Bob Thompson

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...

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...

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...

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...