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Jeannie Walters

Jeannie Walters

360Connext
Jeannie Walters, a customer experience consultant with more than 15 years of experience serving mid-market and Fortune 500 companies, specializes in developing social media strategy, improving face-to-face and online experiences to improve customer retention, cross-sales and transactions - in short, bottom-line results. She is a Social Media Club of Chicago board member and a member of Faith Popcorn's Talent Bank, was a Vistage Member of the Year and is known for her presentations at Tedx and SOBCon 2013.
  • 0 comments 183 reads
    Posted on 2013-05-20

    It’s challenging to find your customers, but it probably shouldn’t be, right? I mean, you create a product and find a market and there you go. Business 101.

    Today, however, it’s more challenging than it’s ever been. Your customers are living on their terms, not yours. They are doing their best to avoid your direct marketing and advertising. They are living their lives with or without you.

    Something I stress to clients is how no customer will ever be as obsessed with your brand as you are! They are carrying on and fitting your brand into their lives.

    find your mobile customerToday, consider how and where your customers might be interacting with your company. Take, for instance, the demand for mobile apps. When...

  • 0 comments 450 reads
    Posted on 2013-05-17

    CXPA 2013 MIEBen Hart, Senior Director of Customer Loyalty at Rackspace, was the Keynote Speaker for the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA). Rackspace is a $1.3 Billion hosting company that is the # 1 specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry. They serve 60% of the Fortune 100. They’ve been in the Top 100 Best Places to Work for the last four years and they’re fanatical about customer experience.

  • 0 comments 219 reads
    Posted on 2013-05-15

    CXPA

    During the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) Member Insights Exchange, one of the breakout sessions was a presentation by Brian Bolten, Vice President/Director, Engagement Strategy of True Action, an Ebay company. The focus: how to create personalized journeys by understanding customers’ behavior more. In this session we learned a lot about how eBay is unlocking the customer journey.

    Understanding the eBay customer experience journey (CEJ) is a multi-layered process. They represented the journey through maps directed at key stakeholders and audiences. For example, the CMO received a high-level, marketing focused...

  • 0 comments 248 reads
    Posted on 2013-05-09

    Today, Maritz will be announcing the results from a comprehensive study into U.S. consumer loyalty programs. The study, the first released by Maritz, aims to help explore the motivations of brand loyalty across six key industries: financial services, entertainment, retail programs, hospitality, grocery, and airlines. Thanks to early access to the findings and an interview with Scott Robinson and Bob Macdonald from Maritz, I thought I’d share interesting findings which may help organizations navigate the shifting landscape of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

    ...

  • 0 comments 117 reads
    Posted on 2013-05-08

    I had the honor of speaking at SOBCon conference for entrepreneurs hosted by Terry “Starbucker” St. Marie and Liz Strauss this weekend. The theme of the event this year was the “Customer-Centered Business” and each speaker was asked to focus on one area. What makes SOBCon a very different type of event is how each session is led by a speaker and then the attendees get to put theory into practice right away.SONCon 2013

  • 0 comments 62 reads
    Posted on 2013-05-06

    How many meetings have you sat in recently where the term “gamification” has come up? It’s often waved in front of an executive as either a magic elixir or a battle cry. Gamification, it is stated, is the answer to engaging customers.

    I like the idea of gamification…in theory. In its simplest definition, it is creating an action and reward system for members of your community. Humans like games because we get some immediate gratification. The gamification of experience, however, leads to some odd “rewards” for those who play.Gamification

  • 0 comments 294 reads
    Posted on 2013-05-03

    With all the talk of understanding customers, it’s sort of amazing we haven’t had this discussion before. OF COURSE Lady Gaga is an ideal role model for anyone who wants to focus on community building and customer loyalty.

    Monster Loyalty

    Now available at Amazon.com

    In her new book, Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers Into Fanatics, author...

  • 0 comments 148 reads
    Posted on 2013-05-01

    Is it multi-channel or omnichannel? That is the question. In this ever changing and speediest of worlds, we are tweeting from our phones, planning playdates on our tablets, and presenting via webcams on our laptops. Your customers are using whatever device they have in the moment. Multi-device is so prevalent, it’s difficult to tell the Mac lovers from the Droids.

    800px-Hakozaki_Junction_-_06How do you best serve customers when they are jumping from device to device while posting on your Facebook wall and calling your customer service line at the same time? What are their expectations from channel to channel? What about the old-fashioned ways of storefronts and face-to-face? Do...

  • 2 comments 412 reads
    Posted on 2013-04-29

    Last week was a wonderful chance to connect with several other customer experience professionals at the Chicago Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) Local Networking Event. We ate, drank and chatted about what issues we’re facing. One thing that comes up over and over again is how challenging it can be to close the loop on customer feedback. Customers provide insights all the time – chatting with customer service reps; sending emails through the contact forms on web sites and even describing a pain point to a friend who works at the company.

    Too often, the feedback, while incredibly valuable, dies quickly. The forms are ignored, the rep doesn’t have the proper place to record the feedback, the friend isn’t encouraged to recognize the complaint from a...

  • 0 comments 180 reads
    Posted on 2013-04-25

    Customer experience improvement starts with honest evaluation. Goals for any organization naturally don’t align perfectly with the goals of their customers. There is a natural conflict of interest. The company wants profits. The customer doesn’t want to pay too much. Check that out. Conflict of interest!

    customer experience improvement by reflection

    How Do You View Yourself Honestly?

    That’s why it’s so important to approach customer experience improvement through reviewing your actual organization with a bias toward your customers. But how? After all, humans have biases. We have biases based on how we were raised, where we live, what we believe and why we believe it! Reviewing the experience your customers or...