Questioning the Voice of the Customer
July 12, 2011
With search vendors embracing customer service and customer support, here’s an interesting insight into the niche: Steve McKee at Bloomberg Businessweek declares that “The Customer Isn’t Always Right.” Yeah, customers—who needs ‘em!
Actually, McKee does acknowledge that businesses should heed consumer voices much of the time. However, he insists that the reality of competing interests limits the value of that information:
As Adam Smith pointed out: ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest.’ The same is true of the people who purchase the meat, the beer, and the bread. If you ask customers to design the perfect product, they’ll rack up the features and ratchet down the price, then be thrilled to buy from you all the way through your ‘Going Out of Business’ sale.
Businesses must balance customer input with knowledge about their own needs. The sting of losing a few sales because your prices are too high is small compared to the importance of protecting your bottom line.
What’s becoming increasingly clear, search vendors who offer customer support solutions are helping companies which want to reduce their customer support costs. Helping the customer? Maybe that is a secondary or tertiary benefit?
Cynthia Murrell, July 12, 2011
Endeca Pursues Customer Support
June 20, 2011
Always striving to stay abreast of trends, we found this post at CMSWire “Endeca Spotlights Customer Experience Mgmt with Infront” quite interesting. It is no secret that the search landscape has changed. Traditional vendors of “findability” solutions have put on their thinking caps in order to find ways to pump up revenue in a tough economic climate.
Endeca is pushing its technology’s applicability to customer support. Endeca’s InFront suite of products offers a solution to certain customer support information challenges. Endeca’s system does search and Guided Navigation. It also ads support for search engine optimization, social content, and mobile media support. Endeca asserts:
InFront allows businesses to create greater customer engagement with richer content and promotions,” explained Jason Purcell, General Manager, eBusiness, Endeca. “With integrated analytics and agile business user tools, InFront adapts to changing market needs, influences customer behavior across channels, and scales a relevant, personalized experience for every customer, every time.
Which search vendor will emerge as the victor in the pursuit of customer support license revenue? There are a number of search horses in the race, but there are incumbents. The race is difficult to call.
Micheal Cory, June 20, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
AT&T Shifts into Genghis Kahn Mode
June 13, 2011
I remember learning about warriors riding horses 24 hours a day. Instead of hitting the Mongolian equivalent of a convenience store, the rider open a vein on his horse’s neck and took a swig. Efficient.
Now AT&T wants to break in to the online coupon market according to Bloomberg’s article ” AT&T Takes on Groupon with $10 Promotion for Daily Deal Site.”
The new-old Ma Bell has revealed her plans to open a “Grouponesque” type of Web site for consumers through YellowPages.com.
Daily deals are the latest consumer shopping trend and have taken off in the wake of the slowing economy. Why pay full price when you can pay one half or one third of the full price?
AT&T will have to compete with veterans like Groupon, Facebook, and the such newspapers as the New York Times. AT&T believes it can be competitive by using larger discounts and making their site more amenable to the mobile deal hunter.
Pundits and assorted consulting firms anticipate that sales at restaurants, clothing stores and hair and nail salons will reach $6.1 billion by 2015 making the internet discount business potentially, extremely lucrative. The article said:
Market leader Groupon, based in Chicago, is planning an initial public offering later this year that would value the company at between $15 billion and $25 billion, two people familiar with the plans said last month.
I’m not entirely sure what my colleagues believe, but if ATT can truly capitalize on its “no search” couponing idea, may have an edge on their competitors. Could AT&T have a consumer market winner? With more than 90 million users AT&T is going to have a running start in this hot new segment.
Leslie Radcliff, June 13, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Online Addiction: Will Search Be a Controlled Service?
April 20, 2011
TechEye.net reports that “Kids Go Cold Turkey When You Take Their Technology Away.” We never agreed 100 percent with Marsshall McLuhan and his hot and cold thing. We do understand dependence, involvement, and digital magnetism. If the good Dr. McLuhan were in Harrod’s Creek today, he would sit up and take notice at this story.
Researchers at the University of Maryland subjected participants ages 17 to 23 to 24 hours without cell phones, the Internet, and TV. They could use landlines and read books. (Our view is that digital addiction can take place much, much earlier.)
The subjects’ diaries show that such restrictions threw many of them off their game. For a generation raised with such devices, unplugging is apparently unnerving, according to the article:
“[The study] found that 79 percent of students subjected to a complete media blackout for just one day reported adverse reactions ranging from distress to confusion and isolation… One of the things the kids spoke about was having overwhelming cravings while others reported symptoms such as ‘itching’. . . .One in five reported feelings of withdrawal like an addiction while 11 percent said they were confused. Over 19 percent said they were distressed and 11 percent felt isolated. Some students even reported stress from simply not being able to touch their phone.
And on the plus side, one in five enjoyed the experience, and some found they had more in-depth conversations during that day.
For a busy one parent family, hooking a child or adolescent means some blissful moments of peace. But what about other effects? How will these dependencies change search and content processing. Can an addicted user discern whether information is accurate or inaccurate? Will the user notice? Will the user care?
The study has me wondering about the future—will our grandchildren have chips in their heads that keep them wired 24-7? Will in-depth conversation, even in-depth thought, go the way of bound books? Key word search seems less likely to appeal to those who find the warmth and comfort of online so appealing. Facebook, on the other hand, offers a warmer place. Is this the McLuhan “hot”?
Will the solution be to make search a controlled service.
Cynthia Murrell April 20, 2011
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Metadata for the iPad and Its Rich Media
February 5, 2011
If you’re a photographer and an iPad owner, you have no doubt realized that the pre-loaded Photos app leaves much to be desired. See “Expo Notes: Sort Shots iPad App Adds Metadata Features” at Macworld for the solution.
There’s no reason not to use metadata these days to tag and organize your images. Sort Shots, at $5, is an affordable way to do so on your iPad. The article gives details:
“The app now has the ability to use existing metadata and EXIF tags—a feature iPad-owning photographers have long been clamoring for. This update makes it possible to find, order, and show photos and videos according to various metadata such as keywords, date taken, and rating. The sorting tools make it easy to assemble custom slideshows. New ratings, keywords, or file names that are added within the app are kept intact upon export. “
You can use Sort Shots to save custom sorts. You can also sort images by dragging and dropping thumbnails. The app is compatible with Lightroom, Bridge, Capture NX, Aperture, and iPhoto. Can better search be coming? We hope so.
Cynthia Murrell February 5, 2011
A New CRM? Search Vendors Scramble
January 22, 2011
“The New CRM Will Drive Revenue” is a posting from one of the new type of consulting firms. Individuals sign up as experts. Then the 20 somethings beat the bushes for clients who can’t pay or don’t want to pay the fees for a McKinsey, Bain, or Booz grade firm’s services. I enjoy these write ups. I also subscribe to Funny Times.
If there ever was such a thing as a “duh” statement, this would be it. Companies with better customer relationship management systems (CRM systems) will do better and attract more revenue as the economy begins to improve. Okay.
It comes as no surprise that IT professionals are going to be needed more and more as companies begin to rely more heavily on the internet in order to attract business. Basic CRM and knowledge management skills are still going to be needed but now it’s on a whole new level.
Not only are systems going to be forced into automation they will also have to create full-time mobile support because of the new age of smart phones; applications for iPhone, Droid, and Blackberry will have to be created and supported. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Linkedin will have to be created and maintained as well in order to maximize consumer consumption.
What would have made the write up more on point for Beyond Search was a comment about the mad scramble some search and content processing vendors are now undertaking. Companies like Vivisimo are now in the customer support game, and there are others. Why?
I am not sure “customer support” is the point of the exercise. The goal is reduce costs and keep the pesky customers away. What better way to achieve this than replace humans with software created by folks who are mostly into code.
The new CRM will drive revenue? No, the new CRM reduces costs and does little to help some “customers.” Great idea.
Stephen E. Arnold and Leslie Radcliffe, January 23, 2011
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How Americans Spend Their Time
December 18, 2010
Slurp, slurp. ”
That is the sound of “real journalists” gobbling the latest Forrester confection. I read “Forrester: Americans Spend Equal time Online and Watching TV.” Great headline, but I am not sure I know what “time” means. Also, the pairing of online and watching TV is ambiguous.
I get the point. Web activity is now as popular as watching the boob tube. Great.
But what happens to the data if a person watches TV when online?
I think I know what the mid tier outfit is trying to accomplish: make sales for its consulting business. The “data” are the bait for the canny Forrester fishermen and fisherwomen.
Here’s the main idea. People are spending as much time watching TV as the people are fiddling with their computers, which I think means devices that are computers just hauled around or tucked in a pocket.
Several observations:
- What’s the sample size? What was the sampling method? Is the n=xxx such a big deal? Omit that from the stats homework in the lousy liberal college I attended as a dull normal and the prof awarded an automatic F. Guess that doesn’t apply to mid tier consulting outfits.
- Online usage is growing. Okay, great to know since devices have been proliferating for several years. It makes sense that if there are more devices, usage would go up.
- TV sucks. Well, the write up did not document that, but the TV crowd, like the newspaper and other publishers, are in a tizzy as people use their laptops and gizmos like the Apple TV to get the programming each user wants. With control, TV sucks less. If you want only shows you love, TV does not suck at all.
- The features used by those online mirror the same Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville “average” that his travels in America documented. The only difference is that the stuff that pleases is pretty well know; for example, email, buying stuff, and socializing.
What’s not in the write up may be in the “real” study available from Forrester? Facebook. My hunch is that the demographics of a statistically-valid sample rigorously surveyed would reveal some nuances not in the article and maybe in the “real” study. Here’s a list:
- In each demographic, which activity is growing more rapidly, which is decreasing more rapidly?
- In the demographic with the heaviest TV usage, what’s the group doing? Using the TV as background, a way to feel loved, or as a primary activity?
- In the demographic with the heaviest online usage, what amount of time is spent on Facebook versus any other social system.
- Across the sample, what is the lean back versus lean forward behavior? How many in each sector use one mode as a primary and the other mode as a secondary?
- Across demographics, who does the most buying? Under what conditions?
Our work in this field suggests some surprising behavioral shifts. The multitasking characteristic is covered in a Forrester blog post. Presumably that activity is documented rigorously in the “real” report.
But what about that sample? What confidence should I have in the oh-so-precise data? Without data about the mechanics of the study, not much I fear.
Stephen E Arnold, December 18, 2010
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Online Shopping Reduces Hassles of the Mall
December 15, 2010
As reported on adage.com, Ad Age and Ipsos Observer recently conducted a survey studying the holiday buying habits of American consumers, and the results do not exactly bode well for physical retail stores as compared to virtual ones. The article detailed:
“Shoppers hunting for deals and convenience increasingly turned online during the Thanksgiving selling season. Coremetrics reported sales jumps of 19.4 percent on Cyber Monday, 9 percent on Black Friday and 28 percent on Thanksgiving Day when many retailers started rolling out their Black Friday deals early. These numbers far outpaced the nearly flat sales at physical store locations.”
Per the survey, daily discount websites such as Groupon provide incentive for shoppers to tarry off to the tangible storefronts in the name of getting a good deal. These sites will even hone on members specific interests based on location, demographics and input on interests. While this may seem like a silver lining for the brick-and-mortar locales, the article states that only the consumer is benefiting. “SymphonyIRI Group data show that coupons are not driving incremental sales. They are more likely to offer discounts to those already planning to buy, thereby cutting at the margins for retailers.”
Something else new to the shopping arena is the plethora of iPhone apps suited for this purpose, ranging from instant price comparison programs and barcode scanners to online coupon books, alleviating the need for printing and cutting. Easy just got even easier. So I guess with the internet, ‘the customer is king’ takes on a whole new meaning.
Sarah Rogers, December 15, 2010
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Google: Snort of a Two Humped Camel
October 17, 2010
Years ago, I wrote a for fee column about one of those nightmares of high school math. Each y axis represents a different scale or a combined chart. The curves often illustrate interesting points about data. The x axis was a common base like the horizon viewed from a hiker plodding through the digital sand. The resulting curve had a fancy name, but the graphic representation looked like the humps on a two humped camel. I can almost hear that snort.
That camel is back.
There are other ways to represent data that show a lot of people generating lots of clicks and money and a few people generating an even larger amount of money. I like the camel metaphor because it is easy to visualize and camels can go a long way when their characteristics are understood.
I thought about a half dozen two humped camels trotting across the search desert when I read “Google Sees a Browser in Every TV.” The idea is that TV delivers eyeballs and advertisers will pay to reach these eyeballs. The key is the notion of “every”. Represent the revenue from “every” using just about any measurement one wants and you end up with revenue that just keeps on growing. “Every” says to me most TV viewers. Plot the clicks, mouse hovers, or whatever other data point one collects. Slice and dice the data. Match the interesting centroids to advertisers’ messages, and you get a big computational job. Plot the data and you may see a curve that suggests the outfit with the infrastructure is going to be in the catbird’s seat. No one else can duplicate the eyeballs, the investment in plumbing to do the matching, and so on. This two humped camel is likely to leave competitors with only one part of the camel. That part is not as nifty as the parts that yield the big revenue curves.
Here’s a passage from the write up I found interesting:
Asked about whether GoogleTV would be embraced by non-techies, those who might not be comfortable with a keyboard in the living room, Chandra [Google wizard] said, “Almost everyone is familiar with a keyboard by now, and uses it to watch videos on a computer. We’re just moving the keyboard to a different room and setting, one more conducive to watching TV.”When asked why WebTV and all of the previous attempts to bring the Web and TV together failed and why GoogleTV will be a success, Chandra says that, more than anything else, timing is key. “We are at a tipping point,” he said. Web video has finally matured and there is enough compelling content available on YouTube and other platforms that will drive usage.
Plot the timeline. Google wants lots of eyeballs and lots of clicks. One hump. Google wants the advertisers willing to pay to access the eyeballs chopped into demographically and pychographically tasty nuggets. That’s another hump. When you put the two humps together, Google may get the camel. The competitors get the camel exhaust.
Snort.
Stephen E Arnold, October 17, 2010
New Virtual Shopping Assistant Opens Doors
October 15, 2010
More about the search-without-search boomlet. With the large number of products available on the market, picking out a simple item can seem as complicated as buying a new car. When it comes to technology such as computers, the fact that they change so often can make it difficult to know exactly what to buy. The company SalesClark wants to help shoppers make those hard decisions with the release of their automated virtual shopping assistant. PR Web article “SalesClark Brings Artificial Intelligence to Online Shopping” describes the program which is designed to make shopping easier and more efficient. The CEO of SalesClark describes the program as “An intelligent shopping assistant saves time and money for busy customers.” A brief customer consultation allows the program to connect shoppers with the products that best meet their needs. Users can enjoy the convenience of finding the products they want quicker and easier. The SalesClark beta version is being released to the public and is geared towards helping shoppers find a new computer. Users can choose the exact features or options they want and get quick and accurate results. Whether you are a beginner making your first computer purchase or a skilled novice this virtual shopping assistant does all the work for you.
April Holmes, October 15, 2010
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