisfies the customers and it may even make them more loyal. [read more]

Super Bowl Ads 2012: Is Nostalgia the New Black?

February 1, 2012 by Jennifer Roberts
with 108 views

You’ve probably noticed it yourself. Matthew Broderick revamping his Ferris Bueller role to promote Honda, the Star Wars Barking ad for VW, and Seinfeld endorsing Acura. The 80′s and 90′s are having a big influence on the creative for this year’s Super Bowl Commercials, even Madonna is showing up at half-time. But is the audience recognizing and responding to these references? [read more]

Does Your Company Inspire Trust? How Online Communities Can Help!

February 1, 2012 by Vanessa DiMauro
with 31 views

The chief executive’s voice is no longer the trusted source for information about the company, the industry or service trends. Customers no longer look to executive leadership for vision and facts. [read more]

Rethinking Approaches to Customer Loyalty

February 1, 2012 by Mark Johnson
with 55 views

Photo by Joe Loong via Flickr

Bernard Chung, Director of Product Marketing of SAP guest-writes for Loyalty 360's State of the Industry series: In my work with forward-thinking enterprises around the world, it’s clear that customer loyalty is a top priority. The focus today is on customer centricity, and no wonder – not only are customers expensive to attract, but... [read more]

Symbiosis: Customer Experience and Business Process

February 1, 2012 by Julie Hunt
with 173 views

Image: BP Trends.com

Now from the customer perspective, which is what upper management should have as top priority, interactions with most companies are becoming more and more a multi-channel journey of multiple touch points that are used to communicate, gain information, compare vendor offerings, seek assistance, make purchases, register complaints, and so on. [read more]

Super Bowl Ads – Using Social Media Analytics to Explain Their Popularity

January 31, 2012 by Jennifer Roberts
with 36 views

The Super Bowl ads have a lot to accomplish in a 30-second spot; they need to entertain us, maybe inspire us to purchase a product or view a show and spark a social conversation. But if you rely exclusively on volume-defined popularity then you are missing the critical reaction piece that complements and explains why a particular ad is popular. [read more]

Should Brands Be Allowed To Filter Their Facebook Timelines?

January 31, 2012 by Jon Burg
with 38 views

Image courtesy of author's blog

Facebook's Timeline offers a summary of the user's FB life based on an algorithm that is in my experience, pretty reliable.Recent rumors suggest that brands may be getting their own Facebook Timelines as soon as the end of February. This unique platform would pose a number of challenges for a number of major brands, many of... [read more]

Is J.C. Penney Stuck With Stores?

January 31, 2012 by Denise Lee Yohn
with 19 views

Image courtesy of author's blog

New York Times’ Stephanie Clifford asked me for reactions to J. C. Penney’s recent presentation about the vision and path forward for the venerable chain. My comments were featured in her piece as follows: Denise Lee Yohn, a branding consultant, said that she was impressed with some of his ideas, but that Penney’s... [read more]

The Customer Experience Journey Continues … Getting Started!

January 31, 2012 by Mike Merriman
with 151 views

Image: Ronploof/Flickr(creative commons0

The scope and scale of your customer experience strategy is largely dependent on your goals and the business itself. Some strategies could be relatively easImage while others require a monumental effort. Regardless of the effort, there are some common CX themes. [read more]

Make that Social Content Shift… 5 steps to creating social content assets out of what you already have!

January 30, 2012 by Maggie Fox
with 48 views

Most companies and organizations already have lots and lots of content. There are likely some real social content gems in those archives of Powerpoint presentations, pdf files, binders and Web pages that have built up over the years. In mining your existing content archives, the challenge becomes finding the time, energy and motivation to unearth those “gems”. [read more]

Social Media ROI Depends on the “Maturity” of Your Approach

January 30, 2012 by Luke Brynley-Jones
with 50 views

In Marshall Sponder's view there are essentially 4 levels of maturity which dictate the degree of ROI that you should expect to get out of social media. [read more]

Simple Social Media Assessment Tool

January 30, 2012 by Keith Paul
with 41 views

The “Social Community Meter” is a basic, clean, no-frills way to gauge how a small business represents itself through social media. [read more]

Being Off Duty Doesn’t Mean You Aren’t Responsible for Customer Service (and More)

January 30, 2012 by Shep Hyken
with 71 views

Image by Mike Knell via Flickr

This may start out to sound like a rant, but it isn’t. It’s simply the set-up for the customer service lesson to be learned. I’m at an airport, working my way through the security line for about fifteen minutes. During this time, a number of flight attendants and airline personnel went ahead of me and everyone else,... [read more]

Nissan Embraces Social Media to Improve Customer Experiences and Foster Advocacy

January 29, 2012 by Brian Solis
with 337 views

In this episode of (R)evolution, Nissan’s David Mingle, Director of Customer Management and Erich Marx, Director of Marketing join me for a refreshing conversation about social media’s impact on business transformation, customer experiences, and building an adaptive business model to learn and evolve based on new opportunities. We... [read more]

Social Media vs. Email — Are We Asking The Right Questions?

January 28, 2012 by Maria Ogneva
with 159 views

Image courtesy of author's blog

While announcing the death of e-mail is a bit premature, it’s absolutely a reality that the paradigm of communication has changed. There has been a flurry of articles lately about giving up email completely, as well as criticisms of such an approach. I think what’s more valuable than claiming the victory of each of the extremes is the... [read more]

The '@' Droppers. Are You Tuned into How Your Customers Use Twitter?

January 27, 2012 by Joshua March
with 73 views

Image: Courtesy of @PaulContentMan

Twitter can be used for personal conversations, but is also a platform for expressing feelings, often frustration. Someone annoyed with your company might not always be looking to engage with your customer service agents, and won’t bother to find your account. [read more]

Average Is Over: Time to Stand Out

January 27, 2012 by Dave Brock
with 100 views

Photo by Mike Gifford via Flickr

In a buyer’s world, where too many products are undifferentiated, where the differences between the companies that stand behind the products are relatively small, where quality is similar, where everything balances out–and on average they are the same, there are two things that stand out as real differentiators... [read more]

Which Brands Became Social Objects and Why

January 27, 2012 by Adam Metz
with 42 views

Image: David Armano/Flickr(creative commons)

Whether consumer brands ever aspired to become “social objects” for much of the last 100 years is questionable. Brands have always wanted to be talked about, but whether they wanted to be talked with is up for debate. [read more]

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