Customer World

Inside Steve's Brain- customer-centric design thinking

Here's an overview of the new book that's just got released - Inside Steve's brain ( Nishad sent this to me a few hours ago). Personally, it tells me a lot about the way the man is thinking, pushing( the people around him), acting-on( his instincts) and executing( without being worried about what the world thinks about him). Customer-centric enterprises need to have customer-centric design thinking - the way their products need to be conceived, designed and delivered. Steve just does it with impeccable perfection and style.    Here's the preview before you rush-out to buy:

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CMO council releases study on 'Leveraging Customer Data and Analytics'

Only 50 percent of global marketers report having a strategy for further penetrating or monetizing key account relationships, reports the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council in a new research study, Business Gain From How You Retain . In addition, a surprising 45 percent rate the effectiveness of customer relationship management (CRM) systems as deficient or needing more work, with only 15 percent of companies rating themselves extremely good or effective at integrating disparate customer data sources and repositories.

 

Conducted in late 2007 and early 2008, the CMO Council's Business Gain from How You Retain study undertook a wide-ranging evaluation of where and how marketers are "operationalizing" customer intelligence and insight to reduce customer churn, increase lifetime value, improve the customer experience, and increase the effectiveness and targeting of marketing spend.

More importantly, marketers are struggling to gain a true and timely view of the customer due to inadequate or incompatible IT systems and databases, siloed data in functional areas, and a limited strategic focus or management mandate on Customer Data Integration (CDI). Compounding the issue is a lack of formalized data-sharing policies and practices in the organization, combined with internal political or cultural barriers and IT obstacles and objections to data integration.

 

"We are seeing a fundamental need for marketers to be more effective at tapping the valuable vein of customer data that runs deep inside all organizations," notes Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. "Investing in integrated systems that harvest customer insight is critical to driving both marketing and business performance," he adds.

•       Only 15 percent of marketers say their companies are doing an extremely good or effective job of integrating disparate customer data sources and repositories; 55 percent note there is room for improvement or a deficiency in this area.
•      More than 31 percent of companies surveyed had customer churn rates of more than 10 percent and 32 percent reported turnover of five to 10 percent. In comparison, more than 62 percent said they desired or expected a churn level of less than five percent.
•      Respondents believe customer churn significantly impacts business performance through revenue loss (59.9 percent), reduced profitability (39.6 percent) and greater marketing and re-acquisition costs (36.3 percent). 
  
•      While churn is a big issue, nearly 67 percent of those surveyed say they have no system for re-activating dormant or lost customers, while just over half of respondents have a strategy for further penetrating or monetizing key account relationships.

•       While more than 35 percent of respondents report that the CMO or marketing department (38.9 percent) has primary responsibility for the customer analytics function, they are not leveraging its value. Over 31 percent of those surveyed do no data mining at all and 63 percent are only doing moderate levels of data mining for intelligence and insight.

•             The top six strategic applications of customer information by marketers include:

                        - Up-selling and cross-selling
                        - Segmenting and targeting
                        - Driving retention, loyalty and promotional programs
                        - Identifying new opportunities and unmet needs
                        - Improving customer service
                        - Shaping personalized and customized communications

•      Key initiatives to increase customer retention include improving customer communications (65.2 percent); addressing complaints, problems and pain points (51.8 percent); and enhancing the customer experience (54.8 percent). Unfortunately, fewer marketers noted their companies' willingness to modify business practices and policies to accommodate customer needs.

Do you onboard your customers?

I am not always excited if somebody tells me I have acquired a new customer. I always look at what is in the plan of the marketing & product teams to make these customers use all the features and benefits of the product, so that these customers can be with them for life. Not too many companies pay attention to onboarding customers. They acquire and forget. Or they pay a lot of attention to how to acquire customers but not do enough review of what is done to keep and grow these customers. Kevin Zimmerman, Sr. Editor, at Peppers & Rogers writes:

Consumer electronics companies and retailers are finding out the hard way what happens when you don't educate customers. Take, for example, the recent situation involving the purchase of popular high-definition televisions (HDTVs). According to Forrester Research Analyst James McQuivey, 20 percent of the sets sold have been returned in some U.S. regions, in large part by consumers who didn't realize what they were buying. Per an ESPN/Knowledge Networks/Statistical Research Inc. study, only 64 percent of homes with an HDTV have HD programming via broadcast or cable, and 13 percent of people who own an HD set do not know if they receive an HD signal. McQuivey forecasts the 20 percent figure will drop moving forward, as more retailers see the need to educate customers about the format if they want to avoid such massive returns.

Who's responsible for customer education?

Henry Choy, senior analyst at Jon Peddie Research says ""The store should do a better job of educating customers, the documentation inside the box must be better, cable companies can get more involved,"..

For a moment, if we as marketers think like customers, then count the number of times we would have read an operating manual, the number times we would have used the features that we primarily bought the product for, the number of times a company that we bought the product from, called to tell you if you have understood the features and used them. In my case, it is close to zero. That's the opportunity waiting to be tapped - Onboard your customers and you will realize there's profits to be made for life.

Landline Vs Landless marketing thinking

Shlomi Ron has a thought-provoking article on how telco marketers' mindsets have to change in an increasingly landless telephony world.

The land-line school of thought is characterized by a localized connectivity that "chains down" device users to one place -- at a point of access -- and demands multiple charges per connection and content consumption.

In contradiction, the landless school of thought preaches convergence, or full ubiquitivity (ubiquity+connectivity): the freedom to access information using multiple devices (e.g., desktop, laptop, cellphone, PDA, videogame consoles, et cetera) anytime, anywhere without complex and multiple fee schedules.

In terms of communication, land-line thinking is typically manifested with wireless carriers that charge for voice communication, text and data services and web services separately, with additional fees for each additional family member using the service. A landless business model would factor the cost of content into the cost of the access device, thus providing consumers with unlimited access to a Universal Content Country, supported by myriad content providers.

Today marketers are faced with two distinct challenges: delivery and content. Think about land-line delivery as a physical faucet: water (content) is gushing through at pre-designated locations, and the faucet makers control both the access and quality of water. Well, consumers are starting to demand the ability to carry their own glasses and drink their smart water on the go and on their own terms. Let's make sure we are still looked upon as a reservoir where users can fill those glasses, when and where they want to. 

Outsourcing marketing to volunteers

Apple's iPhone, in my view, is a case study on marketing by buzz. There's a lot to learn from this for other brands.

Economist had this to write about Apple's iPhone marketing strategy:

The actual launch day, June 29th, became known as “iDay” among Apple cultists. Queues started forming days in advance at many of Apple's 164 shops in America. Depending on the location, the scenes had flavours of Woodstock, Mardi Gras, or—in Silicon Valley's Palo Alto, say—an Apple programmers' conference. Pizza deliverymen did a brisk trade catering to the waiting masses. Steve (“the Woz”) Wozniak, who co-founded Apple but has since parted ways with it, could have got an iPhone through connections, but waited in line just for the experience.

• The first shoppers to emerge victorious were cheered as heroes and brandished their trophies for the cameras.
• AT&T's rivals, Verizon and Sprint, issued “talking points” to their salespeople, with helpful hints for impugning the iPhone's divinity. They lost customers anyway.

Honchos in all sorts of industries have long studied keynote speeches by Steve Jobs, Apple's boss, for ways to cast spells on audiences; now they also need to work out how he outsourced his product marketing to an entire nation of volunteers.

What's the next big thing on the mobile?

Kate Lips is a social media strategist. Here's her take on what's the next big thing on the mobile?

"Well the network operators and handset manufactures losing a little control of course.The previous model was that you had to create an app which would work on a handful of phones, then work really hard to broaden your appeal. Then your market was narrowed anyway by the fact that even if people had compatible handsets you were asking them to download, install and run software, often not knowing their (data transfer) cost implications. It severely crippled the market reach of mobile services. No longer, if you can just make a web app!

....I believe Apple is going to fast forward this with iPhone. Talk about reinventing the phone; they also took a pretty good look at the mobile industry and seem set to reinvent some of that too. By making it possible for any developer to create applications (because they are web baed), they are offering a level playing field. It’s like a breath of fresh air.

Roomware is about a bunch of developers getting together to build an open source server that enables other independent developers to quickly build mobile apps. “Software running in a defined physical space” - using SMS, and also RFID, and potentially using other connectivity.

Micro Marketing

Keith Pardy, Sr.Vice President, Strategic Marketing, Nokia says  in an interview to McKinsey’s Trond Riiber Kundsen says:

• "Our experience is that consumers hate confusion, and maintaining relationships is much more important than flashy, big-burst marketing."
• "It’s not about pushing out messages any more. You have to initiate interesting conversations and build meaningful relationships with consumers."
• “First we observe, then we design.” We have teams of anthropologists, ethnographers, psychologists, and consumer insight experts observing and understanding people’s behaviour.

The Wired 40 - Most innovative companies in the world

Wired has released the annual list of most innovative companies in the world.  Apart from the Googles, Apples and the like, to me the list has some interesting trends of how customer-focussed innovation is going to be key for survival and growth of companies around the world.

Here are key innovation trends that I picked-up which are going to have significant impact on our society and culture:

• Innovation Trend #1 : Green Energy
• Innovation Trend #2 : Medical Services
• Innovation Trend #3 : Gaming
• Innovation Trend #4 : Information transformation
• Innovation Trend #5 : On-demand lifestyle infrastructure & entertainment

Take a look at some of the companies in this list:

Medtronic has moved up one place in the list. What do they do? They make chest implants that transmits vital signs to the Web for your cardiologist to view. Clearly to me, it is the starting of converting pharma/medical products into a customer services business.

Sunpower is in the business of "green energy". Again an extremely customer-focussed utilities business where they are using solar energy for residential and commercial applications. They have moved-up 4 places in the rankings.

Level 3 - If internet video and  web 2.0 are reshaping our lives, bandwidth and data pipes are key catalysts to this change. Level 3 boasts of 50,000 miles of net backbone. Companies that carry and convert this data into information in real time will be in demand. Level 3 is new to this list!

Exelon is driving innovation around alternative energy generation. Energy crisis is going to be a key global problem and Exelon is aiming to build the first new US reactor in a generation. Companies that can innovative in the area of alternative energy will be the winners of tomorrow. They have moved-up from rank 33 to 17!

Nvidia and Nintendo  are in this list too. Gaming and gaming related business seem to be a key innovation trend that is catching-on. As more and more consumers get addicted or introduced to gaming or as gaming becomes an integral part of our lives, more and more brands need to understand how to leverage this new G-culture. In fact, Nvidia moves-up 11 places and Nintendo is new to this list!

Salesforce.com moves-up 8 places. Clearly, it seems SAAS(Software As A Service model) is here to stay. It's no more just about building great software products but the business model of making it available to millions over the web on an access fee basis is going to be key.

Comcast, NTT Do Co Mo, Verizon are players who are changing the landscape of entertainment and mobile communications. They are driving on-demand internet based entertainment and building new digital lifestyle infrastructure. 

   

Leveraging Mobile Marketing @ Mobile Monday, Mumbai

I spoke at Mobile Monday in Mumbai yesterday and shared my thoughts on how brands could leverage the power of mobile marketing. With over 2 billion mobile phones worldwide and 200 million mobile subscribers in India( and growing!), mobile as a marketing medium is reaching a tipping point. Marketers, publishers, aggregators, application providers, mobile operators and agencies have to unlearn a lot of old marketing principles and adopt new marketing rules for mobile marketing to gain widespread acceptance.

Why mobile advertising is different?

I have in the recent past seen a host of advertisers and mobile shortcode operators treat this medium the same way as many other mediums. Most of them are "text and response" campaigns. But, I certainly believe mobile offers greater opportunities and what is needed is a bit of imagination and forgetting what one has learnt from other media. Paul Golding makes an interesting point about this:

"...the ability to reach consumers at any time and in any place, with the added potential to know the user’s context (e.g. location) is potentially valuable to content and service providers. If they know how to monetise the “mobile attention” of the user, then let them pay to do so.The challenge is trying to normalize and define the economics of engagement.

The problem here is that the mobile world is not like the Internet. There are multiple ways of engaging with the users. Whereas those from the Internet world (e.g. Mads Moller from Google) were talking about banners and text ads, those from the messaging world, like Arie Baak from LogicaCMG, were talking about “in-service” ads like messages appended to top-up and voicemail alerts etc.

Understanding the context of the user was discussed a lot. Operators know a good deal about their customers. There’s a lot of information buried away in call records, texting profiles and other sources of context. Add location to this and the potential exists to track the intent of users in a powerfully unique way. Indeed, operators have access to a resource that is so powerful that it scares the likes of Google and other ad-brokers. An operator can track everything the user does (i.e. every site visited, every number called) whereas Google can only track your search habits. Even the most sophisticated web-tracking agencies can’t track every site visited (i.e. using cookies).

No doubt there is potential to exploit and monetize the rich assets available to operators. However, the question is how.

120 million personal TVs in India

Imagine a day when 120 million Indians( and expected to reach 400 million in 2010) can have their own personal TVs on their mobile. The day does not seem to be far off.

Modeo has launched a beta of their version of mobile TV in the US. Services like Modeo can be soon expected to be launched in India.

Modeo is a digital television broadcast live to the one device you're never without—your mobile phone. Modeo is transparently high-tech, making mobile TV as familiar as the coffee table clicker. Modeo's content is provided by most distinguished entertainment brands in the business, airing today's hits and TV classics. One can watch top-rated sitcoms, dramas, news and sports. Also one can tune-in to music and talk radio. You could also download video podcasts, bite-sized episodes of your favorite shows and exclusive made-for-mobile content.

No wonder, London School of Economics has written that the future of TV is personal.

MobileTV has the potential to unleash a new revolution in the country. The telecom revolution has created a new wave of growth in India and if TV goes mobile, it can just mutiply the benefits of telecom revolution.

New marketing opportunities will surface:

• 5-sec TV Spots
• Interactive programming - Voting, Personalized programs, Channesl etc.
• User generated content
• May be one can start trading entertainment time with air time!
• M-wallets
• Product purchase requests from mobile etc.

It can also create new development opportunities like:

• e-learning can just become easy to implement
• The rural-urban information divide can be bridged very quickly

I can't wait to see TV go personal!

Chennai will be the first WiMax city in India

So after much speculation about which city would be WiMax’ed first - Pune or Bangalore, it seems Chennai has stolen the show: Aircel launched WiMAX and aims to make Chennai wire-free and provide coverage across the commercial areas of Chennai. They’ve used “802.16d standards at a speed range of 2 to 10 Mbps”. There are already ‘hotspots’ in other cities and Aircel plans to expand WiMax to 26 other cities, with complete coverage being achieved bit by bit. Payment systems will be enabled around hotspots via prepaid cards. No word on how much it’ll cost… Read more

thro' contentsutra

One number for a better life

How many phones do you have today? An office phone, your mobile phone, your home phone  plus a phone or two more for different reasons, I guess and when you multiply this with all the friends and contacts you have in your phone book, life looks really complicated when you want to contact somebody. But, it won't be a problem anymore.

GrandCentral is a brilliant new web app that lets you consolidate all of your phone numbers into one number, meaning someone can call you on your GrandCentral phone number and all of your phones (cell phone, work phone, home phone) will ring. And then it gets interesting.

If you don't want every one of your phones ringing each time someone calls your free GrandCentral number, you can set rules by friends, family, work, and others, defining where the calls should be directed. When a user leaves a message, you can listen to it online or directly on your phone. The remaining set of features on GrandCentral are a little mind-blowing, in that "I'd never thought of that, but how am I now living without it?" sort of way.

Here’s a list of some of the features:

• Incoming phone calls ring on different phones according to which group you’ve placed a caller’s phone number in.
• You can play different voice mail greetings for friends, family and work calls.
• Voice mail is stored indefinitely.
• Voice mail can be listened to and replied to with just a few clicks.
• Voice mail messages can be listened to in real time and you can jump in to initiate a conversation in real time with one click.
• Telemarketers or others can be banished to the spam folder so if you’re called by the same number again your phone will simply not ring.
• You can click to have GrandCentral call both the person who left a message and your phone.
• You can record a section of any call with one button on the keypad of your phone.
• You can seamlessly switch from one of your phones to another.

thro' Techcruch

What's the right mobile tariff? Indian customers have a buddy!

India is a hot bed for mobile services. It is one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. Last month, 5.9 million customers got added according to TRAI.

Keeping with this trend, US based Trilogy has launched a new service yourbillbuddy.com. It helps Indian mobile customers select the 'best-fit' tariff plans.  Some of the benefits include:

• Recommendations
• Helping optimize usage
• Get more savings

Here's my take:

It is a nice idea but the real growth in this category is coming from the pre-paid market which is a low unit-value of talk time. These consumers don't have access to the net and hence I guess this service will only have niche usage amongst high ARPU customers.

I guess what Trilogy is attempting to do is to capture some customer information/profile and use it for churn & cross-sell programs or business services that they will be providing in the Indian market.

Would be interesting to keep a track of this service!

The Hug Shirt - Differentiated Customer experience thro' Mobiles

The Hug Shirt (F+R Hugs) is a shirt that allows people to exchange the physical sensation of a hug over distance. Embedded in the shirt there are sensors that feel the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender and actuators that recreate the sensation of touch, warmth and emotion of the hug to the shirt of the distant loved one.The system is very simple: a Hug Shirt (Bluetooth with sensors and actuators), a Bluetooth java enabled mobile phone with the Hug Me java software running (that understands what the sensors are communicating), and on the other side another phone and another shirt.

When touching the sensors on your shirt your mobile receives the data (hug pressure, skin temperature, heartbeat rate, time you are hugging for, and the name of the person you want to hug) and delivers it to the other person. If the other person or the sender doesn’t have the shirt she can just send an SMS text message, and it will be transformed into a hug! If you don’t need a hug you can switch it off.

The shifting of product mix - part 2

Yesterday, I had written a post on how technology disrupts consumers' use of an existing product or service. And how it often leads to changes in the product mix of companies.

I wanted to discuss on how telecom companies' mix of their revenues would change with VOIP becaming a reality in the near future. For decades they are used to earning revenues from voice services. Imagine if voice services become free! Then, there will be whole set of new services that will drive their revenues, I presume. Monthly charges on internet thro' the same pipe, value-added services like ring tones, wallpapers etc., entertainment content - music downloads, movie downloads, games, education content on a pay-per use basis, SMS...and may be many more.

It will be whole new world out there for telecom companies. It will be no more  only about ARPU( as in voice only- Average Revenue Per user), it could ABPU( Average bytes per user!) or  ADPU ( Average Downloads per user!) or ASUPU( Average services used per user) or it could be a new metric altogether.

What do you think it will be? Let's discuss.

A telescope for your Nokia phone

In an era of disruptive innovation, this one is a stunner!

The handset accessories firm, Brando has developed a "telescope" for some Nokia handsets, which the company says offers a 6x zoom facility for the camera phone. The design does need the back of the handset to be replaced - to provide a securing mechanism for the telescope - so is currently only available for the Nokia 6230, 6230i and the 6680 handsets.

Thro' cellularnews

Now, get ready to go mobile when you fly

Europe aims to be the launch pad for the world's first aircraft offering commercial mobile phone service when an Airbus A318 operated by Air France takes off in March.

The aircraft will offer onboard mobile phone service on short-haul flights within Europe and to and from North African destinations as part of a commercial test from March to September 2007...

The aircraft will be equipped with technology provided by OnAir, a joint venture owned by Airbus and SITA, which aims to provide a range of communication services such as telephony, e-mail, and Web surfing to passengers.

Read more

Rewarding prepaid mobile users

The South African mobile telephone service provider Cell C has followed in the recent footsteps of competing operator Vodacom to launch its own loyalty programme for prepaid customers.

With the strapline, "It pays to stay on the phone with Cell C", the company is asking its prepaid mobile users to imagine spending two minutes on a call and instantly receiving a 15% reward in the form of a free SMS (worth R0.80). After each qualifying call, Cell C automatically sends the subscriber an SMS notification to tell them how many SMS credits were earned during the call. Users don't need to take any action to claim their rewards.

Read more

thro' thewisemarketer

Young men are mobile marketing friendly

Researchers at Northeastern University say that men are much more open to marketing-related programs and promotions in the mobile space than females. For example, men (in particular, younger men) are more likely to download new ringtones, music and games than females, according to a initial results of a survey of two regions - an established market (the United States) and an emerging one (Pakistan) - designed to provide insight into consumer attitudes and responses to mobile marketing efforts. There are also significant differences in how younger and older individuals use their phones.

Younger users, for example, are more like to download songs for fun, whereas older ones use their phone to access news content. Younger consumers are therefore more vulnerable to personal privacy abuse, as they exhibit a greater propensity to give permission to marketers to engage them in the mobile space.

Read more

Music retailing on the mobile

Airtel announced the launch of Airtel Easy Music across India.

This service is available for all prepaid and postpaid Airtel mobile subscribers from over one lakh plus Airtel retail outlets. This makes Airtel the largest retailer for music not only within the country but also in the world.

How does one use Airtel Easy Music? It's as simple as this:

• Choose your favourite song from the music catalogue available with the retailer.
• Tell the retailer your choice.
• Retailer will just press a few keys on his phone and download a song (Hello Tunes or Ringtone) to your mobile phone.  In the case of Hello Tunes you will be required to
  dial 674 (tollfree) to confirm acceptance of the song.
• You will also get an SMS confirming the successful download of your song.
• Finally you can pay the retailer for the song and walk out...as simple as that.

So, Just walk in and Walk out with your favourite song.

thro' thehindu

Loyalty programs thro' mobiles - Chicago Grocer shows the way

The Chicago-based upscale grocery chain Potash Bros. Markets has become the first MobileLime merchant in Chicago to offer its customers savings and rewards through their mobile phones.

The deployment of the MobileLime system at Potash Bros. apparently marks the beginning of MobileLime's national expansion as it moves beyond its existing merchant base in Boston, MA.

How it works

Rather than issuing a typical membership card or number, MobileLime turns a shopper's mobile phone number into their unique identifier for the loyalty rewards programme. The cashier simply enters the member's mobile phone number at the check out, and the shopper receives any appropriate item-level savings toward their purchases in real-time.

In the Potash Bros. Mobile Rewards programme, members can opt-in to receive weekly e-mails, interest-oriented text messages, event alerts, special offers and savings on a selection of items every week.

Know more

How mobile VoIP will change cellphone usage

At last week's 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, several big names in the communications sector, including Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles), Nokia (Profile, Products, Articles), and Skype Technologies (Profile, Products, Articles), announced mobile phone-based VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) products and services that could radically change how cellular customers use their handsets in the future.

European 3G (third-generation) operator Hutchison 3 Group (Hutchison 3G), a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, announced a partnership to provide what could become the world's first commercial VoIP service for mobile phones.

"We don't view VoIP as something that will cannibalize our voice business; users will have to pay a fee for access," said Christian Salbaing, managing director of European Telecommunications at Hutchison 3G. "We view VoIP as a way to create greater customer choice and expect the service to increase their usage."

thro' infoworld

Mobile Coupons - Now, forget your paper coupons

It's simple. Easy. And convenient - Mobile Coupons will be the way the world will go.Imagine with over 2 billion mobile phones across the world, it will be easy to download and use it in any supermarket.

Cellfire is a service dedicated to enabling people to save money at their favorite stores and restaurants, using their mobile phones. Everyone loves a deal but no one loves to carry paper coupons. Cellfire is free, easy to use, and has amazing deals from great stores and restaurants.

Know more here.

Microsoft's free internet voice service challenges Vodafone

Tony Glover writes:

MICROSOFT has developed a Skype-style free internet voice service for mobile phones that City analysts believe could wipe billions off the market value of operators such as Vodafone.

The service is included in a mobile version of Microsoft Office Communicator due to be released this year. It will take the form of a voice-over internet protocol (VoIP) application that allows Office users to make free voice calls over wi-fi enabled phones running Windows Mobile software. It uses the internet as a virtual phone network as well as accessing e-mail, PowerPoint and other Office applications.

Read more

thro' tech.memeorandum

Got a mobile, you've got the money to pay!

Paying bills on time, transferring money to a friend in the same or different country, or making a purchase at a retail store just got easier with Motorola’s (NYSE: MOT) M-Wallet Solution, announced today. Motorola’s M-Wallet features an easy-to-use mobile interface that gives the consumer quick access to the financial world virtually anywhere, anytime, in a secure and convenient way—eliminating the need to carry a credit or debit card in your wallet.

For example, merchants can issue virtual loyalty or gift cards directly to their customer’s mobile phone. These cards can be redeemed via a mobile phone or can allow customers to conduct secure point-of-sale transactions, collect loyalty point, and obtain store receipts at existing retail merchant locations. M-Wallet users must opt-in to receive coupons or other promotional services, allowing them to choose preferred merchants who participate in the program and thereby reducing spam.

Read more

thro' mopocket

Customer Conversations - Reading into trends

I think customer conversations  or chatter or buzz will increasingly have a great impact on brand preference, brand awareness and marketshare. I did a trend analysis of some Indian brands in different categories - Retail, Telecom, Technology, Banks etc. You can do it here for the following brands.

Interestingly, the customer chatter for some of these brands  - Shoppers' Stop, Pantaloon, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Tata Indicom, Reliance Infocomm, Wipro, Infosys  and they show a direct correlation to how these brands have innovated or performed in the marketplace. Increasingly brands need to pay attention to customer conversations and ensure they are "top-of-chat" in addition to being "top-of-mind".  This will in the future reflect customer involvement, customer engagement and customer ownership trends for many of these brands.

I did the same for Google & Microsoft, Apple & Dell and the results do reflect the success of Google and Apple in the recent past!

When you really need a response from IVR systems!

Paul English has some interesting tips  for customers to cheat IVR systems of companies and get to a human on the other side! He along with some volunteers have developed a cheat sheet to bypass phones systems.

Welcome to gethuman.com! This free website is powered by over one million consumers who demand high quality customer service from companies they use.

He also recommends the following tips to get to a human:

1. Interrupt. Press 0 (or 0# or #0 or 0* or *0) repeatedly, sometimes quickly. Unfortunately the same keystroke does not always work for each company. Many IVRs will connect to a human after a few "invalid entries", although some IVRs will hangup. :-(
2. Talk. Say "get human" (or "agent" or "representative") or raise your voice. The IVR might connect you to a human after one of these key or unknown phrases.

3. Just hold, pretending you have only an old rotary phone.

4. Connect to account collections or sales or account cancellation; they always seem to answer quickly. First ask them for their name and rep number (so they know you are writing it down, and thus so they are more likely to help you.) Then ask them to transfer you to the department you need. Sometimes they will put you ahead of the queue, although sometimes they will send you to the end (and thus in those cases this tip is useless).

5. Selecting the option for Spanish will sometimes get you a bilingual human more quickly than if you just waited for an English-only operator.

When you do finally find a human, ask them how to connect directly the next time (in case your call gets disconnnected etc), and be sure to tell us so we can then list their number here. :-).

Click to know the best companies for customer service.

Just the  kind of thing customers need  so as to speed-up the time to get customer service issues resolved  rather than leave it to automated response systems!

India fast becoming a wireless country

TRAI(Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) reports:

• Total number of mobile users in the country as of January 2006 is 80.61 million
• Gross telecom user base is around 130 million, so teledensity nears 12 per cent
• Over a 4.7 million customers went mobile in Jan 06!

Download indiamobilejan06.pdf

thro' contentsutra

Japan Rail Launches Mobile Wallet Phone Service

Japan Rail launched their long-awaited Mobile Suica service, which will allow customers to use their FeliCa-enabled Osaifu ketai (wallet phone) to get into the station simply by swiping their handset past the turnstile reader. The service will be available at almost 900 stations located in the Tokyo, Sendai, Niigata, and Kansai regions.

Until now, it has in fact not been possible to use your phone as a train ticket in Japan. As the well-established 'Suica' card is also accepted at many shops (including Bic Camera, a major electronics chain) in and around JR stations, this move will undoubtedly push up the volume of mobile payments made in 2006.

thro' mobile weblog

Your mobile phone gets ready for targeted ads!

Marketing Vox reports:

Third screen media announced the launch of the world's first advertising management solution  for mobile content providers.The new platform, designed to streamline ad management and delivery on mobile networks, has been selected by publishers such as The WeatherChannel, USA Today and MSN to manage advertising inventory in their mobile content.

According to eMarketer, the amount spent on mobile advertising and marketing in the United States will reach $760.4 million by 2009. Advertiser demand for mobile marketing has developed so quickly that publishers need a solution for creating and managing ad inventory across mobile content.

The solution allows for ad targeting by frequency, location, day-part, keyword, device, browser and carrier.

Now, personalized radio channel on your mobile

Vodafone and Sony have teamed up to provide music service on mobiles.

Marketing Vox reports Vodafone Group Plc is to launch a new music service that will allow customers to access music in tune with their tastes using cell-phones, as the mobile giant looks to grow revenues from areas other than phone calls.

Vodafone said a key feature of the new service was its personalization system, which would allow customers to customise radio channels to their personal tastes by pressing a button to indicate ``like'' or ``dislike'' while listening to a song.

If a customer presses dislike, the music skips to the next song, and Sony's classification will ensure that subsequent radio channels would avoid songs similar to those rejected. Vodafone, which plans to launch the service in six European countries in the coming months, said it would charge customers a monthly subscription for unlimited listening to music on both mobile phone and computer.

I think this is a brilliant idea and such a differentiated customer experience will drive "stickiness" for the Vodafone brand. Increasingly, content and the way it is going to be used will differentiate brands and customer experience.

Only square inch of space but build a different customer experience

Ad Week has this interesting article on how many brands are striving to create a different experience on the mobile. The challenges are very different from the traditional 30 sec spots, as brands need customers to "seek out" their messages rather than "pump-in" the message as they are used to in other mediums.

The screen is small. The audience's attention span is even shorter. And the environment—as likely a quiet park bench as a rumbling subway car—is variable. Mobile marketing is riding a high tide of hype and promise, thanks in part to media darling Apple's video iPod, and big-ticket advertisers like Burger King, Unilever and Samsung are looking for ways to hitch a ride in consumers' pockets.

To do so, advertisers and agencies are being forced to abandon the "we interrupt this program" delivery method used since Old Gold brought you a dancing cigarette pack, and create content that mobile users will not just sit through, but seek out. Creating for a small screen also comes with a new set of visual concerns. It has to be more graphical, less detailed...

And, just like with TV spots, time is a factor. For a mobile audience, the appropriate length of a bumper is still open for debate. Text messaging, however, doesn't provide much in the way of traditional brand messaging—a point that some clients stumble over. This is a very simple media and it can't convey emotion easily, and for some brand marketers, it doesn't grab an audience as much as they'd like it to...

Read more

Look for disjointed observations to understand customers and technology usage

Fast Company has a very insightful article on customer-driven research & development at AT&T Customer Expectations  Research Lab. A group of 40 PHDs are in search of fundamental truths about ways in which people adapt to new technologies. Physicist Greg Blonder has this to say about new technologies and how customers react to it when they were introduced:

• When the typewriter was first introduced, most people recoiled at the idea of communicating in a medium that seemed to offer no insight into the writer's style or personality!
• When the answering machine came along, people dismissed it as cold and impolite.

Social context is only one of the tests Blonder, Muller, and Isenberg apply to help determine whether and how quickly people will adapt to new technologies. "Observability" and "tryability" are two other factors. One reason new models of athletic shoes catch on quickly, Blonder says, is that everyone can see them on the street. In contrast, things like computer memories are difficult to market because people tend to use them in private.

While Blonder looks at history, Muller is applying anthropology. She's sent pairs of researchers to dozens of sites -- including a bank in San Paulo, a charter school in Minneapolis, an engineering firm in San Francisco -- to see how the Net is changing the way people work.

From these disjointed observations, Muller and her team hope to match the changing nature of work with new products designed to support it.

Read more

Mobile Marketing Vs Traditional Marketing

How does mobile marketing differ from traditional marketing?

FAREENA SULTAN: The personal nature of the [handheld] device makes it one in which the user is very attached -- and at times emotionally attached -- to the device. It's an extension of their personality and of their being, which is particularly true of the youth market.... So when a marketer is trying to approach a consumer through this very personal device, they have to be extra careful not to overstep the boundaries. A consumer has asked to be sent information or content or entertainment, so anytime this user receives information that they do not want -- it's bad enough when you are looking at email and getting spam -- it's even worse because it is such a personal device and there's so much [emotional] attachment to it.

WSJ.COM: So how are advertisers and marketers approaching this situation?

DR. SULTAN: A marketer might think, "Here's a device, it's in the hand of my target audience 24-7, and most people are not a foot away from this device 24 hours a day," so I can reach this person at various locations.... A person is in a mall and you send them a solicitation for a coupon for a sale that's going on nearby. So your ability to reach people is immense and perpetual. But at the same time, you only want to reach the people who want to be reached. If you cross that boundary, the reaction is much worse.

thro' emergic

When mobile will overtake TV!

New Media Age reports Coca-Cola UK is planning to invest more and more money in mobile advertising. Coke claims mobile phones are potentially more powerful than TV in reaching its target audience. Quoted in the article, Coca-Cola marketing manager James Eadie explains: Mobile marketing could be phenomenally important, when you look at the penetration of handsets and the passion the audience has for mobile. As a way of connection, it ought to be phenomenally powerful and more important than TV. So we should be spending 50% of our marketing budget within decades. Of course, Eadie also recognizes there are still several obstacles preventing mobile marketing to go mainstream. For example, the differences among carriers in shortcodes application and the unavailability of freephone text.

thro' adverblog

Welcome to one more interruption marketing method!

Marketing VoX in a post mentioned that the mobile marketing association has issued the guidelines for mobile banners.

The MMA recommendations (PDF) refer to graphical banners (and 80 x 15 pixel black and white bitmap graphic), text "banners" (a two-line text ad, 12-16 characters per line) and a combination unit (16-color image/text banner), among others.

The article mentions marketers, service providers are ready to go and make money. I was thinking about me, the poor consumer - Mspams will soon become a problem. I don't want to see tower banners, roadblocks hitting my mobile screens. Soon, we will have stats on clickthro' rates of mobile banners! I see a lot of articles on effective mobile targeting - Best Practices coming my way! White papers from the likes of Enpocket to let me know how I can make the best use of the medium. Not to forget seminars that will be conducted across the country! Research on how consumers consume mobile media! It sounds too similar and I have a 'seen this before' feeling in my stomach.

Can't we find a better way to use the medium? Interruption marketing in TV was at least acceptable as I was sitting in front of the TV only for a couple of hours( Even that is slowly dying it's natural death). Also, I was'nt in front of the PC accessing the net 24 hrs. But, if am walking with my mobile phone 24x 7,  I don't want ads 24x7. 

I am not against mobile marketing but I think we are applying the same principles and not finding new ways to interact with consumers. It's still in the realm of push marketing. 

I think the mobile medium has exciting possibilities to create unbelievable customer -brand experiences.  But, it cannot be old wine in a new bottle!