Driving Customer Loyalty and Top Line Revenue with the User Experience to Customer Experience Connection

Administrator — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:22:42 +0000

The connection between user experience and customer experience always creates a great and valuable discussion. This has been particularly true at business development seminars, marketing workshops or one of the recent San Diego Software Industry Council panel presentations. The reason is that user experience and customer experience are inextricably related. The experience a prospect or customer has in using a company’s technology (including web sites, intranet, enterprise software, kiosks, PDA, cell phone or other wireless mobile devices) is absolutely part of the customer experience.

Customer experience encompasses the experience customers have with a company’s people and processes. Since processes include technology, the intersection between user and customer experience is made there. These experiences happen whether they are purposefully created or not.

I am frequently asked by CEOs and company owners: Does the user or customer experience have to be considered if the discussion is not about product or service? The answer is absolutely yes. The answer is routed in the importance of the pre sale experience by the prospect and the post sale experience as a customer. For pre sales, it could be how the prospect experiences advertising in analog or digital form such as a web site, sample software, how an affiliate is linked in, published product or service reviews and much more. These are important influencers of purchasing decisions impacting prospect to customer conversion rates.

The user experience continues after the sale and becomes a critical element of the overall customer experience as it combines how a customer experiences the support, usefulness and value of the product or services used. It also can include the status of ownership or usage, and packaging.

Most companies that have gone beyond usable products and services to design specific positive user experiences as part of a well thought out and executed customer experience program have one or more of the following positive attributes:

o Accelerated customer acquisition, engagement, loyalty and top line revenue
o Sustainable growth with slower margin declines
o Competitive advantage because the user and customer experience is positively
different; and
o Increased return on investment, brand and company equity

Regardless of their development stage, companies that are committed to continuously providing superior user and customer experiences show almost all of the attributes above. They are leaders in the fast company business of understanding and providing purposeful and profitable customer experiences. Examples include Four Seasons Hotels, brokerage firm Edward Jones, Lexus Automotive, Apple Computer and UPS shipping.

Where is your company along the continuum of user experience to customer experience? Are the user, prospect and customer experiences with your company being purposefully transformed into value for the business?

Beyond Usability - User Experience Design Presentation at Intuit March 5, 2008 5:30pm

Administrator — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:41:49 +0000

The San Diego Software Industry Council presents:

Beyond Usability

User Experience / Interface Design

March 5, 2008

Register at http://www.sdsic.org/eventregistration.php

Hosted by

Intuit

Do your customers have a good experience with your solution?

Are you leveraging “the experience advantage” for customer satisfaction and increased revenue?

Focusing on how “usable” products are has been a recent trend in software development but being usable is just not good enough.

Come hear how leading companies are going beyond usability and creating engaging user experiences, for . . .

• Competitive advantage

• Sustainable growth

• Increased profit margins and revenue

Our panel of experts share their case studies, experience and examples and discuss how some of these best practices can be easily adopted at your company.

Moderator:

Sean Van Tyne, User Experience Architect, Van Tyne Consulting, www.vantyneconsulting.com

Panelists:

- Maria Melendrez, Usability Strategist, SAIC, www.saic.com

- Beau Sullivan, Director of User Experience, Mitchell International, www.mitchell.com

- Erikheath Thomas, Senior UI Designer, Intuit, www.intuit.com

- Jeofrey Bean, Principal, Del Mar Research, www.delmarresearch.com

Date: March 5, 2008

Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm – Registration and Networking

6:00 pm - 7:30 pm – Program

Fee: Pre registration Only – SDSIC Members $35.00

Pre registration Only – Non Members $45.00

Location: Intuit – New Campus

7545 Torrey Santa Fe Road

San Diego, CA 92129

Register at http://www.sdsic.org/eventregistration.php

The San Diego Software Industry Council SDSIC.ORG

The User Experience Advantage: Sustainable Growth, Customer Loyalty

Administrator — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:41:00 +0000

Between a slowing economy, increased competition and advancing profit margin compression, several companies, who rely on technology to market, sell and deliver products and services (technical or not) are looking for ways of competitive and economic advantage more than ever. Look to your people and processes for an uncommon advantage: The one of giving a great experience to prospects and customers as they contact your people and user your technology to find out about your company and make purchases.

The user experience includes all the touch-points and exposure people have to your company. I will focus on the users of your technology, whether it is your web site, software, kiosk, a mobile device such as an iPhone, cell phone or PDA. These devices have software on them and it needs to be more than usable, they need to offer an excellent user experience. That is, an experience that is engaging, useful and one that will cause them to want to return, buy and be an advocate for your company.

Companies that come to mind who have made the leap from usability to being destination points for great (and profitable) user experiences include UPS, Apple Computer, Lexus, NetFlix, Amazon..com and USAA Insurance. They understand how to bridge the distance between usable products, services and technologies and offering a positive and engaging user experience overall.

Why do companies make the investment in user experience?

Companies make the investment because of the hallmarks of firms that have developed a user experience strategy and executed well:

Accelerated customer acquisition, engagement and retention, and the higher willingness to pay by the customers.
Sustainable growth with slower profit margin erosion.
Competitive advantage through positive “market aligned” differentiation.
Return on investment is vastly improved over the solution life cycle. This translates well into increased company equity, regardless of maturity stage.

Where is your company along the usability-to-user experience continuum?

If you are just at the beginning, then learn more about the default user experiences people are having with your company now. Are the experiences prospects and customers having (yes, pre and post sales) turning into positive value for your company? Are they converting visitors to customers? Are the experiences turning customers into advocates for real competitive advantage, long term growth and return on investment? Find out about what the best in class user experiences can do for your company in answering these same questions to obtain the user experience advantage.

Three Uncommon Steps for Accelerated Web Site Performance

Administrator — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:58:28 +0000

How do you like our web site?
Businesses frequently want an evaluation of their web site. They want and need to know how it compares to the competition. Equally important, is that most of them will be getting this assessment from the business development viewpoint for this first time. This is usually very complimentary to existing outlook of the web site developer and any search engine optimization (SEO) that has taken place.

The aggregated view of small to medium sized businesses shows that more than 60% of them are disappointed with their web sites.
Many people say they aren’t really sure what their web site does for them. Moreover, they showed striking similarities in “how” they got their web sites going.

Most web sites were bought from the outside by web developers or creative professionals or developed internally, frequently with little or no prospect or demand side information. Many used the web-site-in-a-box approach. The needs of the business were only occasionally included. In one instance, a seller of web site development gave away “quick content” to acquire the business.

Three Uncommon Steps for Accelerated Web Site Performance
More importantly, companies disappointed with their webs site’s business contribution excluded consistently three important steps creating the site:
Establish communication relationships with the market:

Customer needs:

Understand the market first
Do not put-up content and push it out
Communicate the “Do-Fors” that you provide

Develop the web site’s business missions, specific purposes:

What problems will the site help you overcome?
What parts of the business should it accelerate

Testing and Tuning

Test with people who fit the your target customers
Take the results from this testing and fine tune the site

Real Examples of Web site Business Missions

Reduce time-to-market and time-to-revenue
Qualified lead generator
Expand product and service reach while reducing our costs
Target a previously unreachable customer
Allow partners to more easily do business with us
Establish or increase credibility

Uncommon Steps in Action
A five year old high growth financial services firm was getting little or no value from their web site. Site support costs were up, contribution down. The company developed a better understanding of the markets they served. Prospects did not want to read about specifications but how the financial services being offered could solve their problems (within 30 seconds to three minutes).

The owners established their web site missions to be:

Solving problems for prospects (what I call the Do-Fors)
Company credibility
Provide employees with an access anywhere sales presentation.

The results showed a 25% increase in clients reached in the following six months. The cost to reach these new clients has decreased by 10%. The site now serves the company as a two-way qualification tool and a distribution channel.

How can you use the three uncommon steps?
Think about the specific missions of your web site for solving problems and accelerating the business. How will the relationship between your prospects needs and web site be established? Use the three uncommon steps and measure the results and let me know how it worked out!

The New Ford 500 is Now the New Taurus – Why?

Administrator — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:58:11 +0000

Stockholders of Ford Motor Company should be very concerned about the recent marketing slip-up considering the company’s delicate state and fragile position in the auto market.

This slip-up tip-off was when Ford took the new Taurus off the market soon after it was introduced.
When the name was new, the Taurus was the car that finally positioned Ford significantly against cars like Honda’s Accord and Toyota’s Camry in terms of appeal, price and market share. The Taurus had a very good run over several years and an excellent model name with plenty of brand equity and future built into it. Even so, the company retracted the car, along with the name, from the market.

In 2007, the company introduced an all new car designed to compete with the leading Japanese sedans. Given the name “500,” a name that meant nothing to everyone, particularly, the people most likely to buy the new car.

You have to wonder: With all the experience, information and resources Ford has access to, why would they give a meaningless name to a new and important entry into the competitive sedan market?

Additionally, the company never told us how the car was different and better than its competition, basic I know, but why this additional misstep?

The new slow selling 500 model was rather quickly pulled from the market and just a few months ago, a new car called the “Ford Taurus” was introduced. Clearly the 500 renamed the Taurus.

How much did this cost the company to pull the 500 off the market, and then reintroduce the car as the Taurus? How much market share and earnings were lost during this time? How much did it cost share holders?

This was an important and basic marketing slip-up that I hope we do not see again. Now how about telling us about different and better?

Business Development Options to Accelerate Your Businesses

Administrator — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:57:52 +0000

What is Business Development?
What is your definition of business development? Ask seven people what it is and you are likely to wind up with seven different answers. My work with small and medium sized clients has shown that companies define business development based on the situation they are presently in including making a new sale, investing in advertising or offering a new product or service. Also, too many small and medium sized businesses believe that business development options or programs are only for large companies. This is not so.

Clients are often surprised and pleased when they learn that there are at least ten business development options that they can choose from to help solve a problem or accelerate an already successful situation. But you need to consider a few key points critical to a successful outcome.

What problem or acceleration point(s) do you want business development to improve?
Business development options can be used for a wide variety of reasons. To make longer term strategic improvements or the much needed tactical “quick-win”.

Here is a list of the challenges and acceleration points that are most often addressed:

Reduce time-to-market and time-to-revenue
Improve the scalability of your company
Strengthen the go-to-market model for better targeting and ROI
Expand product and service reach while reducing costs
Leverage your brand or someone else’s
Lift your brand
Target a previously unreachable customer

For instance, I was contacted by a client who said they wanted to discuss increasing sales with advertising. I wanted to understand how they came to the conclusion advertising was the answer. After a two hour session with them it was very apparent that they did not need more advertising. They needed to sort out their sales process since they were unable to work half of the 75 qualified leads already coming in each month. I recommended they sort out their sales process and then, when they have additional capacity to address about 125 leads each month, we can work on a specific business development program (such as a lead agent program) to efficiently generate the additional 50 leads.

Why Will My Company Do Business Development
Understanding why you need to do business development, beyond saying that you want to increase sales and revenues, brings you much closer to defining what the problem or acceleration point is and its successful solution. In order to do this, you must understand what defines good businesses development and what problem(s) you would like business development to solve for you.

A case in point: A 20 person financial services firm had invested in having a very nice logo developed after being assured that this was the next logical step to their growth. While the logo developer was satisfied, the business results were disappointing to the client. After this, the financial services company and I met through a referral. I applied the business development considerations (above) to how they were going to market. It turned out that they did not need a logo, they had a distribution challenge in reaching the correct propsects. We then proceeded to select the best business development option. In this case, it was to form distribution alliances to solve for their distribution problem. Together, we obtained the results the CEO wanted within 120 days.

Define What Business Development Means for Your Business. The most effective business development definition includes these key points:

The business development program or activity is well defined.
There will be ramp-up and wind-down time.
Business development is used to solve specific business challenges or used to accelerate selected parts of the business.
The business development activity is reasonably sustainable.
Outside relationships such as referral sources and alliances are two-way activities in benefit (not vendor-client relationships)
There are measures of success such as revenue, number of clients, reduced cost, increased profitability and more.

Between now and the time we meet again in this space, think about business development options and the challenges you have that may be solved with them. Also, how do you want to accelerate your business? What are your next steps?

Has Google Got Game?

Administrator — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:57:14 +0000

It’s going to be interesting to see how the multi-company alignment that Google has put together gains traction to redefine open architecture, wireless communications and very interestingly, local mobile services and its demands for advertising.

The potential to reach certain markets, segments, individuals no less, with pin-point accuracy and timing will have been redefined by technology. Location based services will drive the need for companies developing applications to fully understand and embrace what is known as “the user experience (UX).”

Instead of merely slapping on a graphical user interface, or even a well developed GUI and asking the user to adopt and fill in the blanks, the experience of the user, no matter what the device, must be designed to not only attract and engage users, but to do it in a way that retains them consistently for advertisers.

This strategic alliance portends to not only seed innovation with openness and tools, but to change business models, and in doing so, break many of the rules that have kept many institutional players in business.

It certainly will be interesting to see the strategic and tactical responses of those companies with a vested interest in keeping the status quo. This is one of those interesting and dynamic times, that is extra engaging, particularly for those who are experienced in developing and marketing technology solutions.

What is old is new again in the technology, applications development and marketing worlds. In this case, it is resource rich Google that is pushing the envelope in a new sensible open way, and that’s why Google’s got game.

Welcome to Bean’s Notes!

Administrator — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 11:12:24 +0000

I am glad you are here! I hope you find the commentary and exchanges about marketing, technology and busienss development interesting and enjoyable. Times are not dull!

-Jeof