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 […]
Preparing for the connected future will have a far reaching and profound impact on our organizations. We cannot not change how we work, and how we think, and still expect to be creating magic with our customers. The framework that I detail in the book “Connected!” provides a simple and immediately actionable blueprint. It consists of defining what a connected company is, […]
Let’s start with some cool statistics to set the stage for customer engagement. The numbers are hard hitting. Online sales clearly exceeded offline sales as nicely explained here. 25% more people did not stand in early morning lines. Obviously the availability of blockbuster deals is not an issue anymore. Good in a way but kind of takes some fun and thrill […]
In a turn of events that demonstrates how rapidly the financial payments market is evolving, Visa and MasterCard have both entered into separate deals with PayPal. (ref 1 and 2 below) Image courtesy It was puzzling. Didn’t PayPal already accept both Visa and MasterCard? Yes it did, but the growth of PayPal (and now Stripe), also posed a very real risk […]
Timing is everything. Brands and businesses worldwide were quick to cash in on the Pokemon Go launch mania. Businesses jumped in with all kinds of promotions and offers as millions of people took to the streets hunting Pokemon on their mobile phones (I did too). For the most part, the promotional tactics for customer engagement by businesses can be categorized […]
One the biggest challenges facing brands today is that consumers are bombarded with promotions. It’s anybody’s guess that an average shopper has tens of products they want to monitor, as they wait for the right time to buy. Add to that the fact that shoppers also have multiple wish list items – these are items they’ve seen but are not ready […]
It’s human nature. We try to protect what we have knowing fully well that change is coming. There is advice all around us from experts who say that the store can never die and how customer experience must be enhanced instead to make it a place of enjoyment and social interaction. That’s all very true, but the fact is that if […]
JC Penney is on a slow recovery after a disastrous 17 months trying to eliminate promotions, introducing upscale merchandise, and making the stores a little fancier. Consider this quote on a blog from a couple of years ago when the JCP changes were going live. This quote was from Candice J, a shopper at JC Penney. She brought out a […]
As the holiday season of 2014 starts in full swing, we see news reports of how often retailers are changing prices on their items, how price matching with online retailers is becoming more prevalent and how the effects of show-rooming will be countered. Its obvious that while retailers – both online and physical – change prices based on their internal analytics of […]
In a press release on Sep 22, SAP announced that “The CRM experiment has failed. Today’s empowered customer requires a new model for engagement”. What SAP is referring to is its launch of multiple solutions in the digital and social arena. There is no doubt that the story is compelling. Enterprise customers everywhere are looking at ways to simplify their […]
2015 has arrived and I wish everyone a wonderful new year. Time really flies. I hope this year we can all catch a breath and enjoy the scenery as we whiz along. Resolutions are the “in-thing” at this time of the year. Here’s to grit and hope! However, statistics are not on our side. Not many personal resolutions will endure […]
At Dreamforce 2014 (Salesforce.com’s annual event), executives from Louis Vuitton showed how their founder carried a little black book where he captured his client interactions. This diary helped him engage in a personalized and meaningful dialog with customers. Fast forward to today and the talk of “Clienteling” is everywhere. It is possible now to make information available to the store associates which […]
In a research on consumer behavior, professors at Harvard found (1) that people who bring reusable bags to a store tend to spend more on organic food, and also spend a little more on indulgent items. The construct used was of “licensing” – when you do a good deed you feel good, and you permit yourself some excesses. Through a lot of effort, […]
A recent multinational study by the Cloud Security Alliance showed that financial services firms are improving adoption of the cloud. The top 3 reasons stated for cloud adoption in financial services were: Flexible infrastructure capacity (68%) Reduced cost for provisioning (63%) Reduction in TCO (57%) The top 3 wish-list items revolved around audit, compliance, forensics and encryption. The top applications that […]
How should we arrive at the best match for mobile in retail? How are customers using their mobile phones, and are we gearing up to meet their expectations? In the frenzy of the digital revolution, we’ve all probably heard about the concept of retail clienteling . The world is abuzz with meeting retail customers where they are, interacting with them on […]