Michael Lowenstein

Michael Lowenstein, Ph.D., CMC, is Chief Research Officer, The Relational Capital Group (http://www.relationalcapitalgroup.com/), a research-based, professional development and organizational advisory services firm. Author of five customer-centric strategy books and over 150 white papers and articles, his most recent book, The Customer Advocate and The Customer Saboteur, was published in 2011. Lowenstein's Ph.D. is in strategy and program development, earned from SKEMA Graduate Business School, in France.

What's the Real Goal of Optimized Web Site Visitor Experience?

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Posted on 2013-05-06

And, while we're on the subject, what’s the real goal of web site visitor experience research? Is it to help optimize functionality, information delivery, or site monetization as a component of communication and marketing? While a case can be made for each, there’s a strong argument in favor of monetization (while not neglecting content and functionality). Beyond merely designing websites so that visitors don’t leave, web sites need to understand what visitors want from the experience, and also provide incentive and tools to take action.

Customer-centric organizations strive to create memorable experiences and distinctive, value-add communication for their stakeholders, and this must extend to web site user experience as well. Like other areas of customer value delivery measurement, capturing the voice of the visitor – letting them speak, and in actionable ways – requires that site user experience now be measured relative to expectations. In other words, the visitor...

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A Big, Big "Big Data" Challenge

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Posted on 2013-04-10

A recent post by colleague Richard Vanderveer, Ph.D., an expert and respected senior executive in healthcare-related research, took me to a somewhat disturbing article in Quirk's magazine, by Richard McCullough: http://rbv3.com/blog/wanted-research-methodologist/?utm_source=feedburne... (see internal link to Quirk's article).

Per Vanderveer, and as a read of the article will confirm, what McCullough postulates is that the role of 'research methodologist' is morphing into an individual who reviews enormous Big Data sets to identify what variables correlate with each other. As Vanderveer notes, one potential consequence of this is that: "Theory, causality, experimentation,...

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Loyalty Programs in the Real World: Are They Enhancing, or Undermining, Customer Behavior?

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Posted on 2013-04-04

The classic objective of these initiatives is to leverage loyal behavior among the customer base, in and of themselves, and reduce the use or consideration of competitive products and services. It’s fair to say that, to meet this objective, the program, its multiple channels of access, and its array of components and perception of personal value, and positive informal communication by members on its behalf, need to be optimal.

At this critical point in the loyalty program effectiveness life-cycle, it may be useful to address several key questions

1. First, on a macro level, are loyalty programs achieving their financial goals?

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What's Positive, Real-World, and Actionable In Customer Experience and Brand Research

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Posted on 2013-03-21

This is a statement, and not a question. It is a partial response to Steven Walden's blog about what's wrong with quantitative marketing research: http://www.customerthink.com/blog/the_10_things_wrong_with_quantitative_...

My perspective is that there are some truths in the content he presents, but there are also differing points of view on what works and what doesn't. Namely, the bottom-line objective of most research, especially brand equity and customer experience research, should be to help optimize (through actionability) an enterprise's, product's, or service's strategically differentiated value proposition. And, in reviewing many business-to-consumer and business-to-business customer...

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Addressing Customer Complaints: Truth - Or Consequences - Of Using Social Media To Help Protect Brand Equity and Customer Loyalty

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Posted on 2013-03-20

A recent MarketingProfs article by Susan Marshall (http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2013/10347/five-complainer-custom...) did a nice job of bringing to light the serious issue of expressed and unexpressed complaints. But, though building on the reality that more b2b and b2c customers are now using social media to voice their experience complaints, the article seems to suggest that the road to protecting brands and customer behavior lies largely in how responses to these online negative posts are addressed with the individual complainer.

The 'complainer personas' identified in the blog post are interesting, as are the suggestions for social response. However, the article, having...

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What Does Online Social Exposure Really Mean in Tangible Terms? Shouldn't We Be Able to Answer the Question: 'Where's the Beef?'

2 comments 418 reads

Posted on 2013-02-18

This must be the month to be informed about professional online achievements, real and otherwise. Last week, LinkedIn emailed me that my profile has been visited with a frequency that places it in the top 1% of their 200 million members. Today, I received a message from SlideShare saying that my content had been viewed over 10,000 times.

With regard to LinkedIn, my reaction was that, because I regularly post new customer-focused and corporate culture material (such as CustomerThink blogs) to the almost 50 groups which I follow, it is gratifying to see the professional response, caibrated by profile visitations. And, having it reflect on personal reputation and image can't hurt either. However, I've read some fairly skeptical, even negative, reactions by others to the same news from LinkedIn. Most of this, at least from my point of view, has to do with questioning the real value of such an achievement - even at financial and monetizing levels - beyond contributing to,...

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Are corporate customer experience intentions overwhelmed by senior exec risk aversion and other roadblocks? Can that be changed?

2 comments 959 reads

Posted on 2013-02-13

In developing plans and executing processes for optimizing customer experiences, and the parallel goal of increasing customer loyalty behavior, we often see the admonition "hope is not a strategy" at play within organizations. A recent Oracle study illustrates how wide the gulf is between corporate intention and corporate reality.

A key finding of this research, conducted among more than 1,300 global senior executives, was that over 90% of executives said that improving customer experience is a top priority over the next two years, in part because of the recognized risk to the customer base and to sales if they don't; and a similar percent said that their companies want to be customer experience leaders. However, just over one third were only now beginning with formal customer experience initiatives, and only one-fifth considered their customer experience program advanced.

Another major disconnect was that, while four-fifths of the companies surveyed identified...

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LinkedIn, CustomerThink and the Pursuit of Professional Growth

5 comments 425 reads

Posted on 2013-02-12

Recently, LinkedIn informed me that my profile is among the top 1%, of their 200 million members, for 2012: http://lnkd.in/tsXCtH . To me, this is largely a reflection of desire to share insights and new information in key areas of enterprise direction, in my case particularly with respect to organizational culture and stakeholder behavior.

Building an extended network of business contacts and a personal brand (employers use b2b social sites like LinkedIn as a part of their candidate scouting activity) are important reasons for participation; however, posts to LinkedIn and portals like CustomerThink are critical, post-graduate venues and sources for time-constrained professionals to stay abreast of, and contribute to, thinking about new trends and emerging issues. This represents a true worldwide learning community, where colleagues in related fields get to objectively share information and knowledge they...

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Building Trust: It's a Matter of Fairness, Confidence, Authenticity, Openness, Sincerity....and Exceeding 'Moments of Truth' Expectations

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Posted on 2013-02-06

Billy Joel is one of my all-time favorite musical performers. In 1986, he recorded “A Matter of Trust”, a great rock song in which the lyrics described what can go right, and go terribly wrong, in a relationship (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yYchgX1fMw). A company’s relationship with, and desire to capture the hearts and minds of, two of its principal stakeholder groups – customers and employees – are almost entirely built around belief and value, i.e. perceived personal benefit. Largely, the loyalty behavior companies get are a direct result of the trust and authenticity they create with these stakeholders.

The dictionary defines trust as ”assured reliance on another’s integrity, credibility, objectivity, veracity, and justice.” Sincere, a related word, means “pure, real, honest, and free of hypocrisy.” In ancient Roman times, from its Latin roots, sincere...

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Correlation is Not Causation: Big Data Challenges and Related Truths That Will Impact Business Success in 2013

3 comments 926 reads

Posted on 2013-02-04

For years, social scientists and consultants have warned the corporate world about making too much of correlation analysis, the simple regression technique which shows the relationship between one set of attitudes or behaviors and another. As an example, “The Service Profit Chain”, a model developed by three Harvard professors in the ‘90’s, is generally summarized as happy employees = happy customers = happy shareholders. In other words, at the core of effective employee engagement is the tacit belief that there is a direct relationship or linkage between higher employee satisfaction and customer experience. And, as found by noted customer experience expert Frank Capek, though elevated levels of customer service, and also increased profitability, may result from enhanced employee engagement: “…just because employee satisfaction and engagement are correlated with customer satisfaction doesn’t mean that making employees happier will lead to better customer experience. This is one...

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