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 international keynote speaker, blogger and author of numerous reports, articles and papers. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Customer Experience Professionals Association.

In B2B, should Sales own the Customer Experience?

19 comments 1,676 reads

Posted on 2013-03-09

Christine Crandell writes on Forbes that CX ownership is a hot potato between marketing, finance and sales:

It’s never been clear who should take a leadership role in this new sector of customer experience. Customer experience leads to revenue, but it’s intensely cross-departmental and crosses a wide spectrum of roles and responsibilities. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that increasingly Sales is taking a leadership role in the customer’s lifetime experience.

Not sure I agree that "increasingly" Sales is taking a leadership role. According to a recent Forrester report, "Chief Customer Officer" is the most popular term for the "executive leading customer experience (CX)...

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Beyond multi-channel: The rise of the omni-channel consumer experience

0 comments 1,501 reads

Posted on 2013-03-05

Over the past couple of decades the Internet has changed the game for consumers, and companies. It's been fun following the rise of web self-service, social customer care and mobile—all new interaction channels that consumers now expect their favorite brands to support.

The trouble is, most companies are still approaching this proliferation of channels in a piecemeal, uncoordinated way. In 2009 I found nearly 8 out of 10 consumers experienced "touchpoint amnesia"—forgetting info the customer had already provided. The impact was severe: consumers were 50% less likely to recommend (after a service experience) and 24-35% less likely to complete a purchase (during a buying experience).

OK, that was nearly 4 years ago. By now, it's all good, right?

Um, no. According to a recent Avaya BT consumer study, delivering omni-channel...

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Want to Empower Call Center Agents to Delight Customers? Improve Your A.I.M.

0 comments 2,322 reads

Posted on 2013-03-03

On a trip to Orlando two years ago, I arrived quite late to a Hilton hotel and visited the restaurant a few minutes before closing. The server took my order and disappeared... for just a few minutes too long.

I was starting to wonder if my order been forgotten, when the server came back, apologized for the delay and offered me a free drink. I still remember that experience because it wasn't expected. The delay really wasn't a big deal, and I had no intention of complaining.

It surprised and delighted me that my server was empathetic enough to realize that Hilton's service was not quite up to par, without a complaint. So far as I know, I didn't send any signals via my body language that I was unhappy. And, he didn't have to ask permission to give me that drink.

That's a simple but powerful example of an empowered employee. My server obviously had some latitude to make a decision on the spot to create a memorable experience. The fact that I've told this story...

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Forrester: Chief Customer Officers key to "orchestrate" customer experiences... and change

0 comments 2,197 reads

Posted on 2013-02-27

Forrest Research just published a new report by CX analyst Paul Hagen, with some very interesting insights into the emerging role of the Chief Customer Officer (CCO).

But first, let me take back what I said a few years ago. Around 2007 I predicted that the CCO would be a temporary trend. My argument: the job isn't needed if customer-centricity is a part of how a company does business. And indeed, you rarely see the job position at companies leading the pack in customer loyalty surveys.

Since then, my research has found precious few (5-10%) companies achieve "stage 4" in their customer-centric maturity. Here's how companies tend to progress over time.

CEM tends to come into play as companies progress from targeting customer to extract value (stage 1, a CRM meme) to being...

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Yahoo CEO believes collaboration is about people, not technology

5 comments 733 reads

Posted on 2013-02-25

New Yahoo! boss Marissa Mayer is taking some heat for a new policy requiring employees to (gasp) come into a real office and work with real people.

Here's an excerpt from a leaked internal memo:

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.

The move is controversial especially in tech circles because the hot thing is using technology to collaborate. Enterprise social networks (Yammer, Chatter, etc.), video conferencing (...

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Deliver a Great Experience to All Prospects, Including Those that Don't Buy

3 comments 1,165 reads

Posted on 2013-02-22

For sure, increasing sales productivity is a good thing. Marketing organizations are putting in place systems and tools to generate and score leads, so that reps can focus on more qualified prospects.

However, even in the best case scenario reps will not close every opportunity. Some customers may not have a need to buy now. Others may have a need, but they may select another alternative. A CSO Insights study found average win rates of about 45% in 2011, a five point drop from 2006.

So the key question is: What kind of sales experience are you delivering to all of your prospects—including those that weren't qualified or didn't buy? This is important because, whether a prospect buys or not, their experience interacting with your company will create a lasting impression. A good experience means they may return another day, when they have needs that match your solutions. Or, they'll recommend your company to a colleague. Either way, that helps increase...

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What's next for the Marketing Automation industry?

1 comments 1,438 reads

Posted on 2013-02-20

I recently got an update from Erich Flynn, CEO of Treehouse Interactive. The company has been around for quite a few years, selling SaaS-based solutions for PRM, SFA and Marketing Automation. And growing quite nicely: 30-35% per year according to Erich.

The most recent announcement was about an enhanced solution for lead nurturing. I got a quick demo and thought it was a nice, usable way to help marketers deal with a job that has become more and more complex.

But the big problem I see that market automation solutions require marketers to think like programmers. I get a headache thinking about what marketers have to deal with now -- personas, content, campaigns and lead scoring -- and I'm an analytic sort with a math degree and some programming experience...

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Lean, Not Mean -- 3 Reasons Why Southwest Wins with a Culture that Empowers Employees

3 comments 2,338 reads

Posted on 2013-02-19

One of the biggest misconceptions about Customer Experience (CX) is that it's about delivering a "premium" experience. You know, like Apple, Ritz Carlton and Zappos.

It's true some companies win by "wowing" their customers. But CX can also be a differentiator in low-cost business models. Like Southwest Airlines, one of my favorite examples of a customer-friendly business that is also low-cost.

Some have called Southwest a "cattle car airline" because it doesn't offer pre-assigned seats, unlike virtually every major airline. Hardly a premium experience. It's remarkable, then, that Southwest just celebrated 39 consecutive years of profitable growth.

Furthermore, as you can see in the chart below, Southwest has been leading the airline industry in loyalty ratings (according to the ACSI) for the past 18 years. From...

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Five Big Ideas to Profit from Analytics and Big Data

0 comments 2,561 reads

Posted on 2013-02-10

We cannot solve our problems with the
same thinking we used when we created them.
—Albert Einstein

I believe that making smart, fact-based decisions is absolutely essential to customer-centric leadership. I'm sure many of you reading this will say to yourselves, "We're already doing that."

Sorry, but you're probably not. As you'll learn, many decisions are made out of habit, not conscious thought. And others are influenced by biases we all have. But analytics technology alone is not the answer, either. Not every insight can be put into a spreadsheet, analytic model or computer system.

Here are five ways that that data analytics can help improve the customer experience, build loyalty and boost company profitability.

BIG IDEA 1: Practice Better Data Science

How can we expect to make rational decisions about customers, when customers themselves are not rational? In his provocative 2008 book...

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Customer-Centric Thinking: A Collaboration of Man and Machine

2 comments 1,593 reads

Posted on 2013-02-06

Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.
—Thomas A. Edison

Of the five habits of customer-centric leaders, I suppose Think is my favorite. Maybe it's because of my analytic bent from an early age, leading to a degree in Mathematics and an MBA which emphasized statistical analysis and operations research. I've always been intrigued about how to solve complex problems with methodologies and tools.

Or perhaps I was influenced by IBM, where I was employed for over 15 years. IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, Sr. actually created THINK while a sales manager at NCR in 1911. Frustrated at the lack of good ideas at a meeting, he proclaimed: "The trouble with every one of us is that we don't think enough. Knowledge is the result of thought, and...

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