John Todor
The Paradox of Excellence: Advice for a Down Economy
75% of businesses don't know what their customers of them! That's according to a report in the recent issue of CustomerStrategy (www.customer-strategy.co.uk). We have heard this before. A couple of years ago an IBM study showed that 80% of business leaders thought they were doing...
Why Circuit City Is Bankrupt and Best Buy Thrives
Simply put, Circuit City was stuck in transactional-economy mode, while competitor Best Buy is making the transition to a business model where delivering value to customers is not just focused on price. Circuit City, the consumer electronics giant, announced a few days ago that they...
Practical Ways to Use Web 2.0 in Your Business
In this podcast, Thompson interviews John Todor, managing partner of The Whetstone Edge, about his new book: Get With It! Practical Ways to Use Web 2.0 in Your Business. Tudor shares tips on how business managers can make more effective use of Web 2.0 and...
Three Social Media Strategies Can Stack the Deck in Your Favor When Prospects Search
Growing participation in social media is changing the dynamics of customer relationships. Companies are confronted with two new mandates. One is monitoring the online conversations about their company. The other is learning how to gain online influence with customers—how to build a visible and...
The Fundamental Issues With Most Customer Experience Efforts
If you have an interest in the Customer Experience or CEM, I strongly urge you read this excerpt from Frank Capek's latest blog, and then read the full blog. We've reached the point where most business leaders understand that their organization's ability to effectively acquire,...
Petco.com Finds Connecting Customers Stimulates Sales
Petco.com recently added The Answer Den to their highly successful ecommerce site. The Answer Den enables customers to talk to customers, to ask and answer questions about their pets, pet care and pet products. This open dialog between customers helps customer deal with issues...
UPS Reduces the Hassle Factor and Increases Its Customers’ Profitability
73% of people say they are less likely to buy in the future from and online retailer where the returns process is a hassle., This statistic was reported UPS and Forrester Research at the Online Marketing Conference in San Francisco yesterday. While this might seem…
A Fundamental Change in Customer Relationships: Oracle’s Announcement
The following announcement by Oracle is HUGE. Not because of the new technology, but because of the recognition by a major enterprise vendor that customer wield power and they do so through social media. "We believe there is a fundamental disruption in customer relationships," Anthony...
The Skinny on the Trusting of Strangers in Social Media
It seems a little strange. In the physical world we seem increasingly suspicious of strangers. Yet, there is growing evidence that in the online social media world, we are increasingly find strangers trustworthy and are influenced by their opinions. Here are the highlights from a...
Move Over Web 2.0 and Social Media. It’s Time for SOCIAL Computing
In discussions about Web 2.0, Social Media or Social Networking, it is becoming common to hear: it is not about the technology, it is about what it enables." Heretofore, discussions about what it enables have been mostly about the buzz around flashy examples. Well,...
Hewlett-Packard Exploits Customer Experience Keyword Cache
The Customer experience is about what the customer experiences, right? Marketing people are interested in the customer experience, right? Hewlett-Packard has figured out how to get some market place visibility for its products by using customer experience as a keyword in new releases that have...
How Best Buy Uses Social Networks to Increase Employee Engagement
Gallup and others have estimated that nearly 75% of employees in America are at least partially disengaged at work. This means they are physically present but somewhat psychologically absent. This apathy or going through the motions by employees impacts productivity but it also has a...
How Dell Changed Its Online Reputation
The September 15 issue of Fortune magazine has an interesting piece on Dell Computers use of Web 2.0. When Michael Dell returned to Dell as the CEO in 2007 profits were down 27%. In the early days Dell had a reputation for good service—at this...
How a Small Business Fuels Word of Mouth
Word-of-Mouth is widely accepted as one of the most effective ways of winning the minds of new customers. Potential customers rank people like themselves very high on trust scales. If they are friends, all the better. The question is Why don't businesses take a...
The Long Wait: An In-Store Customer Experience That Kills Business
A whopping 86% of people polled admitted to walking out of a retail store frustrated with having waited too long for service. This same Martitz Research survey found that 67% told others about their negative experience and 50% reported that they had posted something...
Why Most Online Communities Fail
That is the title of an extremely popular Wall Street Journal article from early July, 2008 reporting on a Deloitte and Beeline Labs study of business sponsored, online communities. I guess sensationalism sells. The WSJ interpretation of the study is that over 60% of...
Productive Friction: You Can Do More on LinkedIn Than Collect Links
Seeing and seizing new business opportunities requires a networked brain trust—one that is proactive. In their new book, The Only Sustainable Edge, John Hagel and John Seeley Brown, make the case for productive friction. In essence they say the interesting and profitable business opportunities...
Customer-Centric Salespeople Are Four Times More Effective
That's the claim in a recent white paper. The authors claim that sales professionals fall into two categories, eagles and journeypeople. According to them, most sales organizations are made up mainly of journeypeople. They rely on their knowledge of the company and its offerings...
When Customers Tell Stories, Other People Get Engaged and Buy
Stories enable customers to extend their current product-centric reviews by encouraging the inclusion of background and context. According to Sam Decker, Bazaarvoice's CMO (www.bazaarvoice.com ), "Stories are interesting forms of brand-related UGC. Because they show how consumers have been involved with a brand on...
Who Will Invest in the Customer Experience? Amateur Winemakers Will
Crushpad (www.crushpadwine.com) enables customers to become winemakers. They facilitate the entire experience from sourcing the grapes, crushing them, making the wine, bottling it and labeling it. They will even help customer go commercial if they want to sell their wine. Why to do people pay...