Bob Thompson

CustomerThink Corp.

Bob Thompson is CEO of CustomerThink Corp., an independent research and publishing firm focused on customer-centric business management, and Founder/Editor-in-Chief of CustomerThink.com, the world's largest community dedicated to customer-centric business. Thompson is a popular keynote speaker, blogger and author of numerous reports, articles and papers, including CrowdService: Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds in Customer Service and Support.

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt: My AT&T DSL Customer Service Experience

4 comments 794 reads

Posted on 2012-05-18

Despite what the title of this blog post implies, AT&T service representatives all did a good to excellent job helping me solve (maybe) problems with a balky DSL connection.

So this post is not meant to slam AT&T, but rather serve as a teachable moment. Because sometimes good intentions and even good actions don't add up to genuine customer loyalty.

Loyal to AT&T? Not so much

Speaking of loyalty, I suspect AT&T thinks I'm a loyal customer. I've been a DSL and business phone line customer for 10+ years, since switching from another DSL provider that let me down. When I've interacted with AT&T staff, I've generally been pleased.

But cracks are appearing in my presumed loyalty. When my wife and I moved into our new condo, we decided to split our business between AT&T and Comcast. Both have bundled services for TV, phone and Internet, but we didn't feel comfortable putting all our digital eggs in one basket because:
...

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Facebook's #EpicFail -- Lack of TRUST by Users and Investors

3 comments 807 reads

Posted on 2012-05-16

On the eve of the Facebook IPO, it's interesting how much negative publicity has been surfacing. Users don't trust Facebook to respect privacy. Investors don't trust Facebook to make money for the long-term.

Of course, privacy has not exactly been Facebook's strong point over the past couple of years. Two steps forward, one step back as the FB geniuses maneuver its products (us) towards making what we post as public as possible.

I get it. Facebook is a business. It has products also known as users. And customers also known as advertisers. And companies exist to sell products to customers.

But as one of those products er users, I just don't trust Zuckerberg to look after my interests in a responsible way. While it may be true that the world is moving towards a "share everything" model, that's not my personal choice and I don't want some 20-something dictating his world view to me.

I'm not alone. In today's San Francisco Chronicle,...

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People: The Secret Sauce in Customer Experience Success

0 comments 1,371 reads

Posted on 2012-05-04

There is a tremendous opportunity to innovate the customer experience with digital or social technology. One of my favorite examples is Tesco's Virtual Subway Store in South Korea. Shopper sees a virtual display in the subway, orders by mobile phone, and the store delivers!

Really cool stuff, but time and time again, when I ask people to recall a "memorable experience" they don't talk about technology. After the initial rush of excitement of something new, great technology fades into the background, like the ATM that always works or online banking that is easy to use.

People are what people talk about most often in great (or terrible) experiences. Yesterday this was confirmed for me once again in a Chief Customer Officer Forum organized by Bill Price of Driva Solutions, a good friend and long-timer supporter of CustomerThink...

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Study: Social customer service adoption growing despite uncertain ROI (#scrm)

0 comments 1,858 reads

Posted on 2012-05-02
This just in... Sword Ciboodle has released results of study conducted by analyst Esteban Kolsky. It confirms what I think many suspected:
- Good news: companies in the US and UK are embracing social channels (59% Twitter, 60% Facebook)
- Bad news: "justification and validation" still challenging for social customer service.
A couple of years ago in my very own social business research, I found Social CRM excitement tempered by ROI concerns. In this study, a healthy 40% said that benefits met expectations. Does that mean 60% failed? No, only 6% said their deployment didn't meet expectations. The balance (54%) were not sure.

So it seems that companies are pushing ahead anyway, hence the adoption stats are impressive. But if these investments are not "validated" I think there could be some pullback in the future.

In any...
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DocuSign Revs up Revenue Engine with Collaboration, Content and Technology

0 comments 1,857 reads

Posted on 2012-04-28

About 10 years ago at one of the early Dreamforce events, I met Mark Organ, then CEO and co-founder of a young marketing automation company called Eloqua. Not surprisingly, their solution was on-demand, making it a natural partner of Salesforce.com.

Fast forward to today, and Eloqua sits atop a hot industry with dozens of cloud-based marketing automation solutions. B2B buyers have shifted their research activities online—a Corporate Executive Board study found that an average of 57% of purchasing steps were completed before sales person was contacted. This trend has fueled interest by marketers to engage earlier, track progress through buying stages, and ultimately hand over higher quality leads to sales professionals.

Yet despite 10+ years of growth, my sense is that...

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Marketing tech needs Don Draper to be more Cool, not just Critical

0 comments 998 reads

Posted on 2012-04-24

At Forrester's Customer Intelligence Forum in LA, they opened the conference with an interesting exercise -- Asking the audience to vote whether a well-known brand was "cool" or "critical." The results:

IBM – critical
Facebook – cool
Pandora and Spotify – critical
Adobe – critical
Salesforce – critical
Pinterest – cool
Apple – cool AND critical

Only Apple managed to be both cool and critical. And that may explain its stunning success.

On the one hand, Apple makes stuff that's fun to use. My sister is a big Apple fan, and she takes some pleasure in showing off what she can do with her iPhone and iPad to her geekier brother (me) who is still a Blackberry user. [heavy sigh] But I have many business colleagues who are equally passionate about Apple, and they extol its usefulness for communications, travel, etc.

...

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Macy's Marketing Transformation: From "Mad Men" to "Math Men"

0 comments 2,553 reads

Posted on 2012-04-23

Last week I had the pleasure of attending Forrester's Customer Intelligence Forum, where the theme was "how to create engagement in the age of the customer."

There was some similarity with a recent "Sales 2.0" conference I attended, where the emphasis was on how to make the profession (marketing, in this case) more scientific by using "big data" to gain and act on, customer insights.

The highlight for me was the presentation by Julie Bernard, Group VP of Customer Centricity at Macy's. Before joining the retailer 5 years ago, Bernard earned her retail chops at Saks Fifth Avenue.

At Macy's, her job was to "put the customer at the center of all decisions." That was easier said than done at a 150 year-old brand that was organized around products. Bernard used her analytic skills to attempt to bust myths about what consumers really wanted but was largely...

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Starbucks is customer-centric because it listened… to ME

6 comments 2,472 reads

Posted on 2012-04-14

Lately I’ve noticed an increase in discussion about "customer-centricity." If ever there was a more nebulous term than CRM, this is it.

Is customer-centricity a strategy? A state of mind? A method for segmenting customers? Fortunately, no one is defining customer-centricity as technology… yet.

I think the answer is painfully simple: customer-centricity is in the eye of the beholder – the customer. If you’re providing the products, services, experiences and pricing that customers value, odds are they’ll consider your company customer-centric. At least, that's what Dick Lee and David Mangen concluded in a CustomerThink-supported study a few years ago.

But every customer is different. For example, Apple is one of the world’s top brands and...

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Survey: Brands consumers love (Apple, Coca-Cola, Amazon and Google) and what drives loyalty

0 comments 1,276 reads

Posted on 2012-04-12

ClickFox just released results from a brand loyalty survey. It won't shock anyone that Apple was the top pick, followed by Coca Cola in the second spot. Amazon and Google tied for third. Other top brands included Starbucks, Target and Microsoft.

According to the press release, the survey was short (10 questions) and the number of respondents was small (427). So take these findings with a grain of salt.

Respondents said quality and customer service are the most important factors in their loyalty to a brand. Price was third and convenience fourth. Not surprising, but it should be noted that what consumers say may not match what they actually do.

When asked what brands could do to build loyalty, it's interesting that the customer experience...

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Is Social Software the Cure for Business as Usual? Take the "Red Pill" to Find Out!

3 comments 2,844 reads

Posted on 2012-04-10

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
—W. Edwards Deming

News flash: Your company is slowly going out of business. Just like the parable of the frog sitting in a pot of slowly warming water. The frog doesn't jump out until it's too late, and cooks to death.

Think you're smarter than the average "frog?" Then consider an Innosight study of the S&P 500: The average tenure of a firm decreased from 61 years in 1958 to just 18 years now. At the current churn rate, 75% of the S&P 500 will be replaced by 2027. Will your company make it?

My point is that surviving if not thriving for the long term requires innovation and risk-taking. If you're not willing to try something new...

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