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Customers.com Strategies

• Lumosity Harnesses 45 Million Brains

  A Customer Ecosystem Focused on Improving Our Brains’ Performance

  by Patricia Seybold

  Lumos Labs’ Lumosity is more than a set of brain-training games. It’s an ecosystem aligned around one customer-centric goal: helping people improve their brains’ performance.
  Sep. 6, 2013

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• Good Service, but Missed Opportunity for Greatness

  A Recommendation for Peapod Grocery Delivery Service

  by Ronni Marshak

  Peapod grocery delivery service does a fine job of customer service, but a recent experience revealed a barrier between what they know about a customer and the customer service department.
  Aug. 30, 2013

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• Owning the Customer’s Total Experience

  A Success Story for a Company that Didn’t Let a Customer Down in a Time of Need

  by Ronni Marshak

  When you fail to make sure that your customers have a great and successful experience, whether or not you are in control, you risk losing their business and hurting your brand. But ensuring your customers are successful reaps rewards!
  Aug. 15, 2013

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• Defining the Customer-Centric Organization

  What Are the Attributes and Behaviors that Define True Customer-Centricity?

  by Ronni Marshak

  Is yours a truly customer-centric organization? See how well you stack up to the attributes and behaviors that characterize an organization that holds customers at the core.
  Jul. 25, 2013

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• Improving Wretched Customer Service

  Beyond Giving CSRs Authority—Giving Them the Ammunition to Provide Great Service

  by Ronni Marshak

  What makes well-intentioned customer service so bad? Martha Brooke of Interaction Metrics offers four common mistakes, and we look at how to empower CSRs to avoid these mistakes.
  Jul. 3, 2013

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• DuckDuckGo Respects Our Privacy

  Fast, Simple Search with an Open Customer-Friendly Ecosystem

  by Patricia Seybold

  People who are concerned about online privacy are switching to search engine DuckDuckGo. Users are pleasantly surprised by, and engaged in, its rapid evolution.
  Jun. 28, 2013

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• Customizing Greeting Cards Online

  How Well Did American Greetings and Hallmark Meet My Customer Scenario?

  by Ronni Marshak

  Going through a card-buying scenario identified some important lessons for all businesses about keeping promises and providing a seamless experience throughout your customer ecosystem.
  Jun. 20, 2013

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• Customer Co-Design for Elder Independence

  Approach for Elders to Age in Their Homes

  by Patricia Seybold

  Dr. Allan Teel's new book  tells the remarkable story of an innovative “virtual assisted-living” program that was co-designed with 40 elders in Maine and is now rolling out across the country. 
  Jun. 13, 2013

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• Supporting the Demand (Customer) Chain

  Start with the End-Customers, but Make Sure You’re Making It Easy for Every Stakeholder Between You and Them

  by Ronni Marshak

  In order to delight your end-customer, you have to understand the needs and scenarios of every participant in your demand chain (or, as we like to think of it, the customer chain).
  Jun. 6, 2013

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• How to Address “Wicked Problems”

  Use Dialogue Mapping to Build a Shared Understanding and Evolve a Group’s Thinking

  by Patricia Seybold

  Jeff Conklin’s book, Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems, is a “must read” for people in groups grappling with intractable issues and/or for people who are designing products or solutions. Here’s why.
  May. 23, 2013

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• Exploring the Five Customer-Centric Habits

  Necessary Qualities for Executives and Organizations

  by Ronni Marshak

  What are the habits that successful customer-centric executives share? Rob Thompson of CustomerThink has identified 5, and we add our Customers.com perspective.
  May. 16, 2013

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• Collaborating with Customers

  Working Together with Customers to Achieve Their Goals

  by Ronni Marshak

  Collaboration is a method of working together to reach a goal; it isn’t the goal itself. But when you collaborate with customers to reach a goal, the results can be very powerful!
  Apr. 4, 2013

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• Will Klarna Become a Major Player?

  Invoicing for Consumers Who Want to Pay After Receipt of Goods

  by Patricia Seybold

  Klarna is a deferred payment solution that lets online shoppers buy now and pay within 14 days. Klarna boosts conversion rates by removing consumers’ fear of online transactions. And Klarna removes the risk of fraud for online merchants.
  Mar. 14, 2013

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• What Constitutes a Customer Community?

  Hint: It Isn’t a Bunch of Facebook “Likes”

  by Ronni Marshak

  What constitutes a “true” customer community? A shared sense of purpose and ownership and a distinctive, often well-guarded culture.
  Feb. 28, 2013

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• Utility Customer Experiences: Stark Contrasts in Dealing with NStar and National Grid

  What Each Did Right and What Needs Improvement When Helping Customers in Need

  by Ronni Marshak

  Read the best (and worst) practices demonstrated by NStar and National Grid as they help customers deal with a repair.
  Jan. 31, 2013

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• Amazon Takes on Apple in Digital Music

  Combined CDs and AutoRip Make Amazon Cloud Player More Enticing

  by Patricia Seybold

  Amazon’s AutoRip feature surprised and delighted some customers and annoyed others. We like the fact that we now have digital access to MP3 files of the music we bought on CDs for free and without doing anything!
  Jan. 24, 2013

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• Amazon’s Next Moves

  It’s a Customer Ecosystem Poised to Become an Increasingly Important Part of Our Lives

  by Patricia Seybold

  Amazon isn’t “just” an online retailer; it’s a vibrant and layered customer ecosystem designed to help you get things done faster and cheaper. Amazon phones will bring added convenience. Amazon’s ads will be more relevant than Google’s or Facebook’s.
  Jan. 3, 2013

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• VOC: Using Customers’ Interviews to Inform Decision-Making

  How the Residents of a Small Community Are Shaping the Future of Healthcare

  by Patricia Seybold

  We used interviews of residents on the Boothbay peninsula to help keep cherished St. Andrews Hospital, which Maine Health wants to turn into a walk-in clinic. I interviewed 48 patients and published verbatims. The result: a stay of execution.
  Dec. 13, 2012

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• Assigning Emotions to Moments of Truth

  Enhancing Customer Scenario® Mapping by Capturing Feelings

  by Ronni Marshak

  Capturing how customers might feel depending on how well you help them achieve their goals can enhance a line of site from customer priorities through your bottom-line opportunities based on how they are feeling while doing business with you.
  Nov. 15, 2012

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• Profile of Lead Users in Systems Architecture

  What Can We Learn from Patty’s Pioneers that Will Help Us Identify Lead Users

  by Patricia Seybold

  Lead users are the people who want to design their own products and services because yours don’t fit the bill. To identify true lead users, you need to know what to look for. Use this example from info tech when you’re recruiting lead users in any domain
  Nov. 8, 2012

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