Bob Thompson
Bob Thompson
Bob Thompson is CEO of CustomerThink, an independent research and publishing firm focused on customer-centric business management, and Founder/Editor-in-Chief of CustomerThink.com, the world's largest community dedicated to customer-centric business. Thompson is a popular international keynote speaker, blogger and author of Hooked On Customers: The Five Habits of Legendary Customer-Centric Companies.
SocialWhirled shows that digital marketing really can be customer-centric
Digital marketers face a lot of challenges to engage with prospects to generate leads (B2B) or present offers (B2C). Some operate in what I...
Worst to First: How Five Customer-Centric Habits Enabled Sprint’s Dramatic Turnaround
My family has been a Sprint wireless customer for more than 10 years. We're happy now, but six years ago we almost fired Sprint...
5 Questions for Chip Bell — 9 1/2 Principles of Innovative Customer Service
One of our top customer service authors Chip Bell has just added an excellent new book to his collection. Here are five questions I...
“Art vs. Science” — A false choice in sales success?
Over the past few years there's been a lot of talk about "Sales 2.0" as making sales more "scientific." And, to a lesser extent,...
Report: Detroit losing ground to imports in auto customer satisfaction. Why?
The ACSI just released its August 2013 report on automobiles, based on interviews with 4K customers earlier this year. Domestic cars have slipped back...
The Future of Work is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.
The title of this post reworks a quote often attributed to science fiction author William Gibson: "The future is already here. It's just not...
Get Satisfaction surfs CX wave, updates strategy and platform in move upmarket
OK, I could have titled this post "Social CRM is Dead." But that wouldn't be right, because I already said that two years ago....
Confirmit’s VoC product strategy focused on Horizons platform
This past week I attended Confirmit's annual customer conference. I spent some time with CEO Henning Hansen and other executives, to get an update...
Five Ways to Profit from Digital Experience Management (DXM)
Imagine you're running Expedia, which serves millions of travel shoppers each month. Expedia.com is a complex web site. How would you improve the user...
SDL pushes for leadership in emerging market for Digital Customer Experience Management solutions
This week I attended SDL's annual customer conference in San Jose, and spent time with executives to learn more about the company's strategy and...
Study: Marketers and Consumers Out of Sync, Big Data is a Big Mystery
In March 2013, The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) conducted two concurrent surveys of consumers and executives, to explore the effectiveness of different marketing channels....
Solving the “Digital Experience Conundrum” for large U.S. banks
I think one of the key issues faced by retail banks (and indeed most retail businesses) is what I've dubbed the "digital experience conundrum."...
Nimble — Social CRM for the rest of us
In my first year in business as a fledgling CRM consultant in 1998, I attended a Goldmine conference and came away impressed with the...
Delight, by Design. Innovation Sets Intuit Apart as a Customer-Centric Leader
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.—Steve Jobs Let's admit it. Innovation is sexy. It's cool. What company wouldn't like to appear on one...
Salesforce.com acquires ExactTarget — Is this finally CRM 2.0?
There's been much speculation for the past couple of years that Salesforce.com would buy Eloqua, Marketo, or some other marketing automation (MA) vendor to...
Teens to Facebook: “See u later… on Twitter!”
In the past year or so, I've been hearing more and more reports of so-called "social media fatigue." I just did a Google search...
Medallia: CX Success Driven by Leadership and Action; Mobile Feedback Growing
Last week I enjoyed attending Medallia's Best Practices Forum, the annual customer conference for the provider of Customer Feedback Management Solutions. Medallia is an...
CXPA Raising the Bar for Customer Experience Professionals: Three Key Insights
Last week I attended my second CXPA Member Insight Exchange (MIE), the annual conference for the non-profit organization striving to "raise the bar on...
ResponseTek closes CX feedback loop with new mobile app
Over the past 10 years, perhaps more, I've been following the so-called Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) industry. Getting, and acting upon, customer feedback is...
Smarten Up the B2B Customer Experience: 5 Big Ideas
Last week I had the pleasure of attending the B-to-B Customer Experience Summit, organized by Walker, a customer intelligence consulting firm. This two-day conference,...