Is your marketing calendar chaotic? Take this one question test.

Wrestling social media to the ground

Every social media manager I talk to tells me one of two things.  One, they are relying on technology to get their mission accomplished.  Or Two, their collaborative process involves spreadsheets, word documents, emails and contentious moments deciding who on the team is going to react to a rogue social post mention.

Well kudos to those with technology, I just want to point out the advantages social relationship management software brings to the table.

Marketing Calendars Have Many Cooks

Think about your organization.  

Here’s the one test question:  Is your agency assembling content, putting it into a spreadsheet or word doc and then sending it off for approval? 

Then does the process involve approvals from:

• legal,
• the brand managers,
• the community managers,
• Corporate Communications,
• Public Relations,
• Marketing,
• (I don’t know…anyone else?  HR?)?

I suggest you do two things if this is true.  One calculate the amount of expensive labor expended.  And Two, think about how much important information can be lost in that shuffle.

Synergy Not Chaos

The alternative of course is to have a single view into the content so as to support a true team collaborative process.  Think about what life would be like if the team could log into the same dashboard, (each with their own security limitations of course). 

1. The agency can upload the content. 
2. The content can be routed via workflows to each approver automatically; alerting each of them it’s their turn. 
3. This single view of content can be scheduled, pushed, published and then monitored. 
4. Rinse Repeat

Chaos Squared

For those organizations with global reach, or many departments, stores, etc. you probably have many Facebook pages, Twitter handles, Instagram accounts.  Think about how the process to distribute approved content could be streamlined, curated with confidence and pushed out there if, again, your teammates were alerted by email to look into that single view dashboard.

The platform will also improve productivity by enabling your team to push out communications across multiple pages, multiple social networks at the same time.  Again, count the hours and do the math.

With a social relationship management system, the team at the hub can have confidence those folks on the tips of the spokes will be publishing What you want and in a Timely Basis.

Plus you’ll have confidence that all of your messaging will have a consistent Voice.  Even if those messages are in multiple languages. 

Measuring Performance

For those responsible for monitoring the content’s performance consider merely logging in to view the metrics, to eyeball what’s working instantly. This versus the monthly reports gathered by perusing multiple metric sources.  We all want to know “what’s working” and waiting is never easy.  With the technology monitoring your content’s performance you can specify time periods, social voices, channels, accounts in varied slicing and dicing fashion.

Wrap Up

So if you’re assigning tasks to others and want to monitor their workflow,

Technology shouldn’t rule the roost, but it can be the backbone that supports the creative energy of the smart people on your team.  If team collaboration excellence is your goal, then using a social relationship management set of technologies to manage your marketing calendar is absolutely the best practice.

Ron Shulkin blogs researches and writes about enterprise technology focused on innovation and social media. You can follow him Twitter. You can follow his blogs at this Facebook group.  You can connect with Ron on LinkedIn.  

Ron Shulkin is the Chicago area Director for Spredfast. Spredfast provides a social relationship platform that allows organizations to manage, monitor, and measure their social media programs at scale. Spredfast enables more people, in more places, to engage in more conversations from a single platform on supported social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ YouTube and popular blogging platforms. You can learn more about Spredfast here.

A New Twist on Storytelling: The Cleveland Clinic Empathy Series Continues

To follow-up on my post "The Critical Element Missing from Your Customer Experience Programs," here is the next video in the Cleveland Clinic empathy series. “You’ll be moved by these life-changing stories, and astonished when you learn what these patients have in common.”

Cleveland Clinic’s Empathy Series Continues – Patients: Afraid and Vulnerable

If the video doesn't appear, you can view it at http://youtu.be/1e1JxPCDme4

This year’s Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit (TCEL) focuses on “Return on Relationships: Factoring Empathy into the Stakeholder Equation.” Here are just two of the many TCEL sessions where you’ll "discover the emotional drivers that are critical in creating an effective customer story and how to factor empathy into the bigger equation to get a return on customer relationships:"

• “Bringing Empathy into Your Organization,” Crystal Collier, CEO, Tarp Woldwide and Dan Hill, President, Sensory Logic
• “Empathetic Marketing for Total Customer Experience,” Mark Ingwer, Ph.D., Founder, Insight Consulting Group

Want to learn more about customer experience from Crystal, Dan and Mark in person? Join them at Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit 2014 in Miami in April. To learn more about the event and register, go to www.iirusa.com/totalcustomer.

Stay connected with TCEL:

• twitter.com/TotalCustomer #TCEL14
• linkedin.com/Total Customer Experience Leaders
• facebook.com/TotalCustomer

 

Peggy L. Bieniek, ABC is an Accredited Business Communicator specializing in corporate communication best practices. Connect with Peggy on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and on her website at www.starrybluebrilliance.com.

Customer Experience Innovation: Treat Your Customers Like People

With the 2014 Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit just weeks away, I was lucky enough to catch up with Len Ferman, managing director of Ferman Innovation, and former Senior Vice President of Innovation and Ideation at Bank of America.

Today, corporate leaders often lose sight of customer needs in the constant quest toward next quarter’s earnings. But, what is positive for stock prices tends to conflict with long term customer satisfaction and shareholder value.

You simply can’t understand the customer experience if don’t empathize with your customers, Ferman told me. “You have to be able to see them face-to-face and listen to them talk about their pain points and challenges,” he said.

Ferman suggests that corporate leaders need to spend more time attending traditional focus groups – watching their customers talk about their interactions with the company and hear their first hand experiences and further, understand how these fit within the broader context of the goals and challenges that they have as people.

“When you see customers face-to-face, you pick up the body language and expressions that you cannot discern in the most disciplined reading of a market research report,” explained Ferman. “Only when you have seen your customers talking about your company, can you truly empathize with their needs.

Listen to the full podcast interview here: http://bit.ly/1fQymj7

Len will be speaking in just a few weeks at the 2014 Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit, taking place April 9-11th, in a session entitled, “Innovation a Roadmap for Customer Experience.”

This year’s conference will explore the new realities of building brands and relationships in today's socially driven and data abundant world. The event shines an important lens on the power of insights and the critical need for marketers to focus on factoring emotion into the bigger equation to get a return on customer relationships.

For more information about this exciting event, click here: http://bit.ly/OeuKLI

About the Author: Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist of the Marketing Division at IIR USA, has a background in digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and technology. Amanda is the Editor at Large for several of IIR’s blogs including Next Big Design, Customers 1st, and ProjectWorld and World Congress for Business Analysts, and a regular contributor to Front End of Innovation and The Market Research Event,. She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and feature stories in the technology industry. She can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.

Related articles

• 12 Days of Innovation: May You Stay Inspired in 2014!

The Critical Element Missing from Your Customer Experience Programs

Following up on Tuesday’s post, “How to Create an Emotional Customer Experience,” here is another example of a powerfully compelling video containing the one critical element missing from many organizations’ customer experience programs: empathy.

Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care by Cleveland Clinic

If the video doesn't appear, you can view it at http://youtu.be/cDDWvj_q-o8

As you can see, making a difference in people’s lives builds trust and credibility and of course, creates a better world for all of us! To learn more about creating empathy through video, check out these articles:

• What is The Greatest Secret to More Empathy? Absolutely Amazing Video! by Michael Rogers
• In Video, Connecting is King by Russell Working

This year’s Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit (TCEL) focuses on “Return on Relationships: Factoring Empathy into the Stakeholder Equation.” Here are just two of the many TCEL sessions where you’ll "discover the emotional drivers that are critical in creating an effective customer story and how to factor empathy into the bigger equation to get a return on customer relationships:"

• “Bringing Empathy into Your Organization,” Crystal Collier, CEO, Tarp Woldwide and Dan Hill, President, Sensory Logic 
   
• “Empathetic Marketing for Total Customer Experience,” Mark Ingwer, Ph.D., Founder, Insight Consulting Group

Want to learn more about customer experience from Crystal, Dan and Mark in person? Join them at Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit 2014 in Miami in April. To learn more about the event and register, go to www.iirusa.com/totalcustomer.

Stay connected with TCEL:

• twitter.com/TotalCustomer #TCEL14
• linkedin.com/Total Customer Experience Leaders
• facebook.com/TotalCustomer

Peggy L. Bieniek, ABC is an Accredited Business Communicator specializing in corporate communication best practices. Connect with Peggy on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and on her website at www.starrybluebrilliance.com.

Never Eat Alone

Never Eat Alone was advice that I followed a few years ago when I attended the North American Conference on Customer Management.  I had lunch and conversations with like-minded people that wanted to learn more about customer service excellence.   Experts gave presentations of the best practices of building relationships with clients, as I nibbled on my croissant.   At the cocktail reception, I connected with other attendees and presenters as they shared their passion for customer service.   After I returned home, I connected with many of my contacts.  One of the exceptional speakers was Kelly Cook, Senior Vice President of Marketing at DSW.   As a founder and Board Director of Texas Women in Business, I asked Kelly to keynote at the annual anniversary luncheon.  Her presentation on Women in Leadership Roles was well-received and DSW even hosted a reception at one of their Austin locations.
  

Customer Service & Shoe Lovers!

  
At the Total Customer Experience Leader's Summit coming soon in Miami, Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone, will speak on Changing Behavior Towards the Customer Experience.  His insights on helping others and ourselves break bad habits will be helpful in our personal and business lives.   Ferrazi, son of a steelworker and a cleaning lady, developed the practice of connecting with others that helped him earn a scholarship to Yale, a Harvard MBA and top executive positions.   His principles are based on generosity & genuine relationship-building.  As you attend the Total Conference, a few key principles to follow are:  

• Don't keep score:  It is never simply about getting what you want.  It's about getting what you want and making sure that the people who are important to you get what they want, too.

•  "Ping" constantly:  The Ins and Outs of reaching out to those in your circle of contacts all the time - not just when you need something.  

• Never eat alone:  The dynamics of status are the same whether you're working at a corporation or attending a social event - "invisibility" is a fate worse than failure.   

Each day there are opportunities to follow thought-leaders on the topic of Factoring Empathy into the Stakeholder Equation.  Amazing speakers are on the agenda and you will have the opportunity to not only connect with the experts but determine your own strategy for exceptional customer experience.  Learn from my personal experience and set the intention to never eat alone but to create relationships with attendees and experts.  

Download the brochure for more information: http://bit.ly/1idxeUe 

How to Create an Emotional Customer Experience

“Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.” ― Vincent Van Gogh, highly influential post-Impressionist artist

Great storytelling evokes emotion. Using the power of storytelling, you can create emotionally compelling videos with equally compelling messages that will continue to resonate with your employees and customers and build brand loyalty.

This video is one of the best examples of storytelling I’ve seen posted on www.publicwords.com. If the video doesn't appear below, you can view it at http://youtu.be/7s22HX18wDY

 

This post also provides tips on how to recreate the same “magic” for your videos.

Here are two articles from www.ragan.com to help get you started on creating videos to engage your employees, who are the “key to delivering your customer’s experience,” according to Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit (TCEL) keynote speaker Peter Neill, Former Chief Customer Officer, Level 3 Communications:

• 20 Ideas for Your Next Corporate Video:
• An A-to-Z Guide to Producing Internal Videos for Employees:

Want to hear more from Peter on customer experience in person? Join him at Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit 2014 in Miami in April. To learn more about the event and register, go to www.iirusa.com/totalcustomer

Stay connected with TCEL:

• twitter.com/TotalCustomer #TCEL14
• linkedin.com/Total Customer Experience Leaders
• facebook.com/TotalCustomer

Peggy L. Bieniek, ABC is an Accredited Business Communicator specializing in corporate communication best practices. Connect with Peggy on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and on her website at www.starrybluebrilliance.com.

Your 2014 Customer Experience Strategy Checklist

Customer experience is a huge opportunity for growth today. Organizations who are doing it right are seeing profits soar above those who have not. The key is understanding how to align customer strategy against the other long range goals of driving loyalty alongside new business. 

How you get this done is what your peer groups will be discussing at the upcoming Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit.  This year, TCEL explores the new realities of building brands and relationships in today's socially driven and data abundant world. Discover the emotional drivers that are critical in creating an effective customer story. TCEL shines an important lens on the power of insights and the critical need for marketers to focus on factoring emotion into the bigger equation to get a return on customer relationships. We cover it all at the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit.

Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit 2014

April 9-11, 2014

Trump International Beach Resort

Miami, Florida

Download the brochure for more information: http://bit.ly/1idxeUe

Here is Your Customer Experience Strategy Checklist: 

• Build an Experience Management Core Competency, Experience Engineering Inc.
• Be a Leader that Inspires Creativity and Innovation, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide
• Change Behavior Towards the Customer Experience, Ferrazzi Greenlight
• Use VOC to Take Actionable Insights, Asten Johnson
• Master the Mindset of the Millennial Candidate, Career Builder
• Use Emotional Energy To Make Your Customer Experience Programs Easier, Faster and Smarter, Brandtrust
• Put Big Data to Good Use and Optimize The Customer Experience, TNS
• Bring Empathy into Your Organization, Tarp Worldwide, Sensory Logic
• Use Employee Recognition Programs to Energize and Strengthen Customer-Centric Organizations, Janet LeBlanc & Associates Inc.
• Use Empathetic Marketing for Total Customer Experience, Insights Consulting Group
• Move Brands Faster and Longer in the Social Media Era, Microsoft
• Build Brand and Loyalty Through Customer Experience, Forrester
• Incorporate the Rational and the Emotional into the Customer Experience Journey, Bank of Montreal

Visit our website to download the brochure and view the full program:  http://bit.ly/1idxeUe

As a member of our LinkedIn Group, we’d like to offer you a 15% off the standard registration rates, use code TCEL14LI to save. Register today: http://bit.ly/1f1zpvh

We look forward to seeing you in Miami!

Cheers,
The TCEL Team

#TCEL14

@TotalCustomer
customers1stblog.iirusa.com

Customer Experience Conversations: Nestor Portillo

In this next post in our Customer Experience Conversations series, we sat down with Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit’s speaker Nestor Portillo, Director, Social Communities and Customer Experience at Microsoft who shared his best customer experience, the importance of empathy, and how social media has affected customer experience today.

In April, TCEL will explore these topics and the all of the new realities of building brands and relationships in today’s socially driven and data abundant world. The event will shine an important lens on the power of insights and the critical need for marketers to focus on factoring emotion into the bigger equation to get a return on customer relationships. Your experience at TCEL will include three full days of high-level visionary keynote presentations and in-depth case studies illustrating linking insights & data, data measuring & mapping, design thinking, synthesize intelligence from B2B and B2C companies across verticals, disciplines and cultures to march forward with a sound total customer experience plan.

Here is what Portillo had to say:

IIR: Describe your best customer experience.

Portillo: My best customer experience was with Wells Fargo few months ago. I’m not sure if this is a common practice everywhere or not (if don’t it should), but my experience with them when deactivating my debit card (lost it) and getting a replacement was awesome.

First I will say, it was flawlessly and fast which is something that I was expecting however what really surprise me was that the whole interaction was extremely effortless on my side and once the case (card replacement) was completed, I got a print out with the name of the agent who managed my case, his manager name, their contact information, a summary of the transaction, a summary of what to expect next including timing and also a promise to follow up with me a week after which took place as promised.

What made it a different experience was the low level of effort required from my end and the high level of accountability demonstrated with the print out. You don’t always you proactively get a written commitment about what to expect and on top of that the names/phone and emails of the people accountable for make it happen.

IIR: How is empathetic leadership changing leadership in customer experience today?

Portillo: I would say it is becoming more important than ever. Companies are pushed to deliver on revenue expectations while reducing costs; this makes customer experience a key piece in the operational model to achieve these 2 goals (revenue and operational efficiency).

IIR: Why are empathy and emotion so important in when it comes to customer experience?

Portillo: In my opinion, customer experience is a combination of emotions, memories, expectations, needs fulfillment, timing and effort. All of these are important add-ons to your product or service. So, in order to deliver a great customer experience, it needs to have a high degree of empathy and emotion because the interaction goes beyond product functionality or a feature explanation. You need to engage with empathy because for customers it is no longer a transaction it is about them and their feelings that you care.

If you operate in a business that has low switching costs, then customer experience is your key differentiator or competitive advantage to drive loyalty and keep your market share. Think about cable or cellular services. They all have low switching costs, which means that the real differentiator is the customer experience.

IIR: What are the key traits of a great customer experience leader?

Portillo: I think a great customer experience leader is a person that embrace responsible innovation because customer preferences are evolving as fast as the technology evolves; is a change agent because you need the whole organization onboard and is a customer centric person because customer needs to be at the center of what processes, technology, procedures are trying to address or serve.

IIR: If your customers have a bad customer experience, how do you reconnect with them moving forward?

Portillo: It is very well known that takes years to build trust and seconds to destroy it. Keeping that in mind if your customer had an unpleasant customer experience you are now back to square one and need to rebuild trust. You can reconnect with them by acknowledging what was wrong and telling them what you are planning to do differently from now on. While this may sound easy, this requires high level of transparency and empowerment to truly change things or do things differently!  

IIR: How has the digital revolution changed the overall customer experience?

Portillo: I wouldn’t say changed, I will say changing because the digital revolution is pushing companies to embrace the concept of “Omni-channel” as more and more customers want you to engage with them where they are, when they want and how they want.

Traditional inbound channels are rapidly getting replaced by mobile, social networks and lately with wearable’s devices. With the new “Internet of things” where now you have a variety of devices that customer are using to connect with your company, this demands a consistent customer experience regardless the entry point and this is where the Omni-channel concept becomes more and more important.     

IIR: How do you utilize Big Data to gain the fullest possible understanding of your customers?

Portillo: Big Data is definitely a differentiator, while it is getting better defined as we speak, it is in its early stages and companies needs assess how big data may help however companies have to embrace it and get ready ASAP. It needs to become a formal business practice because it can tell you a lot about customer preferences and behaviors so you can better design the customer experience. Because of Big Data’s complexity, it requires specialized resources due to current tools are great aggregating data, trending it but you need analysts behind understanding what that trends means and how it aligns and impact your business strategy or your product.

IIR: Employee recognition can positively influence employee behaviors and cultivate a customer-centric culture. How do you recognize and motivate your employees?

Portillo: Customer satisfaction and loyalty needs to be part of the individual goals and a key component of their performance assessment. You need to tie compensation, bonuses and rewards with satisfaction and experience to achieve great customer experience.

IIR: How has social media affected customer experience?

Portillo: Social media is a megaphone for good or bad customer experiences. In fact, many customers are using social media to put pressure to the companies when their customer experience is poor or to simply “shame the company into a response.” Today customers know that companies are monitoring social channels so they are using these channels to capture their attention when the customer experience is broken or to expedite a response.

But, not everything is about bad experience, there are several cases where customers use social media to praise companies for their customer experience but let’s say that this is less frequent.

IIR: How do you make the connections between experience, brand and loyalty, which together create customer expectations?

Portillo: In my opinion, brand is a promise, experience is your way to demonstrate commitment on delivering on that promise and loyalty is the customer assessment of how successful you are. I don’t think you can create customer expectations, you can identify and meet customer expectations and you need to align those three to meet or exceed their expectations  

Overall, the customer experience leader needs to make sure customer experience is part of the operational agenda and not only part of the PR agenda. If you ask companies how important customer experience is for their business strategy you will get “top priority” as an answer. But, if you dig a little bit and see how many resources are allocated to ensure a quality of customer experience you may get surprised.

Want to hear more from Nestor on customer experience in person? Join him at Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit 2014 in Miami in April. To learn more about the event and register, click here:  http://bit.ly/NnARgO

About the Author: Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist of the Marketing Division at IIR USA, has a background in digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and technology. Amanda is the Editor at Large for several of IIR’s blogs including Next Big Design, Customers 1st, and ProjectWorld and World Congress for Business Analysts, and a regular contributor to Front End of Innovation and The Market Research Event,. She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and feature stories in the technology industry. She can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.

Related articles

• 14 Customer Experience Trends for 2014 (The Year of Empathy)
• Why big data is an analyst-invented buzzword
• Evolution of the Business Model (Single Channel - > Multi Channel - > OMNI Channel)?
• Empathy is a Social Currency
• Brand Damage and the loss of emotional intelligence
• Retail trends and predictions for 2014
• How to Handle Awkward Situations on Social Media: A Bank of America Story

Earn a Free Pass to Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit 2014: Become a Guest Blogger

Earn a complimentary all-access pass to Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit 2014 by serving as a Guest Blogger at the event. As a Guest Blogger, you’ll have access to TCEL’s comprehensive agenda attracting the best in customer experience insights from around the world, right in Miami in April.

You'll get a pass to the annual TCEL event plus exclusive access to a networking community and on-demand webinars, to help you grow and learn throughout the entire year.

Guest Blogger responsibilities will include submitting at least one post per week to the Customers 1st blog between now and the conference and attending specifically assigned sessions at the event and blogging live or same day.

By participating as a Guest Blogger leading up to and at the event, you’ll receive an all-access pass for the 3-day TCEL event, taking place April 9-11 in Miami, Florida. In addition, Guest Bloggers are responsible for their own travel and lodging. Learn more about the event by visiting our website:  http://bit.ly/Nc3sWm

Apply today by sending your name, title, company, short biography and links to your blog or writing samples, along with a few sentences about why we should choose you to be our 2014 Guest Blogger to Amanda Ciccatelli at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. We will review your submission and contact the chosen Guest Bloggers directly with more details.

All readers of our blog receive an exclusive 15% discount off the standard registration rate with code TCEL14BL. Register here:  http://bit.ly/Nc3sWm

About the Author: Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist of the Marketing Division at IIR USA, has a background in digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and technology. Amanda is the Editor at Large for several of IIR’s blogs including Next Big Design, Customers 1st, and ProjectWorld and World Congress for Business Analysts. She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and feature stories in the technology industry. She can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. Follow her at @AmandaCicc.