Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 23, 2006

As loyal readers of this blog know, multivariate testing is one of the techniques I feel are critical to advancing the art of Customer Experience Management. This is because MVT allows systematic analysis of the factors affecting the outcome of a process. Without a systematic approach, it’s impossible to understand or predict the long-term impact of changes in the Customer Experience.

Multivariate analysis 120

Multivariate analysis Work Management Consulting Statistics 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 19, 2006

Aberdeen Group ( www.aberdeen.com ) recently released “The Precision Marketing Benchmark Report”. It found that companies making “best in class” use of precision marketing tools—which apparently means treating customers differently based on their value—enjoy higher customer retention, cross-sell and up-sell revenues, and customer satisfaction than companies that don’t.

Studies 120

Studies Marketing Management Paid Search Agency Cross-Selling 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 18, 2006

[x+1] ( www.xplusone.com ) offers some pretty intriguing technology for online conversion optimization—that is, it automatically identifies customer segments based on behavior and demographics and determines the most productive offer for each segment. Founded in 1999 and previously known as Poindexter Systems, it has an impressive track record and substantial credibility.

Paper 120

Paper Product Banner Ads Banners 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 17, 2006

I received an email this morning from HyperOffice ( www.hyperoffice.com ) but I don’t know what it was for. Which is exactly their problem. HyperOffice offers hosted versions of common office functions such as group calendars and project management. I took a detailed look at them a couple of years ago and was impressed by quality design at an extremely low price—about $5 per person per month then, still under $10 per month today.

Work Management 120

Work Management Marketing Management Impressions Pricing 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 16, 2006

A press release from The Customer Respect Group ( www.customerrespect.com ) last week announced results from a survey of how “High-Technology and Computer Industry” companies treat their customers online. (Short answer: a bit better than average except that they’re really bad at answering emails.) But who is the Customer Respect Group? A look at their Web site shows they visit corporate Web sites, score them on a 100 or so elements, and sell the results to anyone who is interested.

Peer-to-peer 120

Peer-to-peer Press Customer Surveys Analysis 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 13, 2006

I spent a little more time at shop.org yesterday, finishing up my tour of the exhibit hall. One set of vendors that caught my eye were those helping companies to engage with customers outside of the normal purchasing process. These include services that let customers write and post product reviews, from Bazaarvoice ( www.bazaarvoice.com ) PowerReviews ( www.powerreviews.com ), and on-line customer training from Powered ( www.powered.com ).

Communities 120

Communities Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Ad Building 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 6, 2006

Bear with me on this one. At the risk of seeming pedantic, I want to discuss the difference between the purchase process and the customer life cycle. The purchase process is a sequence of events, such as awareness, trial and repurchase. The customer life cycle is a set of states, such as new customer, active customer, and lapsed customer. One describes concrete activities, such as going to a store or making a payment; the other describes artificial constructs such as customer segments or relatio

Planning 120

Planning Paid Search Agency Deliverability Segmentation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 4, 2006

This was going to be another snarky deconstruction of a press release, based on an announcement from knowledge management vendor KNOVA ( www.knova.com ). Indeed, some sarcasm may still be in order, given that KNOVA has decided it delivers something called an “Intelligent Customer Experience”. I’m sorry but that’s not an informative label. Nor are matters clarified by learning that KNOVA brings “the power of Web 2.0 to the enterprise.

Enterprise Management 120

Enterprise Management Web 2.0 Microsite Press 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 31, 2006

It’s time for another round of “What’s My Product Line?”, the game where we try to guess a company’s product by reading its white paper. Today’s contestant is Syspro ( www.syspro.com ) and its entry “How to Embrace CRM and Make it Succeed in Your Organization,” available here. Our first clue is on the cover of the paper itself. The subhead reads “giving small and midsize manufacturers and distributors the visibility required to compete in a highly competitive business climate”.

Marketing Management 120

Marketing Management CRM Paper Vendors 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 11, 2006

The question with vendor white papers is not whether they are self-serving—that’s inevitable—but whether they are useful as well. The best you can usually hope for is that the information will be accurate and relevant, even if not objective or complete. So it came as a pleasant surprise to find that marketing automation vendor Vtrenz’ ( www.vtrenz.com ) series “Effective Relationship Marketing” presented a fairly comprehensive overview of its topic, including several points with no obvious direc

Vtrenz 120

Vtrenz Enterprise Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 3, 2006

My continuing quest for an agent-based modeling system has led to DecisionPower Inc. ( www.decisionpower.com ), which claims—accurately, so far as I know—to offer the only agent-based modeling application tailored specifically for marketing. My product review should appear shortly in DM News ( www.dmnews.com ) and is already in the archive at www.raabassociates.com/database/articles.htm , so you can read the details there.

Terms and Conditions 120

Terms and Conditions Aggregators Statistics Paid Search Agency 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 12, 2006

I spent several stimulating hours yesterday at the shop.org conference on Internet retailing. Given my current interests, I paid particular attention to vendors who test and optimize customer treatments. Some worth looking at are Certona ( www.certona.com ), ForeSeeResults ( www.foreseeresults.com ), Offermatica ( www.offermatica.com ), optimost ( www.optimost.com ) and Usability Sciences Corporation ( www.usabilitysciences.com ) One thing I found is that even the most sophisticated vendors work

Customer Satisfaction 120

Customer Satisfaction Vendors Conference Optimization 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 20, 2006

Infor ( www.infor.com ), an enterprise software vendor which now owns Epiphany marketing software, was one of four winners of the CRM Magazine 2006 CRM Elite Award for its deployment at Interval International, a vacation exchange network. One critical component was Web site personalization: “Instead of delivering 12 offers on two spots on its Web site as in the past, Interval is able to deliver more than 150 offers on 45 locations on the site.

Ad Exchange 120

Ad Exchange CRM Vendors Software 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 5, 2006

“CRM has sustained success through its ability to help companies sell but, only focuses on a portion of the customer relationship, not taking into account pervasive business processes that can affect customers.” I couldn’t have said it better myself, although I might have been more careful about the commas. But that is the opening sentence of “Customer Relationship Management: Putting Customers at the Center of the Business,” a white paper from Exact Software ( www.exactamerica.com ).

Software 120

Software Product Buy Paper 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 10, 2006

Yesterday’s entry showed that a simple simulation model, predicting only whether customers make a purchase in each time period, could generate meaningful statistics about customer value and status. Such a model can be generated with a few lines of code in an agent-based modeling system. (I did just this using StarLogo TNG, available for free from [link].

Ad Building 120

Ad Building Statistics Response Rate Acquisitions 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 9, 2006

What’s the simplest possible Customer Experience Matrix? You probably haven’t spent a lot of time wondering that, and I don’t generally lose sleep over it myself. But as we at Client X Client start building more sophisticated simulation models, defining the simplest possible case gives us an important reference point. Of course, the question has an obvious answer: the simplest version of any matrix is a single cell.

Ad Building 120

Ad Building Statistics Segmentation Purchase 120