ClearAction
AUGUST 24, 2008
Customer Experience Metaphors Offer a Wealth of Insights Lynn Hunsaker. Like radical, man, but everyone tends to talk in metaphors. A picture tells a thousand words, they say. And we all use 5-6 metaphors a minute, according to author Gerald Zeitman in his book How Customers Think. So how much do you know about your customers’ metaphors? The ones they use to describe your brand.
Customer Experience Matrix
APRIL 2, 2008
OK, I freely admit I’m fascinated by offbeat database engines. Maybe there is a support group for this. In any event, the highlight of my brief visit to the DAMA International Symposium and Wilshire Meta-Data Conference conference last month was a presentation by Joe Foley of illuminate Solutions , which marked the U.S. launch of his company’s iLuminate analytical database.
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ClearAction
AUGUST 23, 2008
When Customers Complain, Make Lemonade Lynn Hunsaker. Negative customer feedback is a lot like biting into a lemon — the bitterness is hard to love — unless you give the lemon a good squeeze and some sugar, and transform it into refreshing and healthy lemonade. You’re only as strong as your weakest link, so those lemons — customer complaints and low survey ratings — are indeed essential ingredients to improving customer experiences.
Customer Experience Matrix
JULY 12, 2008
I spent a fair amount of time this past week getting ready for my part in the July 10 DM Radio Webcast on columnar databases. Much of this was spent updating my information on SybaseIQ , whose CTO Irfan Khan was a co-panelist. Sybase was particularly eager to educate me because I apparently ruffled a few feathers when my July DM Review column described SybaseIQ as a “variation on a columnar database” and listed it separately from other columnar systems.
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Customer Experience Matrix
MARCH 11, 2008
Let me tell you a story. For years, United Parcel Service refused to invest in the tracking systems and other technologies that made Federal Express a preferred carrier for many small package shippers. It wasn’t that the people at UPS were stupid: to the contrary, they had built such incredibly efficient manual systems that they could never see how automated systems would generate enough added value to cover their cost.
Customer Experience Matrix
DECEMBER 24, 2008
Back when I was writing a great deal about QlikView , I proposed that its fundamental value came from empowering business analysts to do work for themselves that would otherwise require IT support. (See, for example, this post , which has the virtue of pretty graphics.) This same notion of considering which users do which work has permiated my ideas of usability measurement for demand generation systems and usability in general.
Tech Customer Success brings together the best content for the technology customer service and experience professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Customer Experience Matrix
DECEMBER 13, 2008
As Tuesday’s post suggested, my thoughts on usability measurement have now crystallized. To provide a meaningful and consistent comparison of usability across demand generation vendors, you could: 1. Define a set of business scenarios that must be supported by the system. Each scenario would describe a type of marketing campaign and the system tasks required to run it.
Customer Experience Matrix
DECEMBER 9, 2008
I noticed a visitor to the Raab Guide to Demand Generation Systems site from a new source the other day, which turned out to be a mention on blog by Jason Stewart of Demandbase. The context was a discussion of system selection and the Raab Guide was paired with a reference to a very excellent series of posts on system selection on Maria Pergolino’s Inbound Marketer blog.
Customer Experience Matrix
DECEMBER 9, 2008
I think we all know that the simplest practical measure of intelligence is how often someone agrees with you. On that scale, University of Ottawa Professor Timothy Lethbridge must be some kind of genius, because his course notes on Software Usability express my opinions on the topic even better and in more detail than I’ve yet to do for myself. Specifically, he lists the following basic process for measuring usability: - understand your users, and recognize that they fall into different classes
Customer Experience Matrix
DECEMBER 3, 2008
My little tour of demand generation vendors landed at Pardot just before Thanksgiving. As you’ll recall from my post on Web activity statistics , Pardot is one of the higher-ranked vendors not already in the Raab Guide to Demand Generation Systems. So I was quite curious to see what they had to offer. What I found was intriguing. While last week’s post found that Marketbright aims at more sophisticated clients, Pardot explicitly targets small and midsize businesses (or SMBs as we fondly acronymi
Speaker: Benjamin Woll, Tiffany Spizzo, and Jaime Santos Alcón
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Customer Experience Matrix
NOVEMBER 25, 2008
I had a preliminary conversation last week with Mike Pilcher of Marketbright , one of the vendors I’ll probably end up adding to the Raab Guide to Demand Generation Systems. We didn’t look at the software itself, so I can’t comment on it in any detail. The slides did list a few unusual features, including “prospect portals” that help buyers and sellers to share information related to a project; a sales proposal builder; and features to work with sales partners.
Customer Experience Matrix
NOVEMBER 19, 2008
As you might imagine, I’ve been trying to decide how to expand the set of products covered in the Raab Guide to Demand Generation Systems. My original plan had been to add several marketing automation vendors with significant presence in this market. The tentative list is Unica , Aprimo , Alterian , and Neolane. But I’ve also been approached by some of the other demand generation specialists.
Customer Experience Matrix
NOVEMBER 13, 2008
A funny thing happened as I was writing one of my usual rants on incorporating usability into the selection process. (The resulting paper is on the [link] site, creatively titled "Building Usability into Your System Selection".) After a few bon mots that probably no one else will find clever ("Usability is hard to measure; features are easy to count" "Small hard facts beat big blurry realities") I got to describing the steps in a usability-aware selection process: define business needs define pr
Customer Experience Matrix
NOVEMBER 6, 2008
I spent a few minutes last week on the Web sites of about eight or nine on-demand business intelligence vendors, and within a few days received emails from two of them ostensibly asking about much earlier visits where I must have registered with my email address. Given my current obsession with demand generation systems, I’m pretty sure this was no coincidence: they had deposited a cookie linked to my email address during the earlier visit, and used this address to react when I returned.
Speaker: Carolyn Clark and Miriam Connaughton
Forget predictions, let’s focus on priorities for the year and explore how to supercharge your employee experience. Join Miriam Connaughton and Carolyn Clark as they discuss key HR trends for 2025—and how to turn them into actionable strategies for your organization. In this dynamic webinar, our esteemed speakers will share expert insights and practical tips to help your employee experience adapt and thrive.
ClearAction
NOVEMBER 1, 2008
Customer Experience is Best Defined by Customers Lynn Hunsaker The term customer experience has a wide array of interpretations. For some people it revolves around shopping or website navigation. For others it's about ease of use as the customer interfaces with the product or service they purchased. For some, it's about technical and customer service.
Customer Experience Matrix
OCTOBER 31, 2008
The fourth and final item I had planned to add to the Demand Generation Guide Web site was posted yesterday. This is a spreadsheet on calculating the business value of a demand generation system. Basically it defines a formula for calculating profit based on factors that are affected by a demand generation system: number of leads, lead-to-customer conversion rate, net margin per customer, acquisition cost, lead handling cost and sales cost.
Customer Experience Matrix
OCTOBER 27, 2008
Over the weekend I completed "Demand Generation vs. Customer Relationship Management", the third in my trio of papers explaining where demand generation systems fit into the larger world of customer management software. Like the other two, they are available at the Raab Guide to Demand Generation Systems Web site [link]. This one was much easier to write because I was able to draw on the six-task framework established in the first of the trio, "Introduction to Demand Generation Systems".
Customer Experience Matrix
OCTOBER 23, 2008
As I promised (threatened?) in my last post, I've been furiously writing articles to explain demand generation for the new Guide Web site. I just finished #2, the not-very-creatively titled "Introduction to Demand Generation Systems" and posted it there. I won't recap the piece in detail, but am pleased that it does contain pictures. One illustrates my conception of how demand generation systems fit into the world of marketing systems, as follows: Is that cute or what?
Speaker: Michael Veatch, Senior Director, Implementations & Ella Aguirre, Director of Solution Consulting
Embedding payments can be a transformative step for software companies looking to enhance their platform capabilities, boost customer satisfaction, and drive long-term growth. However, the success of payments hinges on a single thing: implementation. Drawing on real-world insights and experiences, payments implementation experts Michael Veatch and Ella Aguirre will explore actionable strategies that can lead to a transparent, friction-free launch and mitigate potential challenges like technical
Customer Experience Matrix
OCTOBER 20, 2008
One of the first people I told about the new Guide to Demand Generation Systems -- an experienced database marketing consultant, no less -- was receptive to the Guide but asked whether there was any real difference between "demand generation" and "marketing automation" in general. This set off all kinds of alarms, since this was someone who clearly should have been familiar with the distinction.
ClearAction
OCTOBER 15, 2008
Customer Experience Insights by Stepping Into Your Customers’ Shoes Lynn Hunsaker If we could "be a fly on the wall" observing customers' experiences what a treasure trove of wisdom we'd have! Surveys, user groups and advisory boards are common tools for understanding customers — but what is their scope? Do we have a comprehensive suite of tools for stepping into our customers' shoes?
Customer Experience Matrix
OCTOBER 15, 2008
I've emerged from the cave where Osama bin Laden and I were working on the new Guide to Demand Generation Systems (oops -- the Osama part was supposed to be secret) and am now catching up with the rest of the world. One news item that caught my attention described a recent National Research Council report that concluded data mining to find terrorists "is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts.
Customer Experience Matrix
OCTOBER 14, 2008
The new Guide Web site is now fully functional at www.raabguide.com. Please visit and comment. If you want to make a purchase, even better. Per yesterday's post regarding the comparison matrix and vendor tables, extracts of both are available on the site (under 'Look Inside' on the 'Guide' page). These will give a concrete view of the difference between the two formats.
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Customer Experience Matrix
OCTOBER 13, 2008
I won’t claim a direct cause-and-effect relationship, but is it really just a coincidence that the stock market finally had a good day exactly when my new Guide to Demand Generation Systems is about to be released? Think about it. That said, the new Guide Web site is in the final testing and should be launched tomorrow. It might even be working by the time you read this: try [link].
Customer Experience Matrix
OCTOBER 1, 2008
I've been distracted this week by an unrelated client deadline, but the new Raab Guide to Demand Generation Systems is indeed complete. A proper e-commerce site will be available shortly, but if anyone really can't wait, the salient details are: - 150+ point comparison matrix and detailed tables on: Eloqua, Manticore, Marketo, Market2Lead and Vtrenz, based on extensive vendor interviews and demonstrations - price: $595 for single copy, $995 for one-year subscription (provides access to updates a
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 5, 2008
I have mostly been focused this week on formats for the new Demand Generation Guide. Since this is of interest to at least some regular readers of this blog, I suppose it’s okay to give you all an update. The issue I’m wresting with is still how to present vendor summaries. As of last week’s post , I had decided to build a list of applications plus some common issues such as vendor background, technology and pricing.
Customer Experience Matrix
AUGUST 28, 2008
Now that I have that long post about analytical databases out of the way, I can get back to thinking about demand generation systems. Research on the new Guide is proceeding nicely (thanks for asking), and should be wrapped up by the end of next week. This means I have to nail down how I’ll present the results. In my last post on the topic, I was thinking in terms of defining user types.
Speaker: Jay Allardyce, Deepak Vittal, Terrence Sheflin, and Mahyar Ghasemali
As we look ahead to 2025, business intelligence and data analytics are set to play pivotal roles in shaping success. Organizations are already starting to face a host of transformative trends as the year comes to a close, including the integration of AI in data analytics, an increased emphasis on real-time data insights, and the growing importance of user experience in BI solutions.
Customer Experience Matrix
AUGUST 27, 2008
“You gotta get a gimmick if you wanna get ahead” sing the strippers in the classic musical Gypsy. The same rule seems to apply to analytical databases: each vendor has its own little twist that makes it unique, if not necessarily better than the competition. This applies even, or maybe especially, to the non-columnar systems that use a massively parallel (“shared-nothing”) architecture to handle very large volumes.
Customer Experience Matrix
AUGUST 6, 2008
I somehow ended up posting some comments on QlikView technology on Curt Monash's DBMS2 blog. This is actually a more detailed description than I've ever posted here about how I think QlikView works. If you're interested in that sort of thing, do take a look. Tags: qlikview database technology qliktech analytical database.
Customer Experience Matrix
AUGUST 5, 2008
I finally had a conversation with columnar database developer Vertica last week. They have done such an excellent job explaining their system in white papers and other published materials that most of my questions had already been answered. But it’s always good to hear things straight from the source. The briefing pretty much confirmed what I already knew and have written here and elsewhere.
Customer Experience Matrix
AUGUST 4, 2008
I had a very productive conversation on Friday with Fred Yee, president of ActiveConversion , a demand generation system aimed primarily at small business. As you might have guessed from my recent posts, I was especially interested in his perceptions of the purchase process. In fact, this was so interesting that I didn’t look very closely at the ActiveConversion system.
Speaker: Aaron Jacob, VP of Accounting Solutions & Reagan Cook, GTM Lead
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