Customer Experience Management In Europe
<This post was orginally published in Customer Experience Matters>
In preparation for my speeches in London and Stockholm, I examined the responses from our Q4 2009 customer experience survey of executives which was the basis for my research on North American companies called The State Of Customer Experience, 2010.
It turned out that there were 53 responses from Western European firms with annual income of at least $150 million. While this was not a large enough sample size for me to publish in a research report, it was certainly interesting enough for me to present during my speeches. So I thought I’d share some of the data here.
First of all, there’s definitely a lot of interest in customer experience in Europe. Forty-seven of the respondents said that customer experience was either critical or very important to their firm’s 2010 strategy and, as you can see below, three-quarters of the respondents said that there company is trying to differentiate itself with customer experience.
Only 6% of the respondents said that they had a very disciplined approach to customer experience management. Here’s what they identified as major obstacles for improving customer experience:
Take Stock In Customer Experience Leaders
<This post was orginally published in Customer Experience Matters>
Jon Picoult, the Founder of Watermark Consulting, just published a blog post called Yes, Virginia, There Is A Return On Customer Experience Investments. He looked at the stock performance of companies based on how well they did in Forrester’s Customer Experience Index (CxPi).
It’s great work! Here’s a graphic from his post that shows how customer experience leaders outperform customer experience laggards in the stock market. His analysis used the results from our 2007 CxPi.
Adapting to Cloud: The Channel Models They Are a-Changin’
NetSuite, a leading SaaS ERP/CRM provider, recently announced that it is revamping its channel partner comp model: 100% on Y1 subscription revenue, and 10% thereafter. VARs have been remiss in taking up the SaaS torch, largely because most SaaS vendors haven’t provided a financial model conducive to VARs’ cash flow requirements. Per the on-premise license model, channel partners make a big portion of their nut on initial product margin, i.e., up front. But vendor SaaS economics minimize up-front remuneration and spread revenue out over a long period of time. Though it sacrifices year-one revenue, NetSuite’s 100/10 model more closely mirrors VARs’ accounting practices.
NetSuite’s model will be the first of many SaaS channel model “experiments” that will ultimately be a shot in the arm for the SMB market in particular. Contrary to popular belief, SMBs have been slow on the uptake of SaaS (application hosting outpaces SaaS adoption by SMBs by a factor of 3-4x) …
… due to the fact that VARs, in ownership of the customer trust asset, haven’t been pushing SaaS. But the financial barriers to channel partners’ SaaS advocacy are being broken down.
Now that the path for VARs to play in the cloud is being forged, and their play along with software vendors, aggregators, and ISPs being validated, distributors and DMRs, long wedded to on-premise license models, are going to have to figure out their place in the new cloud channel order.
What do you think? Is this one of many experiments? What is the role for distributors and DMRs in cloud computing?
The Secret Of Successful Social Communities: 4 Social Needs
Ever since I first started working with online social communities I've been thinking about just what it is that makes some communities successful while others fizzle and die. In particular I'm curious why collaboration communities seem to be so hard to make work.
Of course we have plenty of research into the strategies and tactics involved in setting up and running a successful social community, and we continue to publish new research and insights each month. But what do we know about the real reasons why individuals take the time to participate in these communities? What motivates them? And if we can understand what motivates them, is there a connection to figuring out why some communities are more successful than others?
While doing recent research on social computing initiatives I got to thinking on this problem again. Recently I made the connection to Abraham Maslow's work on the hierarchy of needs:
Maslow suggested all people are motivated by a desire to fulfill basic human needs in an ascending hierarchy. He also suggested that unless the lower-order needs are fulfilled, the higher-order needs are not motivators of behavior.
The primary needs Maslow identified fall into five groups:
My Next Chapter In B2B Marketing
Almost four years ago, I began a new journey at Forrester Research when I agreed to take on the B2B marketing research coverage and practice. The first significant research that I conducted and wrote, “B2B Marketing Needs A Makeover – Now,” looked at the challenges B2B marketers face and how they address these issues through marketing programs and technology investment. Little did I know that “Makeover” would become the seminal piece of research in a series that extends across those four years and culminates in an upcoming report next week.
Today, it is with a mix of pride, nostalgia, excitement, and deep appreciation that I announce the next step in that B2B marketing journey, which started in 2006 here at Forrester, but extends back more than a decade earlier through various high-technology marketing positions I held prior to becoming an analyst.
At the end of March, I will leave Forrester to become the Vice President of Industry Marketing for Xerox Global Services, North America.
Very simply, I have been helping many clients face down their marketing challenges, adopt new approaches, and improve the reputation and standing of marketing at their firms for some time. While personally rewarding in so many ways, I longed to return to my roots where I could do more practicing and less preaching. Xerox offers me this opportunity.
