This week while at a big box retailer I overhear a store manager telling her assistant manager to “not call backup unless it was absolutely overwhelmed and necessary”, talk about a way to approach customer experience. For the manager this … Continue reading →

For the past 5 years I’ve tracked holiday season emails to see the changing trends, volumes, and types offers being used. As email has become more competitive and customers have taken to a variety of communication paths, most notably social … Continue reading →

2011 has been a big year for social – we saw Governments get toppled in part due to social organization, meetups & sharing, President Obama do a town hall via Twitter questions, Facebook announce a digital version of your life story and a half dozen major IPOs that show there’s real money being made. But while all of this attention has really taken social out from behind the shadows to show its importance, it’s also made a lot of people jump to meet sudden expectations rather taking the time to dive in to what it is that makes social so powerful – conversation. Continue reading →

Free Shipping: just about every retailer has it and many marketing tests have shown that even if you reduce the total price of an order by a couple bucks, people still go with the site that doesn’t have that specific line-item or even up their basket to get to the free threshold. Shipping is an afterthought, a line, a fee and like all fees we as shoppers feel like its being snuck in on us. People hate fees.

Yet as ecommerce find overwhelming success in removing one fee, we seem to be adding new ones all over the place in an attempt to keep our base price looking low. All for what? Continue reading →

These days social has become so important to business, such a focus, that marketing has convinced its self ending a billboard, flier, TV or radio advertisement with a link over to Facebook or Twitter is the must-have call to action. I can see the arguments – customers will “like” the page and end up someone you can message time and time again. UGC from other fans will authentically validate the product and make people buy. People know and trust social sites so they’re more likely to go there. But is that what we’re really doing? Continue reading →

It’s somewhere between midnight and sunrise and as I pause my Black Friday research for another caffeine break [after more than a dozen destinations spanning two malls and three counties, there’s been a number of those], I’ve found myself asking one question: what is it that has propelled Black Friday to reach almost as much notoriety as the holiday it follows?

What it is that makes people line up 6, 12 even 24 hours in advance? Is it the deal? Being able to claim first in line? Continue reading →

It’s that time of year – you know, big meals, lights on the tree, and buying gifts — lots and lots of gifts. Ya, it’s an exciting time. The buying frenzy created by the holidays opens up an opportunity to tap into more customers than any other part of the year, and unlike with the other 9 months of the year, most of the purchases are wrapped around a want which offers the perfect platform for engagement long after the lights have come down. Continue reading →

I’m on a lot of email lists, dozens, probably more and years and years I’ve collected emails from the internet 100 down to niche boutiques and specialized services, everyone you can think of and a few that surprise even me. From competition to best practices and trends, it’s a great way to see what’s going on in the industry but not surprisingly I don’t “act” on these messages very often. Still, in 5 years of collecting and tens of thousands of emails no one has ever asked me why. Continue reading →

The sad reality is that we, as consumers, have come to expect our opinions to be practically ignored, to be hard-sold by someone reading off a script with 3 different levels of service and to be brushed aside with generic response. Despite all the talk of being social & transparent, most of customer service is still about getting the issue to a “closed” status rather than actually engaging to understand, acknowledge and learn from the issue.

The truth is you can’t always fix the root problem a customer is having but when you allow your reps to be honest, friendly, informative, and let them decide how to handle a negative based on their expertise doing this hour after hour, you do what customers don’t expect… care. Continue reading →

The chief issue with a like, a retweet, or any other broadcast that is asked of a user is the endorsement behind it. Just as social has a code of conduct for brands engaging with consumers, the same exists for consumers engaging with each other. Posting to the wall and using a strong statement, each “like” is a statement. And not only do you have to get past that hurtle, but under the current feed systems, each action disappears off in minutes to a sea of new updates, photos and other likes leaving little long term connection outside of a smart counter. Continue reading →