Ronni Marshak's Research

Offshore Customer Service

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Does offshoring your call center impact your brand? It does if the quality of service goes down. This refresher course in providing good customer service should help you avoid the pitfalls of the most common offshore call center offences, most of which are the result of valuing cost savings over nurturing customer relationships.

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Is Sears.com Strong Enough to Help Save Sears?

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Sears is facing major financial challenges. Can its online strategy save the company? Our customer experience audit of Sears.com looks at how well the site can meet a customer scenario of “I want Sears.com to make it easy to manage my purchases and related home services to simplify my life.” Our findings might surprise you.

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All I Want for the Holidays

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

There are many ways to personalize the holiday shopping experience that will delight customers and bring in extra sales from those of us who avoid Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Start by leveraging the wish lists that customers have already set up with you. Don’t waste that valuable information or the customers’ efforts.

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How Well Does Mint.com Help Me Keep Track of My Finances?

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

How well does Mint.com, a free web-based personal financial management service, meet the scenario a 55 year old single working woman who wants to get a handle on her personal finances? In this customer experience audit we run the site through its paces and see where it shines and where it is a bit tarnished.

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How to Be a Great Customer

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Relationships between company representatives and customers go both ways. In order to receive the very best customer experience, you should be the very best customer you can be. Here, we offer some guidelines for how to be a good customer and reap the rewards of positive, win/win relationships.

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Brand Loyalty

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

The combination of great products and a good customer experience will keep customers loyal to your brand. Add in a “personal” relationship with the customer, and that customer will become a fervent fan and an evangelist for your company.

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Engage Them Early, and They'll Be Customers for Life

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Students are an excellent audience when prospecting for loyal customers. Engage them early with great products, great deals, and a great customer experience so that they turn to your company when they graduate and are ready to become loyal to a brand. Savvy companies, such as Ford, Apple, and JetBlue, have programs to engage students and turn them into customers for life. Do you?

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How Well Does Bank of America Help Me Manage My Money Online?

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Our latest customer experience audit of bankofamerica.com follows the customer scenario of “I want my bank to help me manage my money online and make smart money management choices.” The results: the Bank of America web site does a good job of helping customers manage their personal finances. It isn’t as good at helping them choose the right accounts for their needs. Use our findings to determine how well your company is doing to help your customers choose and manage your products and services to meet their needs.

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Apple Sacrifices Customer Experience for Revenue

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Apple is exacting a higher commission on digital media purchased from within publishers’ own iPhone apps, forcing them to modify the seamless customer experience. You used to be able to buy a new book from Amazon within the Kindle app. But now, Apple takes 30% of those revenues. That’s forcing app owners like Amazon to remove the link and force customers to go to their Web browsers. The result is angry customers and a potential hit to the Apple brand. When working within a customer-centric ecosystem, it’s important to recognize the value that partners bring in supporting critical customer scenarios and providing a seamless customer experience.

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How Well Does Staples Help a Small Company "Manage My Stuff?"

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Staples has done a great job of making it easy for customers—both consumer and business—to find, purchase, and return products; get rebates; and receive rewards for monies spent. But how does it do in a scenario in supporting a small business customer’s account management needs as he tries to “manage his stuff?” Use this CX Audit to compare with your own company’s implementation of “Manage My Stuff” for your business customers.

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How Well Does Amazon.com Let Me "Manage My Stuff?"

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Amazon.com is the role model for creating a great online customer experience. But how well does it do in helping loyal customers “manage their stuff” — their account information, digital items they have purchased, the way they interact with the site, and the information they want Amazon to know about them. In this customer experience audit, we see how Amazon does in a true-to-life customer scenario. Some of the results might surprise you!

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Providing Consistent Customer Support

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 12 May 2011 00:00:00 GMT

When support knowledge isn’t consistent from agent to agent, you have to be lucky to get a successful outcome. Dell’s current support processes seem to depend on the luck of the draw! To provide consistent support, businesses need to provide up-to-date and shared access to up-to-date troubleshooting tools and knowledge bases. They also need to capture customers’ contexts so customers don’t have to repeat themselves over and over.

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Using Smartsheet to Work with "Customers"

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Projects aren’t just internal activities anymore. As we try to address customers’ problems, we need to open up our projects beyond organizational boundaries and collaborate with our constituencies. Smartsheet offers a cloud-based collaborative project management tool that looks and operates like a familiar spreadsheet, but that supports attachments, discussions, and secure access by row based on permissions. The New York Charter Schools Association and the Center for Cartoon Studies have adopted the Smartsheet to solve significant problems for their customers. Read their stories.

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End-to-End Customer Experience

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Customers hate complexity! Even though they may be involved in a complex project or they have a complex relationship with your organization, they still want it to be easy for them to achieve their desired goals. What they really want is for someone else—whether it is your organization or a third party—to manage the complexity for them! Both B2B andB2C customers want a single point of contact who will act as their advocate—a customer project manager who is knowledgeable, communicates with the experts to ensure that the customer's needs are being handled, who has the clout to act on the customer's behalf, and who makes it easy to navigate the oft confusing path through a complex project or relationship.

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Turning Innovation into Reality

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Patty’s Visionaries are a hand-picked group of customer-centric executives that we meet with twice a year. The tradition began in 1998, with the executives featured in our first book, Customers.com. We’ve kept the group going ever since, adding new members as people retire or change jobs.

Patty’s Visionaries are natural innovators and leaders. They are great listeners. They are also great storytellers. It’s a privilege to listen to them compare notes and share their stories every six months.

At our Winter 2010 meeting, one theme that came up in multiple conversations intrigued me: How can you take all the great ideas that come from customers, partners, and employees and make them actually happen? Let’s look at the different aspects of outside innovation generation and what you need to do to actually turn ideation into innovation.

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User Interfaces Shouldn't Just Be Intuitive

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 GMT

When you are designing a product or service, make sure that you are as clear as possible when you design the user interface. Being user-friendly or intuitive isn’t enough. While everyone loves a mystery, we don’t like to guess about how to use something that we really need. Take the guesswork out, and make it all obvious!

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Treating Your Customers with Respect

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The difference between a great customer experience and a disastrous one is treated how the customer is treated after presenting a problem to the provider. In the examples in this article, the caring attitude and follow through demonstrated in the successful experience shows how to recover from a product issue. In the disasters, the provider’s representatives either seemed to blame the customer or left the customer totally in the dark.

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Confessions of a Groupon Addict

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Groupon has been getting a lot of recognition as the fastest growing company ever. The company offers a great experience on daily discount deals to customers. However, merchants who participate can get burned if they don’t clearly think through the deal and what they want to accomplish. Although there are many Groupon merchant success stories, more and more horror stories are emerging from merchants who faced financial disaster from honoring these discounts without reaping the rewards of up-sales or new customer loyalty.

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Collaborating with Customers

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Collaboration is not something that can be measured. But the results of collaborating with customers lead to improved innovation and great relationships. The important thing to understand is that you shouldn't work on behalf of your customers, but you should collaborate with your customers to achieve these results.

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Quick Way to Gather Customer Requirements

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Co-designing with customers using Customer Scenario® Mapping is a great method for quickly gathering an integrated portfolio of customer requirements, including search keywords, customer-critical parameters, information architecture, decision support, business rule definitions, marketing offers, business processes, and technology (and human) service definition. The mapping approach also supports drilling down into details that can be used as a blueprint for application, product, and process design by your development teams.

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The Four Business Process Management: Communication, Coordination, and Collaboration, and Customers!

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

How should you think about workflow and end-to-end business processes that span organizational boundaries? You need to understand that you should always design processes that coordinate the communication and collabo-ration of participants (whether human or automated) for the benefit of the customer.

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Dell Support Fails at Providing a 360-Degree View

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Providing a 360-degree view of all your customer interactions to your customers is vital. But you also have to provide a 360-degree of your internal policies and processes to all customer-facing employees. Dell didn't do that with unhappy results. A formerly loyal customer is now somewhat soured on what was a preferred provider.

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Use Your Words

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

People comprehend information in different ways, be it verbal, visual, or a combo of both. When you prepare information to communicate to customers, make sure you take into account how different people want to assimilate the information and that it is easy for all to understand.

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I Need Help Now!

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

In a crisis situation, customers need service fast, regardless of the details of their service level agreements. This article provides some do’s and don’ts that will help your company cement relationships with your customers by helping them when they need you the most.

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Sending Clear and Appropriate Messages

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Email messaging is a great and cheap way to keep in touch with customers. But be sure to avoid misusing the communication channel by over- or under-communicating, misleading customers, or providing too little context on what the message is about and what to do next. Here are some basic do’s and don’ts when communicating with customers via email.

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Bootstrapping Innovation

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The Doug Engelbart Institute's Bootstrapping Innovation system provides a structure for empowering people to solve complex problems together—leveraging the untapped potential of people, knowledge, and tools—to help us make smarter choices, achieve more brilliant outcomes, increase innovation capacity and overall effectiveness, thus reverberating benefits to society.

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The Wrath of Customers

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 06 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes customers go overboard with their negative emotions, even in the face of a situation that isn’t your company’s fault. So what can you do about it?

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Map Ideal Customer Experiences with Cross-Functional Teams

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

There’s great value in using the Customer Scenario Mapping technique internally as a tool that helps your employees become more customer-centric, even without direct customer engagement. Running Customer Scenario Mapping sessions with cross-functional teams playing the role of customers—putting themselves in your customers’ mindsets’ to address current or potential customer pain points— let them show how, as customers, they would want to work with your organization to get things done. The very act of assuming the persona of a customer is a very powerful way to help employees think from the customer’s point of view and to see the value of becoming more customer-focused.

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Supporting the Customer Chain

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

No matter what kinds of products you offer, you probably have more than one set of customers, all of which form part of a customer chain—with many links between your firm and your end-customer. When you explore your customers’ scenarios, you get a good glimpse into their customers’ scenarios all the way up to the end-customers. You can then work together to make every link on the customer chain successful.

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The Not So Friendly Route to Flying the Skies

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

My friend and business colleague, Megan, just went through the daunting process of booking a five-city extended trip that included both business and personal destinations. Together, we realized that there are lessons to be learned from this complex customer scenario for any business. These lessons can help you make complex scenarios less frustrating for customers.

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Moving along the Time-(Team) Space Continuum

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A PSG Classic: collaboration isn’t about real-time vs. persistence, nor is it about the software tools you use. It is about getting your work done in the context of the overall project. It’s about achieving the outcomes of scenarios.

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Unisfair Helps Enterprises Increase Lead Generation Activities

Ronni Marshak — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

With the Unisfair Virtual Engagement Platform, companies can create always-on, multi-venue, virtual environments that mimic the feel and navigation of trade shows. Customers attend sessions, download collateral, and can chat with company reps, partners, and other attendees in the environment. Because customers’ online activities are tracked, you can see what sessions the customers choose to attend, who they spoke to, and, in general, where their interests lie. With the new Smart Reporting and Engagement Index features in the newly-released Version 9.0, your sales and marketing team will get more and better leads based on what your customers really want to know.

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Provide a 360-Degree View of Each Customer's Context

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Customers do business with you to fulfill their scenarios and reach their goals. To do this, they need full access to all the information you have about them, as well as the ability to access, update, organize, and enhance that information. Companies that support their customers’ successes by providing a 360-degree view of the customer context to the customer can reap rewards including increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

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Streamline Customers' Critical Scenarios

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A customer’s goal isn’t to spend money with you. He wants to get his stuff done! By figuring out his scenarios, you help him be successful and win his loyalty in the process. The article explains how to understand customer scenarios and how to identify the ones that are most important for your target customers.

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Kinek Package Delivery Service

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Kinek puts a laser focus on easing the pain of missed home deliveries and creates a new business ecosystem in the process. The company has created a network of Kinek Points, existing businesses who will receive packages for you and inform you when they arrive, thus creating new revenue streams for those businesses and ensuring that your precious packages won’t be left out in the rain!

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Holiday Shopping on Cyber-Monday

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Customers will come up with a variety of interesting online shopping strategies to get the best products at the best price to be delivered when they want them. Here are some basic do’s and don’ts to ensure that you aren’t making it difficult or frustrating for customers and that you are providing a great experience during the stress of holiday shopping.

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Identifying the Problems in Your Cross-Channel Customer Experience

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We recommend taking a cue from retailers—employ “mystery shoppers” who give your customer experience people and processes a thorough test drive! Besides identifying potential customer experience landmines, your company gains a more complete understanding of your customers’ needs and expectations as well as an appreciation for what works and what doesn’t, and a dedication to making it better for everyone.

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Do's and Don'ts of Phone Support

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Are your customers stuck in the infinite loop of IVR hell? Do they beat their chests and swear they will never deal with your company again after a frustrating hour on the phone with your company? These do’s and don’ts can help you create an effective phone support channel that can not only help solve customers’ problems, but can also improve your relationships with them.

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An Unexpected Customer Experience with the Registry of Motor Vehicles

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles provides an excellent customer experience when renewing your driver's license online. Obviously, whoever designed the site thought through the customer’s point of view!

Enticed by Discounts; Impressed by Customer Experience

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A restaurant used discounts to bring the customers in. But the excellent service makes sure that customers will come back.

Let Your Customers Be Part of the Solution

Ronni Marshak — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Don’t try to hide problems from customers—that never works. And don’t just tell them there is a problem without seeking their help in finding a work-around or an outright solution.

How Well Do E-Tailers Handle Gift Giving?

Ronni Marshak — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

During almost 20 years of mapping purchasing scenarios, the customers are clear about the gift-giving features they want on e-tailing sites, including recommendations, gift receipts, and in-time delivery. We evaluate five sites: Amazon.com, Gifts.com, Lowes.com, MagicCabin.com, and Cafepress.com, against these criteria. How well does your e-tailing site support gift giving?

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Do Rewards Programs Foster Loyalty?

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Loyalty programs have to do more than just offer discounts, or else customers will simply play “find the bargain.” This report looks at the differences between Rewards Programs and Preferred Customer Programs and how each impacts customer loyalty.

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Planning a Theme Park Vacation around a Birthday

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Planning a vacation and event? See how well the Web sites for DisneyWorld, Six Flags, and Colonial Williamsburg help you achieve your goals. This test drive follows Mike as he attempts to book a vacation and birthday party at a theme park location.

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How Customers Want to Plan for Retirement with Financial Security

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Customer scenarios fall into patterns. It‘s valuable to know these patterns ahead of time so that you’ll know what kinds of customer and operational metrics to elicit. Then you can focus on how to differentiate the experience, products, and services you offer to help customers reach their goals. This report focuses on the moments of truth and metrics in a typical outcome-based scenario of planning for retirement.

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How Customers Want to Learn a New Skill

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

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How Customers Want to Upgrade to a New "Model"

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Customer scenarios fall into patterns. It's valuable to know these patterns ahead of time so that you’ll know what kinds of customer and operational metrics to elicit. Then you can focus on how to differentiate the experience, products, and services you offer to help customers reach their goals. This report focuses on the moments of truth and metrics in a typical upgrade scenario.

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Tips for Interviewing Customers, Partners, and Stakeholders

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In over 25 years of interviewing customers, we have some insights to share about what makes an interview valuable. This report provides tips and techniques on identifying who to interview, what questions to ask, how to analyze and communicate the results, and how to engage with customers you are interviewing.

Moving from Cost Cutting to Customer-Contributed Innovation at Mentor Graphics

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

In June 2008, Mentor Graphics began a customer innovation program called Mentor Ideas. The program allows customers to contribute product enhancement ideas and to vote and comment on each other’s suggestions. Built on WebStorm from BrightIdea.com, Mentor Ideas has had a direct impact on the enhancements that are being included in the current release of its PADS product line.

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How Customers Want to Plan a Special Event

Ronni Marshak — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Customer scenarios fall into patterns. It’s valuable to know these patterns ahead of time so that you’ll know what kinds of customer and operational metrics to elicit. Then you can focus on how to differentiate the experience, products, and services you offer to help customers reach their goals. This report focuses on the moments of truth and metrics in a typical event-based event planning scenario.

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How Customers Want to Return or Exchange a Product

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Customer scenarios fall into patterns. It's valuable to know these patterns ahead of time so that you'll know what kinds of customer and operational metrics to elicit. Then you can focus on how to differentiate the experience, products, and services you offer to help customers reach their goals. This report focuses on the moments of truth and metrics in a typical return/exchange/cancel scenario.

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How Customers Want to Find and Purchase Your Products/Services

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

How Customers Want to Buy More of Your Products

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

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How Customers Want to Resolve a Problem

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Customer scenarios fall into patterns. It's valuable to know these customer scenario patterns ahead of time so that you'll know what kinds of customer and operational metrics to elicit. Then you can focus on how to differentiate the experience, products, and services you offer to help customers reach their goals. This report focuses on the moments of truth and metrics in a typical break/fix scenario.

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Corporate Executive Board Responds to Customers’ Request for Increased Collaboration

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Corporate Executive Board's Compliance and Ethics Leadership Council respond to their members' desired for a collaborative environment for sharing information. Using BizWiki from CustomerVision, service members can contribute and share messages about compliance issues with peers from other member companies. Ronnie Kann, Program Director of the council talks about the collaboration efforts and how they have made it easy for customers to create and share content.

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TimeTrade Provides Automatic On-Demand Appointment Scheduling

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

TimeTrade puts the power to easily schedule appointments into the hands of customers. The enterprise TESA system allows organizations to publish availability schedules of resources based on complex and hierarchical rules. The newly-announced TimeDriver product line offers much simpler appointment scheduling for individual service providers and professionals.

Virtual Events from Unisfair

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

The Unisfair virtual event environment allows organizations to put on a multi-venue conference without the hassle and expense of travel for themselves or participants. By mimicking the activities and venues found at traditional professional conferences, trade shows, and job fairs, it is easy for participants to navigate the event, network with other attendees, and download any relevant information.

MedStar Health

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

MedStar Health uses solutions from healthcare solutions provider Kryptiq to provide seamless secure communications among medical staff and patients as well as to implement a pro-active health program. Our interview with Dr. Peter Basch of MedStar Health looks at how the organization will be using these solutions to improve it’s already award-winning health services.

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I Need a New Car—Fast!

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT

In this Test-drive report, we apply the Product Select and Buy Customer Scenario pattern and its “I want to find the product or service that best addresses my requirements” Moment of Truth to the online car buying scenario as our customer persona, Mia Driver, visits Vehix.com to find the right car for her family. Just how quick and easy is it for a car novice to research makes/models and locate just the right car on the site?

New Car Insurance for a Growing Family

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

In this Test-drive report, we apply the Product Select and Buy Customer Scenario pattern and its “I want to find the product or service that best addresses my requirements” Moment of Truth to the online auto insurance business as our customer persona, Wanda Childs, visits geico.com and progressive.com to get quotes on her family “fleet” of vehicles. Just how quick and easy is it to get an online insurance quote from Geico and Progressive? Let’s see if the two auto insurers live up to their advertising promises.

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Selecting a Mobile Phone Family Plan for a Family in Transition

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

With his 18-year-old twins off to college, one in Canada, M.T. Nestor needs a new family mobile phone plan to keep the family connected. In this Test-drive report, we apply the Product Select and Buy Customer Scenario pattern and its “I want to find the product or service that best addresses my requirements” Moment of Truth for a customer’s research, comparison, and selection activities for a mobile phone family plan.

Using Business Process Management to Streamline Litigation Discovery

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 24 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

In response to clients' demands that they pay for professional services, not administrivia, the law firm of Fredrikson and Byron, P.A. relies on litigation support administrator Chad Papenfuss to streamline the process using the latest technologies. In this interview, he explains the changing culture and how the firm is using applications such as Exterro Fusion to get everyone on the same page and provide clients with up-to-the-minute information.

Research, Compare, and Select a New Retail Bank

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 03 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

In this Test-drive report, we apply the Product Select and Buy Customer Scenario pattern and its “I want to find the product or service that best addresses my requirements” Moment of Truth to financial services for a customer’s research, comparison, and selection activities for a new retail bank. More specifically, our customer persona, Penny Pinscher, visits Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo to identify a retail bank that meets her requirements for day-to-day financial needs, including a checking account, savings account, online bill pay, and convenient ATMs and branch locations.

Dealing with a Moment of Truth in a “Purchase a Gift” Scenario

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

In every type of scenario, there are three or four moments of truth (those vital moments when, if not successful, we go elsewhere). A failed shopping experience at lindaanderson.com demonstrates the importance of meeting and measuring your customers’ moments of truth. It also shows the importance of empowering support staff to fix a broken relationship.

Kaon Interactive Focuses on Retail Customer Experience

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

The big-box retail industry—large footprint stores, the manufacturers who provide the products, and the consumers who shop there—have a number of challenges to ensuring a successful customer experience and profitable outcomes for all. Kaon International has focused on addressing the scenarios of this target market with an innovative solution based on its interactive 3D graphics animation technology.

Snowbound

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

In this classic PSGroup perspective, we realize that more than a decade later, our concerns about technology enabling us to work everywhere all the time, rather than anywhere all the time, prove truer than ever.

Scenario on 34th Street

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

A holiday classic, “Miracle on 34th Street” surprisingly includes emphatic support of making it easy for customers to achieve their desired outcomes.

Pan American Health Organization

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Collaboration technologies can have a positive effect on the bottom line when used to augment face-to-face meetings. Our interview with Bob Rodrigues of the Pan American Health Organization spotlights how the multinational group uses the Elluminate Live! online conferencing tool to increase the num-ber of people able to attend important meetings.

OnStar

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMT

OnStar, a leader in offering a personalized customer experience with its in-car safety and navigation systems, continues to enhance its offerings. Today, more than four million registered users take advantage of a host of safety and convenience services based on who they are, where they are, and what situation they find themselves in.

A Customer Experience Journey

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Citibank changed the rewards on my preferred credit card, offering a bonus for paying household utilities with the credit card. But signing up the various utilities to take advantage of this offer proved to be somewhat of an exercise in f(utility). This report documents my customer experience with Citibank as well as my utility providers: Comcast, KeySpan, NSTAR, and Verizon.

Virtually Being There

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Providing an engaging customer experience is the goal of all savvy businesses. But how do you give a preview of an interactive vacation activity that really captures the essence of the experience? Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd. has developed an interactive Web site for its Freedom of the Seas ship. In an interview with Maria Polo Gonzalez, manager of e-marketing and distribution for the cruise line, she describes how she and her team brought the onboard experience online.

Help Customers Do Their Jobs

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

The sixth critical success factor originally introduced in Customers.com is “Help customers do their jobs.” You help your customers succeed in their jobs by making it easy for them to achieve their desired outcomes. Making it easy for customers in their business roles, you ensure that they will remain loyal to your products, services, and organization.

How Visual Comfort Uses GroveSite’s Collaborative Workspaces to Improve

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Visual Comfort, designer of custom residential lighting products, uses GroveSite collaborative workspaces to improve communications with its manufacturer and time-to-market. Byron Wilson, account manager with Visual Comfort, describes how his company chose, uses, and benefits from implementing a collaborative technology solution.

GroveSite Collaborative Workspaces

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

GroveSite provides a low-cost, easy-to-implement shared team collaborative environment that can also be used to create hosted public Web sites. Although not as feature rich as some competitive offerings from major players (such as IBM, Microsoft, and EMC/Documentum), the product provides good functionality for a large number of collaboration scenarios for working with customers and suppliers.

Cisco Systems

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT

In the eight years since we published our case study on Cisco in Customers.com, the company has continued to innovate on making it easy for customer to do business with the company. Today, Cisco supports its customers with interaction-based customer support and a thriving online community of networking professionals.

nTAG Enhances the In-Person Conference Experience

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 GMT

nTAG Interactive provides a comprehensive Event Data Management solution that enhances the confer-ence attendee’s customer experience as well as cap-tures real-time ROI metrics. Using “wearable technology,” a computerized name badge worn around the neck, participants have access to all con-ference information, such as agendas, and can ex-change contact information with a single click.

Let Customers Help Themselves

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 00:00:00 GMT

The fifth critical success factor originally introduced in Customers.com is “Let Customers Help Themselves.” The best approach is to let customers help themselves on the Web but give them access to a real person when they have questions or want a personal interaction.

Collaborative Workspaces Evaluation Framework

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 18 May 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Collaborative workspaces are workgroup environments designed to help project teams achieve their scenario goals. We’ve developed a framework to help you evaluate and select the collaborative workspace platform that’s best for supporting your collaborative teams. We will use this framework as the basis for our evaluations of the commercial workspace products on the market.

Raindance Meeting Edition and Seminar Edition

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Raindance enhances its Meeting Edition online collaborative meeting application, adding formal event functions with Raindance Seminar Edition. The product line integrates telephony and video to create the next best thing to face-to-face meetings.

Getty Images

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Getty Images supports image-buying professionals in finding and licensing stock imagery and film for commercial use. Currently under construction is a new Web site implementation that will be based on the workflows of target customer segments.

Convoq SellASAP 2.3

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Convoq focuses its marketing and development on a new version of its ASAP online meeting product, tightly integrated with SalesForce.com. The new product, SellASAP allows sales personnel to initiate and save meetings from within their familiar context.

IBM Lotus Web Conferencing 7.0

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Lotus Web Conferencing provides a strong set of collaboration features for enterprise online meetings. However, it does have some significant limitations in functionality and integration, thus making it a reasonable choice primarily for companies that have standardized on the IBM/Lotus platform. The new release, 7.0, adds some technical enhancements, including opening up the interface to enable third-party telephony providers to add their own integrated audio conferencing.

The Dangers of Defining a Specific Scenario-Mapping Customer

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 00:00:00 GMT

When defining the customer for a scenario mapping session, create a composite customer who embodies the common traits and needs of a key customer segment. Avoid the temptation to map a “real” customer, with very unique personality traits and demands as this can limit creativity.

Identifying the Right Customers and Context

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMT

Before you begin a Customer Scenario® Mapping exercise, you should capture the context of the scenario. This report explains the five key elements to capture: customer, scenario, desired outcome, conditions of satisfaction, and customer context.

It's a Matter of Trust

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 17 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMT

Consumers are often resistant to buying from manufacturer’s Web sites. What can you do establish trust and increase your sales? It is important to educate and manage relationships with partners as well as customers.

American Express Comes Through for a Member in Need

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 16 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMT

When a customer is in crisis, solving the problem on the spot makes the sale! American Express puts itself in the customer’s shoes and saves the day.

Challenges in Supporting Customer Scenarios® Across Multiple Touchpoints

Ronni Marshak — Fri, 13 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Although FleetBoston is doing a good job educating employees on how to service customers, it hasn’t done a good job of bringing that attention to customer needs to other touchpoints.

Axentis Enterprise: Business Process Software for Managing Compliance

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 07 Nov 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Axentis provides a process design, execution, and monitoring application that improves governance and compliance performance, creating a closed-loop compliance nervous system. The product, Axentis Enterprise, is designed for compliance officers who are charged with making sure that corporate and government-mandated policies are being adhered to.

Good, Old-Fashioned, Customer Service

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 03 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Even a no-tech example can showcase best practices in providing customer service. Whether it be carpet cleaning or B2B contract negotiation, the same basics apply.

Winning Back Customers

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 12 Sep 2002 00:00:00 GMT

FleetBoston is improving its customer service with its Winning Gold initiative. Now it needs to make customers aware of its improved service and offers.

The Future of Contact Centers

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 18 Jul 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Contact center solutions today provide a key set of functionality which will, in the future, need to be enhanced to meet customer needs. This Report includes a list of current and future required capabilities.

The CRM Paradox

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 20 Jun 2002 00:00:00 GMT

There is an emerging paradox: customers frequently can get more information than can the employees whose jobs are to help them. In order to avoid stovepipes of information, companies must design systems for customers and customer-facing employees from the outside in.

Workflow Is Not Dead; It’s Just Buried

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 09 May 2002 00:00:00 GMT

The workflow tools of the 1990s haven't gone away; they have become embedded in enterprise applications. But that isn't enough. To address today's business process needs, workflow solutions must support end-to-end, adaptive meta-processes.

Techmar's Outsourced Solution for Nurturing Warm Leads into Sales

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 14 Mar 2002 00:00:00 GMT

TECHMAR has found a sweet spot in outsourced CRM services. Rather than providing call-center or campaign-management personnel, the company takes on the responsibility of nurturing warm leads until they are ready to buy.

Closed-Loop Meta-Process Management

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 21 Feb 2002 00:00:00 GMT

In any given customer scenario, a variety of business processes are launched. These need to be linked so that the owner of the overall “meta-process” has visibility into the state of all customer-related activity.

Ronni Marshak on Customer Experience: Multi-Channel Shopping

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 17 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Different touchpoints and channels have different strengths. Product research is easier online; checking the texture and size of products is easier done in person at the store. Most of us mix and match touchpoints in a blended-channel shopping experience.

Revenio Dialog Manager 3.0

Ronni Marshak — Thu, 10 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Revenio Dialog Manager manages and automates interaction with customers over time and across all marketing touchpoints and channels. The product allows non-technical marketing professionals to build and manage complex campaigns that span the customer life cycle.