Cross-industry collaboration must be interpreted in a dramatically different way today. That’s because the most noteworthy competitors in any industry today have among them several non-traditional players. These include upstarts who have started with simple, logical, online models and are now slowly expanding to gobble up adjacent sectors – Amazon, Airbnb, Alibaba, Uber, PayPal, WeChat to name a few. And then […]
An interesting study by Retail Leader(1) points out that consumers are buying more fresh grocery. The top reasons are more locations and choices. For the market overall, and for our health too, this is great! That got me thinking. More often than not (overwhelmingly), our offers and promotions are refused! So in an era of more choice, as a retailer, how […]
What are connected customer experiences? These are customer journeys that run across company boundaries, and are not limited to the traditional way of creating interactions with our own company’s channels. The focus needs to be on customers’ broader aspirations – what “they” want, and what they are NOT getting. So these experiences are developed with an outside-in approach. Here are 5 simple but amazing examples […]
It was a privilege to speak at the BAI Beacon conference in Orlando a few weeks ago. The topic of the day was digital (of course) and what banks should be doing to improve customer experience and make operations more efficient. My session was on “creating connected customer journeys of the future” – based on my book Connected! I felt that even as we […]
The coalition loyalty rewards program Plenti has wrapped up operations as of July 2018. Plenti was a cross-industry loyalty network where customers could earn points and spend at multiple places. Partners included American Express (creator), Macy’s, Netflix, Hulu, Exxon, RiteAid, Chilli’s, Enterprise, Winn Dixie and others. Why did such an exciting proposition fail? Was Plenti a bad idea or were the issues more tactical? […]
Omni Channel customer engagement has been a hot topic for the past several years. But despite all the buzz the real status of Omni Channel has been lagging at best. The question to ask is: Are organizations themselves integrated enough to be capable of initiating and delivering Omni Channel customer engagement initiatives? Instead of looking at third party reports and statistics, […]
There’s a lot of ongoing debate regarding future of payments which includes a discussion on credit cards, wallets, loyalty, banking, among other related topics. Meanwhile, we need to ask if the current financial services players have really made progress preparing themselves for the future of payments (or banking for that matter). I believe we still need to work on “setting the right […]
The artificial intelligence strategy buzz is everywhere. But now we need to move beyond rule based personalization and predictive analytics based recommendations. That kind of AI has been going on for 20 years if not more. Calling every analytics based project AI using a lot of jargon is definitely fashionable. But it also adversely affects the maturity of your artificial intelligence […]
It’s human nature. We try to protect what we have even though we know that change is coming. In this post I’ll bring out some real drivers of customer engagement, and provide some tactics to get ahead. There has been lots of buzz that the store can never die (Amazon is also getting into physical now), and how customer experience […]
For many years now we’ve been witnessing the phenomenal rise of Amazon.com. Retailers and manufacturers of all kinds have been scurrying to get their digital act together. The media has been rife with questions about traditional business models of stores and distributor channels. And now finally, Amazon has opened physical stores in key categories – grocery and books to name a few. The […]
In today’s fast paced, connected world, it has become crucial to engage with our customers, not just find ways to advertise to them. Customer engagement is actually a strong branding vehicle because it helps us align with the causes our customers love. And it can drive more profitable growth because it realigns our business with its higher purpose. The UNICEF Kid […]
There’s so much is happening in the financial services world that its enough to make your head spin. At the same time, if you take a look at the news today, you can see who’s getting it and moving forward, and who’s content with playing the same old game risking their very survival. Here’s my Fintech Innovation Watch. With a […]
Here is a list of references I used while writing Connected! Very helpful and informative sources. I encourage you to take a look. The HorizonbFit program – https://members.horizonbfit.com/horizonbfitmobile#. The program is powered by Advanta Health Solutions. Alfa-Bank, with its save more when you move program. http://activity.alfabank.ru/Activity/ Plenti, the multi-retailer and cross industry loyalty program by American Express. https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/card/plenti/ COLLOQUY: An […]
In Connected!, one of the 5 strategies I outlined towards being a connected company was about creating 3-tier loyalty models. It means that we start thinking about extending our loyalty programs. Every industry can do it – banking, retail, CPG, travel etc. All we need to do is to think of what our customers want beyond the products we are selling. […]
Excited to announce from Barcelona, Spain, that my second book “Connected! How #platforms of today will become apps of tomorrow” is now live as a Kindle eBook! The paperback & hard cover versions will out through the distributors soon. I’ll also make the eBook available on Barnes & Noble & Apple in the next few weeks. For a limited time, get it […]