Years ago I did some work in Munich. Our office was in the centre of town and my hotel (if you could call it that) was just outside the central business district – but rather than catching a can each day, I thought I’d try cycling.
At the front of the hotel was a bike rack with bikes that could be hired by the day, hour or week. Once you had setup an online account, the bikes could be unlocked remotely via text message. And the best thing was that you could stop “renting” the bike just by relocking it into one of the many racks scattered throughout the city. It was brilliant and supremely convenient.
But most importantly, it changed the nature of the relationship that I had with the city. Rather than rushing from point A to point B, I was able to breathe in the architecture and style of the city. I could see the people and the way they lived. I felt part of a living landscape – and years later I still feel an affinity with the city.
This is partly why I am so excited to see Sydney’s cycleways threading through the CBD. Sure there are great, environmental reasons why they are a good idea – but beyond this, it is about reimagining and recasting the way we relate to the city. It’s about what it means to live, work and thrive in a city like Sydney.
Over on the SBS Cycling Central site is a great interview with City of Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore. She talks about a grander vision – of a larger cycleway network within the City of Sydney, connecting with other shires across Sydney. But she also talks about what it means to live in a city and how we need to own and design the city that we want to live in. And that is something that we should all share in.
We have all been there … a crowded table, a busy restaurant and service staff under pressure. On the one hand there’s orders for the bar, on the other new customers ordering meals. The challenge for most restaurants and cafes is to maximise the yield – to get your customers in, fed and out as efficiently as possible.
But then comes the bill.
Everyone wants to pay by card. Some want to split bills. Some want to tip – others don’t. Eyes start to roll. A great experience has come to an end – and all you want to do is give someone some money. It should be easy, right?
So I was interested to learn more about the Commonwealth Bank’s “revolutionary” solution that they are claiming will be the “future of business”. Based on CommBank’s platform known as Pi, it allows developers (including retailers, businesses and vendors) to create business apps that run on the Android powered secure device unimaginatively named “Albert” (they claim links to Einstein).
The fact that CommBank have engineered a finance focused software platform should be enough to send chills up the spines of software vendors around the world. With an already trusted relationship with their merchants there’s a real chance for simplification of business systems here. In fact, the launch video suggests ways forward – inventory and stock management, customer relationship management and customer loyalty.
Interestingly, they’ve taken a mobile first strategy which puts them ahead of the game – not just locally but globally. There’s even a touch of “social” potential in some of the “out of the box” apps – with a micro-donation option available for those times where customers want to “round up the bill” and donate to a worthwhile cause.
Leading the Sector through Technology Innovation
Over the last two years or so, I have liked the market positioning that CommBank have been taking. Their aggressive use of consumer technology with apps like the Property Guide App and Kaching have differentiated them from the rest of the sector. So this announcement follows a pattern of technology innovation … with the main difference that we’ll have to wait until 2013 to see Albert up close.
An App Store to Rule Them All
Effectively, CommBank are creating and delivering their own App Store for a proprietary device. It’s an interesting move up the vendor chain – working with Wincor Nixdorf on the hardware and IDEO on the human-centred design. In a clever move, this will lock-in Commonwealth Bank merchants across the country and will also serve as a platform for product cross- and up-sell.
It’s still unclear how the App Store will run, but it seems that it will follow the model set down by Apple and Google – with developers registering and having their apps certified before release. I presume there will be options that allow developers to create apps for specific merchants – I’m thinking of the larger retailers like Myer or David Jones – but there is huge potential here for franchises as well.
Thinking Outside the Square
Apple pioneered the “own the ecosystem” approach – connecting data, identity, analytics, content and proprietary devices via the “cloud” – and CommBank seem to be reading from the same hymn sheet. And when it comes to banking and security, there’s a clear case for this sort of approach.
But the question has to be asked … why not just partner with an organisation like Square – the card reader that turns an iPhone into a mobile payment gateway? It seems that the answer is Leo (yes, as in DaVinci) - a “strap on” or cradle for iOS devices like iPods and iPhones. This allows for access to the secure Pi platform.
And while this works for the bank – I’m wondering does it work for the customers of the bank’s customers. John Pironti, security and risk advisor with the Information Systems Audit and Control Association in the US suggests that smartphones may well be more secure than our PCs:
It’s pretty easy for banks to use GPS co-ordinates, SMS text messages, phone calls or some combination of these things to make mobile access to your bank account more secure … Plus, banks can in turn use the smart phone as a type of Swiss Army knife for security — employing the various apps and embedded features in their authenticating mechanisms.
Evolution or Revolution?
There may be a kernel of a revolution here … though it’s not in the device. For all its sleek lines, Albert is an evolution of the ubiquitous EFTPOS device found in most stores across the country.
The real value lies in the platform. As we know from social networks, power always accrues to the platform – and the underlying data – the patterns of purchase, customer relationships, business process enablement – could represent significant value to small businesses. And if CommBank could swim up the value chain a little further to deliver customer experience analytics not ONLY to the small business but to the consumer, then they may be onto something.
The thing to remember, is that in a world where business innovation arises out of the customer experience – it’s your customers who are creating the demand-pull for business innovation. And that’s where disruptive technology like Square come into their own. So, if I was the CommBank, I’d be already thinking of version 2 – and wondering just how I could put the power into the hands of its customers customers.
Increasingly I hear people talking about a “mobile” first strategy. This approach recognises that many people are consuming your content and engaging with your brand on mobile devices as a first choice. No longer are your customers waiting to get back to their desks at the office or at home to check your website, video, email offer etc. Their interest is immediate and opportunistic.
The thing that interests me with mobile is not simply its convenience or its immediacy but the way that it changes the way that a customer will experience your brand. However, the device itself is not a driving factor in this – it is the customer intention.
Think about it … sure you can connect with your customers, provide them with convenience, usefulness and even value. And you can do so at a time that is convenient to them. But you are doing so within a context – and that context is “social”.
This interesting presentation from the Hubspot folks shares 50 amazing facts about mobile marketing – but look closely. Much of what people use their mobile devices for is to augment their experience within a social dimension – shopping, entertainment, location based check-in and so on.
So, by all means, go with a mobile first strategy. But to be successful, make sure that you have social at the heart of your efforts.
You know the story … you just want to buy a product online – but the process is infuriating. You are asked to register before the purchase. The search doesn’t work or the half-hidden check boxes add you in for cross-sell or up-sell opportunities without your knowledge. At every click the website seems to prompt you to close the browser and go somewhere else. In short – the customer experience stinks.
And while many of us understand this frustration as consumers, rarely do we apply this knowledge to the online stores that we build, rollout or activate on behalf of our businesses/brands.
Now regular readers will know, I have long running dissatisfaction with the customer experience offered by most retailers. Big department stores are the worst of culprits – with skeleton staffing, low staff morale/motivation and little attention to customer needs and loyalty – but poor retail customer experience is endemic. And for my money, this is what is largely driving customer online. It’s not that consumers don’t have the money to spend – it’s that they don’t want to spend it with the companies on offer. So, yes, it’s a brand issue.
But coming back to the eCommerce experience. What would happen if an online shopping experience was played out in the real world? Check out this re-enactment from the Google Analytics team. Great stuff. And you know the same happens in-store. It’s time we reinvented retail, don’t you think?
I must admit that there is something immensely satisfying about email campaigns. These days, you can build a pretty creative campaign using free or open source tools like my current favourite, MailChimp, launch, send, measure and report on it’s effectiveness and then turn around and do it all again … with a great deal of ease.
And the nice thing is that the reporting is pretty much real time.
There are many similarities with blogging – the tracking and measurement, the control over content and messaging and even an understanding of user experience, pathing and conversion rates.
But where the consumption of blog content is relatively anonymous (unless you want to get very tricky), email surfaces a lot of interesting information about WHO reads your emails, WHAT they like and sometimes even WHY. And understanding this data, using it to deliver insight into your products, offerings, services or even the way you carry on the business of being social, will increasingly become a competitive advantage.
But before you get to data, you have to have something to send. And you want to maximise the effectiveness of every pixel on offer, right? This awesome infographic from the folks at Litmus provides all the right tips and tricks – and the shares the secret – a powerful call to action incorporating visual and text based cues. Check it out.
As I sat bleary eyed in the audience at the Ad:Tech Sydney breakfast briefing this morning, three words sailed over the heads of the audience and slapped me awake – “creative is back”.
He said it again for added impact – creative is back.
The speaker, Responsys’ Simon O’Day, was part of a panel focusing on email marketing – but his interest was broader. He was talking lifecycle marketing, multi-channel and data.
I caught up with him after the panel for a quick conversation and to get a greater sense of what he was hinting at. Here are some of the themes we discussed:
Creative is back: there is a clear opportunity but also a challenge in the years ahead – after all, we are now all receiving vast amounts of email every day. The opportunity and challenge is to invest in creative and bring it into the heart of our campaigns and use that to cut through.
Data drives insights: there is a vast amount of data now at our fingertips – but rather than delivering insights, most marketers are drowning. Increasingly we need to look to technology to help us sift through the information that is available to us. My view was that we needed some creative partnering to take place – between the marketing teams, agencies and companies like Responsys. To make this data work for us all, we need the deep expertise and the maturity to collaborate. Of course, that’s easier said than done!
Data is everywhere: We have our mailing lists and our databases – and that is all goodness. But social networks are now delivering additional data points that can deliver fantastic insights – as long as you know where to look. We should be looking for these opportunities beyond our own organisations – and tapping into the networks of value that already exist.
Imagine a world of 100% plus open rates: This is where it got interesting. As we spoke, Simon became more and more animated. He explained that hidden deep within the data – what Responsys call “profile extensions” – is information that allows you to engage people in a highly relevant way. The way I understood this was that a new piece of data – like a status update or a change in profile information (whether in your system or on Facebook or Twitter etc) could trigger an engagement – like an SMS alert, an email or an @ message. And because it was highly targeted and relevant, it generates 100%+ open rates.
So what we are seeing, really, are micro-segmentation capabilities that are based on people’s behaviours rather than demographic or other forms of segmentation. It’s pretty exciting – slightly spooky – but also the way of the future.
So what do you think? Is this deep level of targeting, when coupled with a focus on permission a way for us to deal with email overload? Is this a new way of understanding trust or is it going in the opposite direction? You tell me.
I recently spoke at the Social Media Plus conference in Philadelphia. My topic was “social selling” – but rather than just taking a simple route and providing a case study, I thought it would be more interesting to try something different. I wanted to tell the story of my work with SAP’s Premier Customer Network – an unfolding story of our efforts to become a “social business”. But how best to do so? What would resonate?
My colleague, Anand Ramachandran had recently created a presentation using Angry Birds as a metaphor – and on reviewing this, I knew I had a hook. If social media/social business is a “game changer”, then clearly that game is Angry Birds. And the deeper I looked, the more I found.
Here is the presentation – together with a speaking track to fill in the gaps. It looks at what it takes to move from the business simplicity characterised by games like Space Invaders to a complex multi-stakeholder sales process – which is closer to Angry Birds. Along the way I discuss sales process, people enablement and the benefits of connecting open networks with closed communities.
In social media, we are often told to “listen first”. But what does this really mean? For most people, the reality is that we “monitor” – brands, products, people and so on. But, for me, monitoring is only the first step. It’s the most basic thing that you can do to begin showing your customers some respect.
But monitoring is done in silence. It’s a form of brand voyeurism.
So, what does it take to go beyond “monitoring”? I took a lesson from one of my favourite musicians – Natalie Merchant. You can read my latest MarketingProfs article How Natalie Merchant Taught Me to Listen along with plenty of other thought provoking content at the always brilliant MarketingProfs site.
Oh and you can always follow my How to Listen chart. Enjoy.
The Customer Collective is an independent, moderated blogging community focused on sales and marketing executives. Its sister site, The Social Customer focuses on customer service practitioners. Both of these sites operate under the SocialMediaToday umbrella and take contributions from bloggers, writers, thought leaders and practitioners from all around the world. You can automatically share your blog posts via RSS or write exclusive articles directly for the community. It is a great way of sharing your knowledge with a broad, yet business focused audience.
I was recently invited to join the advisory board of The Customer Collective/ The Social Customer and am excited to be joining a respected group of marketing and sales practitioners. Be sure to check out their blogs and Twitter channels for razor sharp insight and quality conversation!
Ardath Albee
http://www.marketinginteractions.com @ardath421 on Twitter Ardath Albee is CEO and B2B Marketing Strategist for her firm Marketing Interactions. She is an expert at creating contagious content and e-marketing strategies that engage prospects-from initial attention until they’re sales ready. She has a unique ability to develop content strategies that work hand-in-glove with overall corporate and product positioning to deliver hard hitting e-marketing programs and tools that compel customers to buy. Ardath is the author of the popular book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, recently released by McGraw-Hill. Connect with Ardath »
Dave Brock
http://partnersinexcellenceblog.com @davidabrock on Twitter Dave Brock is President and CEO of Partners In EXCELLENCE, a global consulting company focused on helping organizations achieve the highest levels of performance in sales, marketing, customer service and business strategy. He helps individuals and organizations develop and execute strategies to outPerform, outSell, and outCompete their competition. Dave is an internationally recognized speaker, writer, and thought leader in leadership, sales, value propositions, marketing, strategic alliances and partnering, business strategy and management. Connect with Dave »
http://the56group.typepad.com/ @pgreenbe on Twitter In addition to being the author of the best-selling CRM at the Speed of Light, Paul Greenberg is President of The 56 Group, LLC, a customer strategy consulting firm, and BPT Partners, LLC, a training and consulting venture that has quickly become the certification authority for the CRM industry. His book, CRM at the Speed of Light: Social CRM Strategy, Tools, and Techniques for Engaging Your Customers, now in its fourth edition, is in 9 languages and been called "the bible of the CRM industry". Paul is also the co-chairman of Rutgers University’s CRM Research Center and the Executive Vice President of the CRM Association. He is a Board of Advisors member of the Baylor University MBA Program for CRM majors, a unique national program. He is a core member of the Board of Advisors for the Center for American Progress, the leading policy thinktank in Washington D.C. Connect with Paul »
Gavin Heaton
http://www.sap.com/communities/pcn @servantofchaos on Twitter Gavin is the author of Servant of Chaos, one of Australia’s leading marketing blogs and is the co-publisher (with Drew McLellan) of the ground-breaking collaborative marketing book series, Age of Conversation. Gavin has worked in agencies (leading the global digital strategy for McDonald’s), but is currently holed up on the client side where he is the Director of Social Media for the SAP Premier Customer Network, North America. In what little spare time is left to him, he works with young people as president of local non-profit organisation, Vibewire. Connect with Gavin »
Jill Konrath
http://sellingtobigcompanies.blogs.com @jillkonrath on Twitter Jill Konrath is an internationally recognized author and B2B sales strategist. She’s a popular speaker at sales meetings, conferences and kick-off events where she shares fresh sales strategies that actually work in today’s business environment. SNAP Selling, her newest book, soared to #1 Amazon sales book within hours of its release. Her 1st book, Selling to Big Companies, was named a “must read” by Fortune Magazine and has been an Amazon’s Top 20 Sales Books since 2006. Connect with Jill »
Mike Merriman
@MerrimanMzinga on Twitter Mike Merriman has a varied background in product development, product management, customer service, strategic consulting, and industry research with over 20 years of leadership experience. As Mzinga’s Director of Strategic Services, Mike applies this broad background to assist our clients in mapping their business goals to specific community and social media initiatives to maintain competitive advantage. Connect with Mike »
Natalie Petouhoff
http://www.drnatalienews.com/ @drnatalie on Twitter Dr. Natalie serves as the Chief Strategist for Social Media, Digital Communications and Measurement at Weber Shandwick, with a world-wide practice role spanning client work, practice development and thought leadership. Dr. Natalie’s focus is to consult with clients on their strategy for social media, marketing, PR, customer service and integrating them using organizational change management, new technology deployment and social media analytics, measurement and ROI. Connect with Natalie »
Anneke Seley
http://www.sales20book.com/wp @annekeseley on Twitter Anneke was the twelfth employee at Oracle, the designer of OracleDirect, the company’s revolutionary inside sales operation, and one of four people recognized as an early innovator in Oracle’s Innovation Showcase. She is currently the CEO and founder of Phone Works, a sales strategy and implementation consultancy that has helped over 350 large and small businesses across industries increase sales productivity and results. Anneke is the coauthor of the best-selling book on the new culture of selling, Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology. Connect with Anneke »
Increasingly, businesses are turning to social media as part of their marketing mix. There is a smattering of Facebook, a Twitter account – and maybe even a YouTube channel. Some will have a social media monitoring solution in place, others a bunch of Google Alerts bombarding their inbox with messages and updates. But there is often a gulf between the listening and doing – between the monitoring and engaging.
And perhaps, more alarmingly, there are precious few businesses who have done the work to put social media into a framework or business context. That’s why I advocate continuous digital strategy. It’s why I think a social business maturity model is important – so that you can actively work to transform your business relationships, systems and processes in such a way as they deliver sustaining value over time.
Unfortunately, many of us only take on transformative challenges when we are forced to – often because our competitors beat us to the punch.
Wouldn’t it be nice to lead and set the agenda instead?
The Dell Social Listening questionnaire gives you valuable information from seven relatively simple questions. Based on Forrester industry data, it allows you to model your own business (or your competitors’ business) and have it visualised as an infographic. Here is one I did for a medium sized tech company. Makes for interesting reading … but it can also be a useful way of laying out your strategic challenges – especially if you are also working in a medium sized tech company.
How do you compare? Where are the gaps? And what are you going to do to close them?
You see, it is important to listen to and engage with your customers. But that’s not the end result. It’s the start. Get to it!
http://www.marketinginteractions.com
@ardath421 on Twitter
