First Step in CRM: Customer Satisfaction & Ethnographic Blogging
This post is written by Peter Auditore, Head Business Influencer Relations at SAP who has coined a term B2P marketing, and who graciously allowed me to re-publish it from his blog www.myventurepad.com.
Last week we talked about customer intimacy and the importance of knowing your customer’s personality. Earlier last month I pontificated on business to person (B2P) marketing and leveraging social media networks. The next logical step in this discussion is how to leverage Web 2.0 into your marketing and sales activities. The advent of Web 2.0 technologies has created a vibrant platform that enables new and innovative ways of evaluating customer satisfaction, which in my mind is the first step in any CRM initiative.
In 1999, my team at Survey.com created what was then the world’s first Internet based customer advisory panel for the world’s largest personal productivity software vendor. At the time the vendor had a telephone based panel of only 200 members and the panel was asked questions on a quarterly basis about products, service support etc. After I closed the deal for a six figure contract, we built out the panel to 8500 customers that agreed to sign NDAs and participate in weekly, monthly and quarterly surveys.
What was surprising to the executives was that once the panel members knew that they would be answering questions for senior executives, they felt empowered and agreed to participate at no cost. Originally, we had anticipated paying small stipends to participants, or giving away free software, but it was unnecessary they wanted their voice heard!
Nothing has changed, customers still want their voice heard and they want to give good, bad and ugly feedback to companies. The Web 2.0 platform and its technologies can now provide incredibly new and innovative ways of empowering customers and more importantly they can provide instant gratification that can lead to improving company products and services. As the world of social media and networks evolve there will be many more opportunities to leverage these technologies into business. New social networks are now emerging globally,
One of the most innovative companies that I have recently been introduced too is: What Now Research in NYC. They offer a service that leverages blogging into real time customer satisfaction; they call it “ethnographic blogging”. Imagine recruiting 200 of your top customers to participate in real time customer satisfaction survey of their experience with your website or your support services. All customers are required to blog about their experience and other customers can see and comment on each others blog posts. This provides marketing and product development with real time feedback into the customer’s experience. And enables the company to identify which customers might be most valuable in building deeper relationships with in addition to those that will ultimately lead you down the proverbial rat hole. In business today, sometimes staying in business means understanding how to leverage the latest and greatest technology innovations to create and maintain competitive advantage.
The Personality of Fish: Technology & Innovation
Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Thursday morning May 10, 1986, the worlds Mecca for marine biology enters a new era as the research vessel Atlantis slips quietly into the inner harbor with its blue hull shimmering in the early morning Cape Cod sun. The smell of diesel from a crowd of TV satellite generators permeates the crisp spring air and interrupts the peaceful quiet of this little Cape Cod hamlet. The ship abruptly stops short of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s dock. And in front of a few spectators, television cameras and streets strewn with satellite trucks and vans, the RV Atlantis puts on a show by executing two perfect 360 degree turns on a dime employing its sophisticated bow thrusters and cycloidal propulsion system. The Atlantis has found Titanic.
After sitting nearly 80 years on the bottom in the deep dark and cold silence of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean the Titanic is finally found at 8000 feet. The most famous of modern day oceanographers, Robert Ballard, has found the Titanic using side scan sonar arrays, and has even explored the wreck in the deep with a remotely operated vehicle named Jason. A few scientists, researchers and their families are there to greet the success and fame that Ballard and his team had brought to the world of marine science. At the time I don’t believe any of us could have vaticinated the significance of this discovery and how the application of these new innovative technologies would change the world of marine science, oceanography and archeology over the next two decades. Since then, the use of side scan sonar and remotely operated vehicles, (ROVs) has brought Black Beard’s pirate ship the Widah up from the depths, enabled the location of the ill fated John Kennedy junior’s private plane and delivered the riches 1854 double eagle coins of the SS Central America from the deep abyss off of North Carolina. And even recently these innovations have found the HMS Victory in the English Channel.
The arrival of the Atlantis and its discovery of the Titanic was one of the most memorable moments of my marine biology career. The sights sounds and images of that day are so etched in my mind that I can see the ship as it made the pirouettes like an instant replay, the rush of excitement for those scientists that understood the magnitude of this effort was undeniable. Some of us felt proud to be marine scientists and to be part of the Woods Hole community, others felt that Robert Ballard was a showman and science had no place for showmanship and public relations. In the era of Reaganism, in my view, we needed all the public relations that we could get considering that it seemed like every year someone was moving our cheese. Understanding technology innovations today is seminal to many small and large business leaders’ strategic and tactical plans. Leveraging these innovations to drive sustainable and profitable and growth is indeed the challenge.
A blog about experiences, curiosity and the never-ending search for ways to do better things better
There is plenty of technology available to learn a lot more about our customers than we do now, if only marketeers really wanted to know. However most are not particularly interested in fear of discovering some “inconvenient truth” about their products or strategies – it is very hard to hide from the knowledge and very easy to explain failed expectations by statistics – “if you sit on a top of the burning stove with your head in a freezer, on the average you should feel comfortable.”