Chief Customer Officer Thought Leadership
Here is CSRA’s latest thinking about enabling breakthrough customer experience by using experiential social media. Experiential works by building empathy and trust—externally with customers, and internally within organizations. It also provides real-time customer voice on demand.
Scroll down for integrated “Best of the Web” CCO posts.
- True Love for CustomersTrue love for customers reveals how nonprofit, commercial and government organizations of all sizes can create much stronger relationships and business by transforming how they relate to customers. Philosophers, clergy and psychologists have long acknowledged love as the most powerful force between humans. Love connects people like nothing else can, I think because love touches and binds together so many parts of the brain simultaneously: Love stimulates the reptilian brain because it’s related to survival. It is central to the limbic brain, which is grounded in emotion and memory. And love throughly engages the neocortex in art, ideals, and many other forms. The Need for Love Businesses complain that it is difficult to obtain and maintain people’s attention. But this is because they are acting like businesses; they use synthetic mechanical processes to communicate and interact. They have forgotten how to love. Yes, businesses can love customers, and love is the strongest bond possible; however, love has many nuances [...] The post True Love for Customers appeared first on Christopher S. Rollyson and Associates.
- T-Mobile Chief Customer Officer NeededWhy T-Mobile Needs a Chief Customer Officer shows how customers’ omni-channel interactions with enterprises demand profound integration of business processes, and how firms’ failure to “go all the way” in breaking down silos ultimately threatens business. Most firms don’t go far enough, including T-Mobile, and their silo-centric efforts fail to get the job done. To illustrate the point, I’ll share how T-Mobile alienates fans like me by not delivering what they promise. This story also shows that the need for a CCO is particularly acute in mature economies like the U.S.A. and Europe because their silos were built decades ago, and their legacy processes often adversely affect customer experience. Chief Customer Officer: Just Another Fancy Title? At conferences and professional groups, I often end up introducing the concept of the CCO to people I meet. I founded the Chief Customer Office in 2015 as a way to empower people to understand the importance of the role. The key rationale [...] The post T-Mobile Chief Customer Officer Needed appeared first on Christopher S. Rollyson and Associates.
- How Do You Feel? On Human ExperienceOn human experience invites you to examine common marketing practices from a human experience perspective. It expands part of a presentation I gave at the University of Chicago Booth that the audience experienced as mind-bending based on their facial expressions. Quite by accident I’ve happened on a rare view of humanity while practicing experiential social media during the last ten years. Experiential’s core research process involves conducting ethnographic research of thousands of people in specific situations. I analyze human behavior in communities in digital public, and it’s very rich, nuanced and complex. Ethnographic yields unparalleled qualitative and quantitative insights into behavior and human experience. Experiential consistently reveals that many marketing practices repel people rather than attracting them because the environment in which marketing is practiced has completely changed from when these practices developed. Marketing creates mistrust and pushes people away, as I’ll show below. This post attempts to reveal this anachronism to you, so you can correct your practices and take the advantage from your competitors. Human Experience
- Ethnographic Research for DesignEthnographic research for design explains how to use advances in ethnographic research of social media to design products, services, experiences… anything—while getting better results at lower risk. Ethnographic research of social media is breakthrough for designers in the “design stack” in which I’ve includedArchitecture/Interior Design, Product Design, User Experience Design/Interaction Design, UX Strategy, Service Design and Customer Experience Design. Designers in all fields lament clients’ resistance to funding robust research. Traditional design research methods are often grounded in asking proposed users explicit questions, and self-reported responses vary significantly from actual behavior despite respondents’ best intentions. Similarly, shadowing, service safaris, “a day in the life,” and other analog research methods are costly and slow. Sample sizes are necessarily small because scaling analog methods greatly multiplies the budget and length of the research phase. Ethnographic research of social media changes the game because it studies proposed users’ actual behavior in digital public when they’re having heated discussions about the outcomes they want when the proposed product, service, or process is useful to them. It enables [...] The post Ethnographic Research for Design appeared first on Christopher S. Rollyson and Associates.
- How Trusting Customers Drives ProfitHow Trusting Customers Drives Profit reveals how firms unwittingly broadcast that they don’t trust their customers, how that weakens profit, and how firms can take the leap. It’s a simple revolutionary idea that’s born from nine years of studying behavior while practicing experiential social media and social business. Analysts, consultants and professors increasingly say that customer experience is the last bastion of competitiveness, and an increasing portion of total experience occurs in digital public. This presents firms with an unprecedented opportunity: interacting with people in digital public can create trust at scale and drive profit from revenue and cost levers. How do you feel when someone tries to “sell” you something? They try to convince you that you need their product, and they insist that theirs is better than anyone else’s. And they don’t even know you! In the industrial mass communications age, mass sales and marketing was accepted, even though tactics were often aggressive and arrogant. In the digital [...] The post How Trusting Customers Drives Profit appeared first on Christopher S. Rollyson and Associates.
- Using Social Media and Social Business Together to Evolve ExperienceUsing Social Media and Social Business Together to Evolve Experience reveals differences between “the two socials,” and its startling conclusion is that most businesses will benefit from keeping them separate but related during the next three years. [Updated] There’s a much deeper context that makes the two socials vital: many of the assumptions on which business is built are being completely disrupted. For only one example, as Chief Marketer myself, I used to follow the mantra, “We always want to show our brand in the most positive light” (even when we’re lackluster). That impulse is increasingly risky. Take a few minutes and reflect on how profound that change is. Entire marketing and public relations industries are built on it, and it is very risky because people reveal the obfuscation and half-truths that used to work. There is no such thing as a “half” truth. From a practical standpoint, organizations need to manage their way through the transition to pervasive transparency, pacing their evolution with changing stakeholder expectations. This is where social media and social business [...] The post Using Social Media and Social Business Together to Evolve Experience appeared first on Christopher S. Rollyson and Associates.
- Digital Transformation’s Personal IssueDigital Transformation’s Personal Issue reveals personal treatment to be the key to breakthrough customer experience, and it shows how digital social spaces enable Chief Digital Officers to use personal treatment to create more profit. Before they arrive, though, they need to lead their organizations through the Personal Issue. The Personal Issue refers to a perceived conflict between empowered customers and profit-starved companies. Digital social technologies are enabling customers to “re-personalize” business and society because their online interactions among themselves are personal, which is changing their expectations of all interactions. However, businesses resist treating customers personally because they fear cost and inefficiency. They don’t understand the digital social economics of treating customers personally online, at scale. Meanwhile, the missions of chief digital officers (CDOs) and chief customer officers (CCOs) are creating bold new “customer experience” and profits by using digital technologies to transform organizations, brands and businesses. They will fulfill their missions far more quickly and completely by using the key. How Digital Transformation’s Personal Issue Developed Here is a very brief, generalized outline of the ebb and flow of the [...] The post Digital Transformation’s Personal Issue appeared first on Christopher S. Rollyson and Associates.
- Omni-Channel Retail Mobile and Big DataOmni-Channel Retail, Mobile and Big Data offers tantalizing glimpses into current and future omni-channel retail trends and technologies. I “sat down” with three thought leaders and a crowd of smart people on AllAnalytics’ real-time webcast, which featured real-time Q&A with the panelists afterward. You can watch it here. Panelists Dr. Erik Brynjolfsson, Dr. Yu Jeffrey Hu and Dr. Mohammad Saifur Rahman collaborate on numerous projects, and they are intensely interested in retail transformation. They also referenced one of their recent papers, Competing in the Age of Omnichannel Retailing, and I have added some of its points here as well. The webcast was well moderated by AllAnaytics’ Noreen Seebacher and Beth Schultz. Although it wasn’t discussed in depth, I observe that big data is especially poignant to retailers for two reasons: they have extremely rich internal, proprietary transaction data on customers (loyalty cards, credit cards, returns information, call center information, service information) and retail customers are the most free-wheeling online. Retail customers discuss their experiences in situations in which they use most types of products. This gives retailers priceless information: [...] The post Omni-Channel Retail Mobile and Big Data appeared first on Christopher S. Rollyson and Associates.
- The Future of the Retail Store in the Omni-Channel Age[UPDATED] The Future of the Retail Store in the Omni-Channel Age is third in CSRA’s retail & omni-channel series, and it is especially relevant to Chief Digital Officers, who orchestrate profound organization change using digital technologies and processes. It also offers rare opportunity to high-stakes CMOs. Part1 of The Future of the Retail Store outlines several aspects of market disruption that are affecting retailers as a group, albeit by varying degrees. Part2 features examples of “reimagining retail” for mobile, banking, grocery, hardware and apparel “stores.” “Future” provides practical examples for the main thesis carried through the series: retailers can thrive by thinking beyond “the product” and its selection, assortment, pricing, etc., because these have a decreasing impact on revenue and profit. Digital social enables customers and retailers to focus on how customers create value with products and services, so when properly used, social is a strong profit driver, and profits are what retailers need to survive and thrive. As examples illustrate, retailers can go with the “showrooming” trend by enabling customers to imagine and [...] The post The Future of the Retail Store in the Omni-Channel Age appeared first on Christopher S. Rollyson and Associates.
- How Social Changed Retail: Empowered Customers and Omni-channel CommerceEmpowered customers and omni-channel commerce are mirrors of each other, and both are transforming “retail.” [UPDATED] Connected customers have the Internet in their pockets and use mobile and other devices in all stages of conceptualizing, considering, evaluating, buying and using purchased products and services. These customers want to interact with firms and brands in a seamless experience that features single sign-on as an entry point; they want the firm to respond using their individual data when that makes interacting more valuable. Omni-channel commerce refers to a collection of technologies, practices and strategies firms use to provide the personal individualized experience that connected customers expect. IBM’s 2012 study of retail customers in eight mature economies (Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, the UK and the USA) and seven growth economies (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Mexico and South Africa) lays bare that the retail “shopping” experience has shifted profoundly, although you wouldn’t know it by looking at most offline or online retailers’ presences. The paper, “Winning over the empowered consumer: Why trust matters,” is a call to action [...] The post How Social Changed Retail: Empowered Customers and Omni-channel Commerce appeared first on Christopher S. Rollyson and Associates.
Integrated CCO Posts
This comprehensive feed includes all articles from each room in the Chief Customer Office, plus many others. Enjoy!
- Championing the Customer Experience | BrandwatchArgues that customer experience is marketing, takes a brand/enterprise view of #customer #experience culture using @deloitte's maturity model @vizia
- U.S. Media Consumption to Rise to 15.5 Hours a Day – Per Person – by 2015Sounds interesting but more intg is attention spent
- Amazon-Whole Foods Is Not About to Wipe Out Supermarkets | INSEAD KnowledgeThe best short analysis I've seen of #Amazon #WholeFoods impact on #grocery
- Response to David Byrne's "Eliminating the Human"[comment] David Byrne's reflection on #hightech elimination of #humans in our lives cc/ @dbtodomundo
- CMOs don't need more tech...[comment] What #CMOs need more than #martech #CDO #CIO
- Why 84% Of Companies Fail At Digital Transformation[comment] Useful update on #digital #transformation results + a model for analyzing results
- Webinar Recording: Digital Transformation and Antifragility | Todd Nilson | Pulse | LinkedIn[comment] Useful reframe of #business #agility: How robustness falls short, what's better
- The hero’s journey through the landscape of the future | Deloitte University PressEconomy: The strong #customer trend to the niche [report]
- 10 Signs of a Company That Really Cares About Customers | Provide Support[comment] Added this sign: Trust Customers - and showed how and why it increases business
- 10 Signs of a Company That Really Cares About Customers | Provide Support#Customer #service perspective on #CX includes a great list of organizational indicators
- What does it take to be a chief customer officer?Emphasizes "the human touch" and using automation to enhance experience & having a global enterprise view
- How to Retain Customers: 46 Strategies to Grow Retention - NGDATA[comment] Excellent: wide array of perspectives on #customer #retention
- The 10 Commandments of Customer Experience[comment] One of the best #CX lists I've seen; makes important connections among them
- Customer Satisfaction: 15 Ways to Improve Customer SatisfactionNothing new but a useful list of #cx how-to suggestions. #15 is my favorite
- Customer Journey Mapping With Annette Franz | MindTouchIntelligent conversation about #customer #journey #mapping #cx
- TrendWatching | 5 Consumer Trends for 2017Worth a look: 5 disruptive "consumer" trends
- Americans Still More Confident in Small vs. Big Business | Gallup"Big business regularly ranks near the bottom in confidence among major U.S. institutions"
- Are You and Your Company Ready for a Cyber World War? | DigitalNext - AdAgeUSEFUL scenario for your own cyber disaster plan: Use it to increase your flexibility #kudos
- Evolve or Die: What Banks, Like Dinosaurs, Must Do to Survive | Jason Henrichs | Pulse | LinkedIn[commented] How the App Store has pulled the rug from under #banks' Web and #mobile presences #solsticefwd
- Keepin It Simple Consulting | HomeConsultancy that addresses #employee #engagement & #organization #development
- SoulCycle Wants You To Join Its Tribe | Fast Company | Business + InnovationHow @soulcycle grows with #community energy, #realestate smarts, site selection #cx #strategy
- Amazon plans to open a Chicago bookstore in Lakeview - Chicago TribuneCustomer experience lab transcends channels: @amazon goes retail in #chicago #lakeview #cx
- Articles | AFPNot a pretty picture: #HCI/human factors meets #security & systems/policies very hard to use
- Real-time employee sentiment dashboard | SigmendContinuously measures and reports #employee sentiment #experience #engagement
- How Sam Phillips Invented the Sound of Rock and RollSuperb story of innovation in USAmerican music Thx @jhagel
- Want to Improve Customer Experience? Start With Human-Centered Design - Rêve Consulting[commented] How and why of using #ethnography and #empathy in customer experience #design #cx
- Official Google Webmaster Central BlogRock on @google - downgrading #interstitials on #mobile #cx #ux
- “Robots Can Restore Our Humanity” – John HagelHow #robots can help us shift work and society toward more creativity, but we need to do this first..
- Shut Up and Listen, Will Ya? | Inc.com[commented] How marketers can evolve and thrive: @tullman asserts listening is critical #socialmedia #marketing #experiential
- Google Investigation: Ad Injection Is Affecting Millions | Digital - AdAge#PPI networks #malware by another name: @google report has the latest #ux #cx
- One Leg Too Few - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaHusterical history in drama, the stage, with PC recruiting context #employee #experience #engagement
- 'NaturePlay' film reveals Scandinavia's amazing nature-based education system : TreeHuggerGenius: How #Nordic education shows #kids #empathy, common #sense, #responsibility
- Customer Experience Is the Future of Design | UX MagazineWhy #customer #experience focus is critical to #design and business
- Customer Experience & Design | Digital McKinsey | McKinsey & Company@mckinsey approach to #customer #experience #design includes #ethnographic #research
- User Experience and Customer Experience what’s the Difference? | Interaction Design FoundationUseful ecommerce comparison shows differences vs. user experience & #CX #UX
- Tacit knowledge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaGreat starter post on tacit knowledge, which is a key focus of #ethnographic #research of #socialmedia
- U.S., EU Launch "Privacy Shield" Data Transfer Framework, Certification to Begin August 1 | Katten Muchin Rosenman LLPImportant privacy advisory for U.S.A. firms that collect EU citizens personal data
- Snapchat and Tumblr: Platforms for Innovation in Social Media Marketing (Report) | SocialTimesUseful: Innovation in #socialmedia #marketing report
- IBM Watson Analytics for Social Media - United StatesInteresting: How to start using #ibmwatson to analyze #socialmedia #bigdata #analytics
- What Behavioral Economics Is Not - ideas42Useful analysis/POV on #behavioral #economics definitions debunks "misconceptions"
- How Far Will You Go to Be Loved? | Inc.comPolemic admonishes #entrepreneurs to commit to #truth telling w #investors #employees #customers #trust #relationship
- 3 Ways to Target Millennial, Gen-Z Customers on Snapchat | SocialTimesHow #Snapchat can support #Customer #Service #employee #recruiting - examples #cx
- Ensuring customer retention: Infancy, adolescence, and maturity | Monica Adractas | Pulse | LinkedIn[commented] Simple 3-stage #customer #success & #retention model with software example
- 14 Ways to Help You Look Primal | Mark's Daily Apple#Primal #hack guide: how to help your eyes in the world of screens #grok
- How To Create A Successful YouTube Channel [Infographic] | Social Media TodayUseful example of #socialmedia #marketing approach to #youtube - better to start w #customer #outcomes
- Customer churn and Retention[commented] How to use #data #analytics to prevent #customer #churn Kudos @rautsan #cx
- Values Based Marketing, and why there's no such thing as "CSR" | Jonathan Hoffman | LinkedIn[comment] "All behavior is marketing" | Astute insight by @jonphoff
- Vista Equity Partners Acquires Marketo#Marketing #automation matures: #marketo in saas rollup deal
- Why You Still Probably Need More Rest (and 23 Ways to Get It) | Mark's Daily Apple#Primal #hack #list for #resting, taking care of yourself: how many do you know?
- Experiential Ownership: Luxury’s New Challenge? - Luxury Society - AnalysisExploring the growth of #experiential #luxury & the impact of #socialmedia
- now publishers - Fifty Shades of ManipulationEXCEPTIONAL analysis of #manipulation esp. relevant to #behavioral #economics
- Manipulating Consumers is Not Marketing | INSEAD KnowledgePOV on #ethical #marketing when #customer #trust is very low
- Society for Participatory MedicineEpicenter of global #participatory #medicine movement in #healthcare
- Describing Personas — Medium[commented] The dangers of using artificial demographics in #user #experience #design #research
- Influencers vs. Celebrities: The Critical Differences | Simply Measured[commented] VALUABLE distinction: how #influencers differ from #celebrities in #socialmedia
- T-Mobile Brings Its "Feisty" and "Hardcore" Brand to Social Media Customer Service | Dan Gingiss | LinkedInGreat #SocialMedia #customer #service: Behind the scenes @tmobilehelp Kudos @dgingiss @mm_mattson #focs
- Empathy Is Marketer's Greatest Tool For Success | Marketing Insider Group[commented] POV calls for #CMOs to adopt a more #customer focused approach KUDOS @brennermichael
- Is Employee Development The Most Neglected Management Function? - Forbes[commented how to go even higher] Too many managers don't tap these gold rules of building strong teams
- DAS DEAD BRAND[commented] Riffs on @VW #dieselgate and its impact on the brand
- Why More M&As Is a Sign That Scale Is No Longer an AdvantageAs explained by @sochanapp & @chcustofc in even more detail: Large firms are commoditized
- 5 things you need to know about Facebook’s chat bots and the future of service | MyCustomerGood analysis: Discusses #facebook #messenger #chatbot within context of #customer #service #cx
- The Power of Truth Telling At Work[comment] Book reveals root case of #employee #engagement & performance crisis: A lack of #truth at work. What to do about it
- How The Net Promoter Score (NPS) Is Like Global Warming [PDF]Insightful: How #NetPromoterScore Can Breed Inaction, it's oft not actionable #cx
- London pub customers pranked by bank - YouTubeFUNNY video spoofs banks: pub servers act like bank associates, shocking #customers #experience
- Has Twitter Forgotten its Customers? | Forum | Customers.com - Trusted Advisors to Customer Centric ExecutivesAstute analysis: #Twitter doesn't gratify users enough socially: #customer #experience the basis of value
- Review Strategies and the Customer Experience | SandhillSolid advice: #Customer #experience and #reviews: How firms can mitigate risks, earn rewards
- Starbucks' CTO brews personalized experiences | CIONew CIO @Starbucks shares how they're using #BigData & #mobile to drive #customer #experience #retail
- Needle Humanizes Customer Experience with Addition of Shopping Cart Feature | Reuters@Needle integrates #customer #advocate #experts into the shopping cart #ecommerce
- No More Call Centers: Needle Grabs $10.5M To Turn Your Fans Into Customer Service Reps | TechCrunch#Retail #ecommerce disruptor crowdsources #customer expertise to empower #experience w products
- Needle Humanizes Customer Experience with Addition of Shopping Cart Feature | Business WireBrilliant! @Needle platform crowdsources #customer experts on using products to create #experience #advocate #success