IBM pulled together 5 Futurists to give their views on the future of customer engagement.
Chris Heuer talked about the only thing that matters. You have to get fundamentals right. Not only to you have to listen, you have to understand. Chris said you can differentiate on values rather than value. This is because transactions are really about human connections. People are more likely to engage with you if they like you and relate to your people. Engagement is interaction with concern beyond the transaction. What really matters then is relationships.
Tamara McCleary creator of RelationShift talked about data mining, analysis and execution based on that data. This is about taking insight into action. Targeted Ads are good if we don’t invade somebody’s privacy, but shows that we care and are there to assist them. Netflix, Amazon and eHarmony use their analytics to anticipate your needs and desires before you are really aware of that. We have to use discretion and discernment with all the data we collect.
Joel Comm spoke about a bunch of different marketing campaigns that immersed consumes into interesting experiences that were mostly low tech, but very creative. The best marketing is interactive and storytelling.
Kristie Wells talked about these deadly deeds.
- Not doing things right the first time
- Forcing channels to compete
- When front line employees fake concern
- Disempowering employees. Why can social media teams do things that CSRs can’t
- Not investing time to coordinate across departments
- Choosing the wrong metric for success. It’s ok to start small.
- Believe that breaking up is hard to do. It’s really easy for customers to break up with you
Stan Phelps started with no one meets customer expectations. You only exceed or fall short. Info sense is the ability to understand individual needs of a customer. Blue goldfish companies turn little lights into action. He talked about Tory Burch combining in-store behavior with customer data to deliver outstanding experiences.
This was a fun, fast paced session that included a lot of good marketing examples.
