“Visualizing user behavior inside the page has proven invaluable for perfecting Web usability, but the mobile Web requires a fresh approach -- not only because it involves devices of various form factors, operating systems and input methods, but because mobile customers are much less forgiving of poor usability than traditional e-customers,” said Dr. Tal Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of ClickTale. “ClickTale Touch is a powerful and effective way for companies to increase the conversions on mobile devices, an absolute necessity now that mobile commerce is really taking off.”

The SDL CCF captures social media conversations that are most important to understanding and enhancing the three fundamental customer journeys all businesses need for success - shopping, sharing, and advocacy - and applies patented algorithms to model the customer experience. It works in conjunction with SDL SM2 social media monitoring application, in addition to SDL's other customer analytics applications. 

"SDL pushes the Big Data envelope and is changing the way we think about social media as a data set. They are highly innovative and they manage to tie their insights back to business needs in a simple, intuitive way. Through the creation of their measurement systems like the Customer Commitment Framework, they are changing the way organizations understand the experiences they deliver to customers," said Tom Moran, principal program manager, Office 365 Customer Experience, Microsoft Corporation.

The new system will help staff across different touch points to more quickly understand a customer’s needs, creating opportunities to deliver the right service with greater efficiency. The system will also provide the foundation to enhance analytical capabilities in a later phase.

“Service Excellence has always been a key pillar of Singapore Airlines’ brand promise, enabling us to retain our position as the world’s most awarded airline for many years,” said Senior Vice President Product & Services, Mr Tan Pee Teck. “But we cannot take our leadership position for granted. IT is a critical enabler that helps us continue enhancing our customer service offerings. The new CEM system will be an important element to help our staff on the ground and in the air take customer service to the next level."

Today's worldwide back office labor pool represents 15-20 percent of the global company's labor force according to a 2010 McKinsey & Company article on back office operations. This workforce performs tasks whose outcome directly affects service delivery including loyalty enrollment, payment processing, order fulfillment and service activation. Many of these back office processes are manual or accomplished through ten or more systems and involve 40 percent of the back office labor pool. Enterprises are finding that this efficiency deficit is a difficult task to address. According to a joint Aspect-Forrester Research survey of customer service strategy decision makers, 42 percent of respondents said that they are unable to effectively manage the end-to-end workflow of interactions primarily because of un-integrated applications.

"The back office is one of the most underdeveloped areas for efficiency improvement in the enterprise. There is a strong market demand for a single solution to optimize and orchestrate the many different resources and tasks that impact the customer experience in both the front and back office," says Spence Mallder, General Manager Workforce Optimization and Chief Technology Officer at Aspect. "With our partnership with eg solutions, Aspect is able to respond to this need and provide a solution that coordinates workforce processes while seamlessly elevating the level of service that is delivered."

“find the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’ in online product reviews.”In order to keep up with consumers’ ever-evolving and highly visible needs and expectations, companies are now looking beyond their CRM, ERP and survey results to capture the voice of the consumer. PolyVista Zoom is a comprehensive and hassle-free service for companies looking to monitor customer sentiment and brand health, discover accurate consumer trends and opinions, and learn where they stand among competitors.

“Consumer technology is driving a huge expectation for flexible travel – an expectation that transit agencies cannot afford to ignore,” said Philippe Guittat, Global Managing Director of Accenture’s Transportation Practice. “Travelers believe that price, technological change and consumer demand will drive the provision of paperless travel, and transport companies need to address developments in areas such as smartphone applications and social media strategy if they are to get ahead of the competition.”

Consumer expectations for greater communication and engagement with transportation providers reinforces one of the key digital trends identified in the Accenture Technology Vision. Public transport organizations should look to create “digital relationships” with travelers to improve interactions, develop better insights into individual preferences, and deliver a more valuable and customized consumer experience.

"Today, brands face the challenge of engaging with their customer base across social media in a way that not only meets the community's needs and expectations, but also drives meaningful business impact," said Rod Favaron, Spredfast CEO. "We are helping TicketCity do both with a platform that allows their social team to engage proactively and reactively with their community, while also providing visibility into activity, audience and interaction trends to prove how their increased engagement is impacting sales and brand awareness."

The most annoying element of FS customer service amongst 18 to 55 year olds was having to start afresh at each point of contact, with FS firms forgetting previous conversations and customer history. 45 per cent of consumers said they expect FS providers to know what they want based on previous contact.

Around half of respondents admitted to getting frustrated when financial service providers do not know who they are or what their issue is, despite having interacted via another channel previously. Other issues highlighted were uninformed customer service agents unable to tell customers the required information, with 11% of consumers saying that was most annoying, and long call waiting times, according to the survey of 2,002 consumers conducted by Leadership Factor on behalf of [24]7.

"KANA Enterprise is the first end-to-end, omni-channel customer service system built to enable an 'Everyone Serves' approach for delivering superior customer support experiences in the intensely competitive environments where our customers -- many of the world's most recognized brands -- compete in globally," said James Norwood, Chief Marketing Officer. "ISM award recognition is spot-on validation of the critical need to join up departmental silos within organizations and support each with case-specific context that allows any employee to assist customers; and likewise validates the process efficiency and revenue growth results such transformational journeys can bring about."

Wearhouse had long been a brick and mortar store, but recognized its customers’ growing use of digital channels during the shopping experience. To improve their competitive and customer experience, the retailer increased their online and mobile presence and is now engaging customers across all commerce channels.

“At The Men’s Wearhouse, our number one differentiator is our customer service. Our customers were online, they were mobile, and we needed to quickly transform our systems in order to provide a positive and consistent customer experience across all channels,” said Vlad Kuznetsov, chief technology officer and vice president of engineering for The Men’s Wearhouse. “In partnership with Perficient, we have successfully built a system that provides improved internal productivity and an enhanced level of service our customers have grown accustomed to, meeting them with a consistent experience at all touch points, and maintaining our brand integrity.”

Sometimes it’s nice to just do a quick ‘side angle’ view on your loyalty program. A quick check and maybe a ‘tweak’ that can kick up the impact of your program.

The recently issued hawkeye survey (link below) highlights some of the most successful loyalty programs out there including "Amazon Prime, American Airlines AAdvantage, Disney FASTPASS, the Kroger Plus Card, McDonald's Happy Meals, My Starbucks Rewards, Walmart's Pick Up Today and others".  Most important for companies, it points to the key components that make them so successful:

Instant Gratification

The closer to the time of purchase the benefit is received — the better. We all love instant gratification, apparently it also applies to loyalty programs. Maybe we’re all a little pavlovian — behaviour, reward, repeat behaviour.

Clear Understanding of Tangible Benefit

Seems obvious when you say but it’s amazing how many loyalty programs get this wrong. A recent study alluded to 80% of loyalty programs members not understanding the benefits they were entitled to. That’s a big problem because the real brand engagement happens when they redeem the reward, not when they earn it. The likelihood of redemption is an important metric which companies should seek to drive upward not downward.

End the Reluctance

Being forced to offer loyalty programs is a fault with your business. This study suggests that loyalty programs that are instantly available to customers who have a clear understanding of benefits have the most impact. That flies in the face of the ‘shifty’ loyalty program which seeks the appearance of having a loyalty program while hoping that some percentage of customers won’t understand or remember to avail of the benefits.

If you’re finding yourself forced to offer a loyalty program, then the problem lies in within your business. Usually it means that your understanding of your business model isn’t strong enough to create a compelling sense of the value of retaining customers. Very few businesses should find a loyalty program unnecessary — given the universal advantage of retaining a customer vs acquiring a new one.

Celebration of Redemptions

Not a profit center Loyalty programs are not a profit center. Having low redemption rates is not a success, it’s a lost opportunity.

Redemption = Engagement

The moment a customer redeems a reward, it opens up a new opportunity to engage with them around a very positive brand perception. That’s when they’re most receptive to upsell, new offerings and competitive positioning.

For example the customer in store expects to be able to use their mobile device to:

While this may seem like another pressure point for companies, the good news is that customers also are giving companies access to them at the most ideal times (in store / during the shopping process).  Those moments are most powerful for more timely feedback and delivering impactful marketing messaging and offers.

The challenge for brands is to meet that requirement with a combination of technological and program evolution.

Good news is that vendors like Ann Michaels & Associates delivering multi functional tablet and mobile solutions, brands are finding themselves empowered to meet customers’ demands for more interactive and relevant interactions. Their recent news release (link below) highlighted key features:

The Customer Engagement Console (CEC) is a tablet-based kiosk that businesses can utilize within retail locations, hotels, restaurants, waiting rooms and other key points of customer traffic to capture feedback and engage with customers in real time, the announcement said.

Additional features of the engagement console, including marketing, loyalty card engagement and social media integration create what the company calls a "robust multi-dimensional platform for consumer experience measurement."

While Ann Michaels & Associates is focused on retail, travel and hospitality solutions, companies are best served by finding vendors in their industries that are providing similar enabling technologies and empowering brands to quickly matchup to customers' multi-channel expectations.

We like ResponseTek CEO Syed Hasan’s definition of CEM from that perspective. His definition puts the spotlight on three things:

ResponseTek’s focus is on continually measuring the ‘gap’ between those three. Before that it’s worth asking three parallel questions:

1. Does your company fully understand what customers see as the CX promise they received at the time of sale?

2. Is the planned CX explicitly laid out and who is your team can describe it fully?

3. Are you measuring your CX reality in any way and how do managers collaborate on that?

Getting started on a CX strategy can be a daunting task for companies that have ignored it until now. Thinking about the problem in a more simplistic way (using ResponseTek’s CEM definition as a basis) can get the internal discussion going in a less intimidating way. More importantly, it can foster the recognition of the gaps that existing formally focusing on these three angles of your CX.

Maybe a topic for your next collaborative management retreat or ‘brainstorming session’?

Aloft Hotels, the game-changing “different by design” brand from Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: HOT), has reached a milestone 10,000 users of its industry-leading Smart Check-In Program, the brand announced today.

One of the easiest and fastest check-in experiences offered in the industry, Smart Check-In allows guests to bypass the front desk and head directly to their rooms.Now available at Aloft hotels in Lexington (MA), Harlem (NY), Dallas Downtown (TX), Brooklyn (NY), and Cupertino (CA), Smart Check-In will expand to more properties worldwide in 2013. The program, the first of its kind in the industry, made its debut at Aloft Lexington in 2010.

Sytel Limited, a global provider of IP contact centre solutions, has used the Open Dialler API in Confirmit Horizons to develop a sophisticated interface with Confirmit. The solution maximises interviewer productivity when deploying Confirmit surveys to contact centre agents within both global and smaller scale customers. It also ensures regulatory compliance, as well as providing integrated voice recording and access to other applications such as live monitoring.