M4 Comm atomic research

Atomic Research and its Importance in User Research

User research has become much more vital. Organizations now realize how valuable research is to understanding behaviors and needs of users and taking those insights and making informed decisions to drive customer value and corporate growth.  Research must be organized and managed in such a way that it can be used to its fullest potential. [...]
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How CX Teams Can Get the Most Value from Desk Research

When CX teams conduct customer and user research, they use everything in their tool kit to understand customers and this understanding informs on the decisions they make to improve customer experiences. Qualitative and quantitative research make up this understanding. There are two components to this research - desk, or secondary, research and primary research. Desk [...]
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Five Customer Experience Trends to Watch for in 2022 M4 Communications

Five Customer Experience Trends to Watch for in 2022

Welcome to M4 Communications' Five Customer Experience Trends to Watch for in 2022. As we normally do before we dive into this year's trends, we take a look at the state of Customer Experience last year. EPSON scanner image State of CX in 2021 2021 was about issues in the supply chain. The only thing [...]
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M4 Comm Empathy is Important

Why Empathy is Important and How to Build it in Your Organization

Prior to social media and digital tools, it was a challenge to understand who the customer was and what they wanted to satisfy their needs. Even with all the social and digital tools to help us get close to customers, learn from and listen to them, and engage with them, we still are behind to [...]
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five customer experience trends to watch for in 2021

Five Customer Experience Trends to Watch for in 2021

Welcome to M4 Communications' Five Customer Experience Trends to Watch for in 2021. Before we dive into what's in store for this year, let's take a look at the state of Customer Experience. If we were at the beginning of 2020, no one could have predicted how upside-down, sideways, diagonal our lives would become at [...]
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Five Key Customer Experience Trends for 2020 to Watch

Five Customer Experience Trends for 2020 To Watch

Welcome to M4 Communications' Five Customer Experience Trends for 2020 To Watch. This has become an annual event here at M4. But before we dive in, let's take a look at where we are with Customer Experience. The Current State of Customer Experience So, where are we with Customer Experience (CX)? The answer to the [...]
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m4comm Treat Every Day as CX Day

Why We All Should Treat Every Day as CX Day

The 7th annual CX Day is on Tuesday, October 1, 2019. It's always an exciting time for me because it's when we celebrate customers, the customer experience (CX) profession, and each other. Last week, I was a guest on a twitter chat and I said just that, and we should treat every day as CX Day. [...]
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How To Treat Each Day Like It’s CX Day

The 6th annual CX Day is on Tuesday, October 2, 2018. CX Day, a Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) initiative, is celebrated across the world on the first Tuesday of October. The day is an opportunity to recognize the professionals and companies that make great CX happen.  There are online events like webinars, twitter chats, and [...]
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Go the Distance with NPS to Drive Corporate Growth

Net Promoter Score (NPS) has been a hot topic ever since it was developed 15 years ago. Depending on what side of the fence you're on, you might or might not hold a lot of value in the metric. Recently I participated with some of my customer experience colleagues in a blog post discussion of [...]
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how diversity and inclusion drive employee engagement

How Diversity and Inclusion Drive Employee Engagement

While I write and speak about customer experience, I write and speak about diversity and inclusion, too. One thing is clear. Diversity and Inclusion is a business issue and it is linked to Employee Engagement. In fact, diversity and inclusion drive employee engagement. Let's look at some data points. The Numbers Have It —Gender-diverse companies are [...]
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earn customer trust m4

How Have You Earned Your Customer’s Trust Today?

I had a conversation with a colleague recently about customer trust and it got me to thinking about it. We are so focused on making the sale, reducing churn and growing the business that it seems customer trust is an after-thought. Yet, we must first develop relationships with customers and earn their trust for them [...]
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railroad tracks for customer experience and customer success

2018: The Year Customer Experience and Customer Success Converge

This week, I read an online comment that Customer Experience is a part of Customer Success. Customer Success professionals believe customer experience is a subset of customer success. Customer Experience professionals believe customer success is a subset of customer experience. Each discipline has its own idea. The Customer Experience vs. Customer Success debate has been an interesting [...]
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focused-on delighting-customers

Focus First On Meeting Customers’ Needs, Not on Delighting Customers

I heard someone say recently that delighting the customer is the same as meeting a customer's needs. That is incorrect. By definition, delighting customers means exceeding their expectations. That's different than meeting customers' needs. I understand why they would think the two are interchangeable. Being able to delight the customer is the holy grail of the [...]
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Conduct Win-Loss Analysis With Purpose for CX Success

I've written about how the Customer Experience (CX) responsibility does not lie in one group, rather it is an all-encompassing organizational endeavor. According to Wootric, the best way to ensure a sound CX program is when companies take a cross-functional team approach. Sales is a key part of that cross-functional team approach. Sales contributes to CX in [...]
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Growth Marketing is All About Engagement and Relationships

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Growth Marketing Conference in San Francisco last week. If you work in growth marketing, attend the conference at least once. I was happy to hear that the conference was going to be all about engagement and relationships. This makes sense because growth marketing is all about engagement and [...]
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How Advocacy Helps You Build A Stronger Influencer Marketing Program

By now, you've heard about the popularity of Influencer Marketing. It's so popular that many organizations are including influencer marketing initiatives into their marketing strategies. Linqia, in its The Value of Influencer Content 2017 report, cites that 86% of marketers use influencer marketing to add more power to their content marketing engines. The ROI is [...]
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new-marketing

Is Customer Experience the New Marketing in 2017?

I've been reading posts about how Customer Experience is the new Marketing. Is it? The Difference Between Customer Experience and Marketing The definition of Marketing, per Merriam-Webster, is: "the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service" Dr. Philip Kotler defines Marketing as “the science and art of exploring, creating, and [...]
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The Chief Customer Officer is Vital to Your Business

I cringe when I hear Marketing should own the customer experience. Two recent reports appear to back up this claim though. A report from the Economist Intelligence Unit and Marketo revealed 86% of CMOs and senior marketing executives believe they will own the end-to-end customer experience by 2020. Walker Info released a report that says [...]
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Five Key B2B Customer Experience Trends for 2017

Each year when I read an annual Customer Experience report, my wish is that Customer Experience finally makes it into the mainstream. I remember reading the findings from Accenture's 2015 B2B Customer Experience Report. I was encouraged to read that approximately eight in 10 executives believe delivering a differentiated experience links directly to business results [...]
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How Content Marketing and Customer Experience Can Drive Retention

Did you know that by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, and Bain & Company says it’s 6 to 7 times more costly to acquire a new customer than it is to retain one? So, if it’s really 6 to 7 times costlier to acquire a new customer [...]
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Mechanics of Measurement

Understanding The Mechanics of Measurement

For marketers to be successful, they can’t muddle through with blinders or rose-colored glasses on. They must be informed and know which marketing activities work, and which don’t. That means understanding the mechanics of measurement. Marketing and measurement are like lock and key. You need both to be successful and grow. Unfortunately, some marketers still [...]
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Direction Plus Planning Leads To Great Customer Experiences

I consider myself a student of life. I always want to be in learning-mode so that I can improve and can continuously add value to those I help: clients, potential clients, and colleagues, to name a few. As Carol Dweck notes, in her amazing book, Mindset, that’s the growth mindset—changing, growing, and stretching oneself through [...]
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How To Conduct Win-Loss Analysis To Achieve Strategic Growth (Part II)

In Part I of "How To Conduct Win-Loss Analysis To Achieve Strategic Growth", I discussed the pre-interview and interview phases of Win-Loss Analysis. The post-interview phase is the most important element of the Win-Loss Analysis process. During this phase, you will gain insights on how to actually improve your processes, and as a result, better [...]
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m4comm_win/loss analysis

How To Conduct Win-Loss Analysis To Achieve Strategic Growth (Part I)

I have been involved with Win-Loss Analysis from the product and sales sides since the mid–1990’s and have written about the subject since 2009. To this day, I do not understand why more companies aren’t conducting win-loss interviews, analyzing results and implementing lessons learned. When I speak with companies, many think they know the answers [...]
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Why Customer Experience Requires a Mindset Shift

Why Adopting A Customer Experience Mindset Is Key

On October 7, 2014, Customer Experience (CX) professionals celebrated #CXDay for the second year in a row. The event, put on by The Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), is an all day celebration of Customer Experience around the globe. It brings together companies and people that are creating great experiences for customers. Where Does Customer Experience Fit? [...]
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Content Marketers: Are You the Utility Player of Your Team?

To many people, Labor Day signifies the end of summer. To me, the changing season, such as the weather cooling down or leaves changing color, football and baseball playoffs signify the end of summer. Baseball playoffs start on September 30th this year. In baseball, the "utility" player, by definition, is one who can play many [...]
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Why Marketers Must Think Different About Content Gating

There are many opinions about content gating these days. There have been LinkedIn Group discussions about it as well as blog posts debating or trying to visualize it. I recently asked marketers on a LinkedIn Group discussion about content gating. I posed three questions - (1) Are you gating content? (2) What content types do you [...]
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The 3 Types of Metrics You Should Be Focusing On

This month, eMarketer published a post citing results from an April 2014 study conducted by VisionEdge Marketing and ITSMA. eMarketer noted that 85% of marketers worldwide said the pressure to measure marketing’s business value and contribution had increased. eMarketer cited another study in the post, one conducted by ifbyphone in May 2014, which indicated that much of [...]
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Have You Been Thinking About Dipping Your Toe in the Content Marketing Water?

You've read about the benefits of content marketing. You've even read case studies of companies who have achieved amazing success using content marketing in their overall marketing strategy. But, are you convinced content marketing will help your small business? Did you know that Content Marketing is the number #1 strategy used by marketers? It's not [...]
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Why It’s Time To Reverse Your Funnel to Turn Customers into Advocates

Retention marketing efforts don’t receive nearly the attention that customer acquisition efforts do. For many companies, that’s a big mistake that results in a lot of missed opportunities. Why? For starters, here are a few stats: According to Bain & Company, it costs 6-7 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing [...]
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Is Content Marketing the Missing Link Between Sales and Marketing?

One thing I like about engaging with my social networks is being able to ask questions and get people’s thoughts on issues, problems, and trends. Recently, I asked on Twitter, “Do marketing and sales still have trouble working together?” The answer was particularly telling: “No. They just do it badly.” In many organizations, the challenge [...]
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The Importance of Social Media In Branding

Creating and implementing an effective social media strategy is the key to global brand awareness and support for nonprofits and causes was the theme of Social Media on Purpose 2014 (#SMoP14) at Stanford last month. The mission of Social Media on Purpose is to help executives at nonprofits and other mission-driven organizations who are responsible [...]
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How To Get Great Testimonials

Seven Ways to Get Great Customer Testimonials

I recently asked a marketing director about customer testimonials on his company website. He openly said, "The testimonials aren't real, I made them up. Everybody else does it, so why can't we?" My second thought, after "Two wrongs don't make a right," was "Aren't you in the business of building trust? What does that say [...]
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Is_Sales_Dead

Is Sales Dead?

I remember when Bill Lee's post in Harvard Business Review came out in August 2012. There was outrage in the marketing community. Well, how could there not be outrage? The title of his post was "Marketing Is Dead". He was right - traditional marketing is dead. This is where I diverge. Mr. Lee notes "Traditional [...]
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Simplicity

Simplicity is not simple. That statement comes off as being trite. But, it's true. One definition states simplicity is "clarity of expression". Apple Head of Design, Jonathan Ive, speaks of simplicity as not lack of clutter but rather bringing order and clarity to something. Looking deeper, simplicity for Buddhists focuses on only the essentials and [...]
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Commenters Welcome.

Comments are very important. It's amazing how many bloggers are still on the fence about this. Comments on your blog equal feedback that your audience is giving you. Whether it is positive or negative feedback, embrace it. Why? -You will be perceived as a listener -You will be commended for caring about your business and [...]
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On Twitter Chats

There are a lot of Twitter chats out there. While it is great to chat, it is important to, as Pillar 2 of Character Counts! Six Pillars of Character teaches us, respect each other. What follows are some best practices for moderators and participants to keep in mind with Twitter chats. For Moderators 1. Promote [...]
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A Marketer’s ABC

In a sales person's mind, ABC stands for "Always Be Closing". We all remember Alec Baldwin's famous words in Glengarry Glen Ross... [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVQPY4LlbJ4&w=420&h=315] We say ABC stands for Always. Be. Curious. Staying curious keeps us present to life, keeps our creative juices flowing, opens us to new opportunities. And, as Steve Jobs notes, his stumbling [...]
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Sustainable Branding Done Here

I read this amazing article about Sustainable Brands today. Whether you are a for-profit or nonprofit entity, you must build, nurture and extend your brand. Still answering these 3 questions in 30 seconds matters today more than ever - Who are you? What do you do? Why should I care? Most emphasis should be placed [...]
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M4-brand extension

Brand Extension – The Only Two Questions You Need to Ask

Let's face it. You are a brand. What you communicate is your brand essence (your values, what you are all about). You can spin it to something else, but it always comes back to your brand essence. Brand is not about product. Its about values. Your values come across through your products. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjxacrSCYRE&w=420&h=315] Apple lives [...]
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corporate-fact-sheet

What is a Corporate Fact Sheet?

A corporate fact sheet should be a part of your media kit. A corporate fact sheet is a one-page snapshot of your business. While your logo should go on top of the page, the following sections should also be included in your corporate fact sheet: 1. Overview. Tell us who you are, what you do [...]
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Real Artists Ship

I have been thinking about this koan Steve Jobs used when developing the first Mac - "Real Artists Ship". I couldn't agree more. As product people, we must produce. That means, plan, develop, launch and manage. Keeping to schedules is key. Like Gordon Gecko's famous line in Wall Street, "greed is good", "shipping is good". [...]
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