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A positive approach to the customer

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Written by Buljan&Partners

Look at these operations and write down what you see:

5×5=25      10+5X2=20      8×2=16     18-6=11      5+3+2=10        9:3=3

If your answer is “the subtraction is incorrect”, you’re right, but if your answer is that five operations are correct and one is incorrect, is even better and what is even better still is that you will be giving more complete and effective information.

So why do we only focus on the incorrect answer if there are more correct answers than incorrect ones and waste so much valuable information? And who is more intelligent? The person who quickly identifies the error or the one who sees the complete information?

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Size Matters

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Written by Luis Hergueta for Buljan&Partners

This is quite obvious in many areas in life but it is not always considered in terms of companies. I was once asked: how long does it take to do this?”, and I answered: “well, it depends on your processes” (CRM mentality, of course).

And for sure processes involve people, time, resources, choices…. All of this we deal every day with. So the more parties you have in a decision, the longer it takes to decide.  Many parties might enrich the final decision / project, but maybe not.

How many emails do you receive a day so that you are informed about all actions being taken in your company? So either you are in a communication overflow regardless of the company size or the company is just too big not allowing you to see more than you can read.

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The new rules of the game for Customer Intelligence

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Written by Silvana Buljan for Buljan & Partners

When it comes to Customer-Centric Leadership supported by sophisticated technology I have learned something new about the current standard of customer analytics. All of us agree that we need to analyze all the data we have available for our customers to give them a better service: transactional data, profiling, behavioral data, etc. And most of us agree about the enormous efforts made in customer analytics: after a complex process of parameterization and qualification of data it sometimes takes weeks for marketing professionals to receive target group segments in order to conduct personalized campaigns. It seems that this will be redundant in the near future with recent developments at big database technology vendors, who are all going for the same concept: in-memory storage. My reduced knowledge of database technology did not keep me from understanding the new functionality of the new SAP 360 customer application based on HANA at the annual SAP Sapphire event in Madrid. If what I have seen is really how it works, it is an amazing step towards “democratization” of the availability and analysis of customer data across the organization. Even marketing and service professionals will be able to segment unstructured customer data – in real-time – without having to make internal requests for data queries to their IT departments.

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The Customer Centric Organization: The Big Data Organization

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Written by Björn Neumann for Buljan & Partners

We definitely have reached a turning point. In the past we needed Customer Relationship Management to focus on, to analyze and to improve customer relations. Then we needed Business Intelligence (or better Customer Intelligence) to implement it (it should have been vice versa, but where people are involved, things not always run in a logical way). Then we noticed: it does not really work as expected! (At least from the customer point of view).

Now the customer outwits us with unorganized, unstructured, misspelled, divers interpretable and out of context information (therefore, instead of Big Data, I rather like to call it Bug Data). It is left in the World Wide Web e.g. on Facebook, Youtube, Linkedin, Twitter, Wikis, Blogs, … or somewhere else. And currently every second terabytes of data are created. Customer Intelligence farewell! Additionally this data is much more up-to-date than the information we have in our databases.

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Can Customer Experience Management save the banking sector´s image?

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Written by Silvana Buljan for Buljan&Partners

Imagine you lose all your hardly earned savings you invested in promising financial products, that were sold to you not informing you about the risk or just by blurring your eyes with promises that could not realistically be fulfilled… It is true that the responsibility is shared: the bank you trusted in has not been transparent in transactions, and you were looking for a high ROI without analyzing in depth the risk that these kind of products have. The fact is though that you are furious about your bank, and the client manager dealing with your money, and the government because they did not prevent this from happening, and and and.

You feel betrayed. And lost because suddenly life as retired person in the future has another image than the one that you were working on. What could the bank do to not lose you as customer? What would YOU make trust them again?

We live in financial times, yes, but we also live in a society whose “rules of the game” are being redefined / reinvented / questioned. Have we missed a fundamental discussion on such basic things like ethics or human values? Every citizen knows that a bank is making money with his money, it´s part of a bank´s business model. And every citizen knows that borrowing money is more expensive than lending it. That´s fair and nobody complains. But is it fair to not offer any recovery if things work out differently than thought? Definitely the money lost in your individual case is “peanuts” for the bank, but still you are the one taking over 100% of responsibility as you signed a “carte blanche” regarding liability rules.

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Technology yes, but with more common sense

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Written by Antonio Igarza for Buljan&Partners

The implementation of a CRM software tool in the Sales Department of a company is a very important point. But this will not solve itself the current challenges our modern society has. Technology is not the solution on its own.

If we think of a standard business department, we can see how there is too much information, a large number of databases everywhere. A today´s company is not lacking data, it lacks of “knowledge”. This lack of knowledge may be, for example, the lack of innovative solutions to address lost sales, for example.

Three ideas that make us understand this reality:
a. Technology cannot identify the problems of the Sales Department. This tool, well used, helps you be an innovator, but it is not able to “extract” the real problems.
b. To define and collect the needed data to analyze the problems in any Department (example: Defining Key Performance Indicators).
c. Technology cannot analyze your problem or be the reference to obtain a solution.

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Buljan&Partners – 10 Year Anniversary: Video "Great Clients"

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Written by Buljan&Partners

Receive our warmest welcome to this 3rd video of our 10th anniversary campaign “Great Projects for Great Clients with Great People”, dedicated to our CLIENTS.

We are very touched by the references we have received from BMW Group, Microsoft, Andreas Stihl and mmmm Abogados.

ENJOY!

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Ryanair – The ultimate Customer Experience mystery

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Written by Monique Jansen for Buljan&Partners

How can a company provoke both love and hatred from their customers? What is the thing that attracts us to them even though we know we will be “tortured” along all customer path and at all touch points, while making a booking, while boarding, during the flight, at arrival? Are they brilliant or just lucky, this is what I would like to find out to solve the Ryanair mystery.

Many blogs exist in which Ryanair is analyzed to the bone and usually in a bad way. There even exists a blog call “I hate Ryanair” http://www.ihateryanair.org/.  And what made me write this is a tweet from the Economist I saw on low costs airlines charging exuberant extras for paying with credit card while paying with credit card is the only payment method offered.

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CRM Bus Tour

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Written by Silvana Buljan for Buljan&Partners

This summer and autumn is intense and challenging for the international CRM industry, lots of things are happening and confirming that CRM is still not dead! We are currently right into this year’s CRM Idol 2012 contest, checking out some really innovative and promising tools to stir up the industry. Last week (13th to 15th August) THE international conference for CRM – CRMEvolution 2012 – took place in New York City, with the presence of the world’s most known and recognized influencers, practitioners and visionaries. But what I really want to dedicate this post to is something that has never been done by anyone before in the industry: 4 of the most influential CRM subject matter experts – Paul Greenberg, Esteban Kolsky, Denis Pombriant and Brent Leary – will travel Europe during 12 days on a Bus to engage with CRM professionals across Europe. An outstanding and unique event!

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I am your customer

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Written by Lisa Rottmann for Buljan&Partners

The other day, a teacher read the following in a Sales training and I think it’s worth sharing:

It’s a letter from “your customer”. This guy is kind of “special” and I’m sure that you will not like him on the first sight! If “your customer” behaves like this, will you be able to like him and take care of him? Think twice: We all behave in the same way when we are customers, don’t we?

Dear Company,

I am your customer. Satisfy my wants with personal attention and a friendly touch and I will become a walking advertisement for your products and services. Ignore my wants, show carelessness, inattention, or poor manners, and I will simply cease to exist as far as you are concerned. Continue reading →