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How radical innovation and careful customer listening go together
It may be difficult to square my current obsession with Roberto Verganti’s new book “Design-Driven Innovation” – a textbook study of how companies create way-out, game-changing innovations that users...
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Offshoring telesales reduces close rates – why?
I’ve heard from several friends in call center operations that outsourcing inbound telesales to the Philippines has resulted in close rates below expectations. In at least one case that I know of, a...
View ArticleCustomers Are Talking: In Praise of “Customer-Oriented Defiance”
Behind many great customer-service stories is a front-line person who went outside standard operating procedure to solve a customer problem. Now this practice has its own name: Customer-Oriented...
View ArticleFord uses real customer stories as centerpiece of new ad campaign
I’m convinced that authentic customer stories are the best way to convey the values and benefits of a product to others, so I paid attention when I read in today’s Wall Street Journal that Ford is...
View ArticleVendors Are Talking: Grocer is “not going to let someone steal my customer”
Language, especially spoken language, is very revealing when it comes to someone’s values. This is why corporate executives are subjected to media training to keep them on message while speaking in...
View ArticleHow B2B customers talk
Some years ago, our company supplied billing services for a mid-sized telecom provider. It was old technology, and we were very interested in migrating them over to a new platform we’d just begun to...
View ArticleCustomers are talking: here comes “Broadcast Shopping”
This week Doc Searls posted on an idea called “Personal RFP.” In this model, people wishing to buy a product would be able to put together an open “request for proposal” – essentially, a specification...
View ArticleCustomers are talking: the complex consumer “buyer”
B2B salespeople are familiar with the concept of the “buying center” – a group of people responsible for reviewing, analyzing and recommending purchases. The best salespeople cultivate relationships...
View ArticleCustomers are talking: HBR says customer service is a strategic function
The Jan-Feb HBR features the article “Rethinking Marketing,” by Roland Rust, Christine Moorman and Gaurav Bhalla. In it, the authors argue that B2C companies need to adopt strategies that put the...
View ArticleThe graph is nice, but what are you hearing?
I’ve been working with a client company and looking deeply into their customer calls to find patterns around why people call, how CSRs handle calls, and what issues customers are having with the...
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