Don't you hate it when you send in a complaint and NOTHING HAPPENS? Even more, don't you hate it when you find out that irate customers are talking about a negative customer experience online, splashed across blogs everywhere? And isn't it even worse when you read that people AGREE? What you see, in plain, cyber black-and-white, is the worst of the detractor versus advocate pendulum. As is rightly pointed out through the NetPromoter score, what we want—in simple terms—is MORE advocates and recommenders. But what we REALLY want is to take detractors gently by the hand and turn them into loud, can't-be-stopped, no-matter-what, shout-it-from-the-rooftop advocates.

Here is the problem: according to our latest research, most of us would be hard pressed to know where to start. Worse, many of us aren't even listening.

Now, don't get mad at me...it's what you, our CMO Council community, told us:

• Only 38 percent of companies gather customer insight from customer engagement situations.
• Just 32 percent look for ways to turn problems into new sales opportunities, and only 15 percent introduce new products or services to further monetize the relationship.
• Merely 17 percent use customer interaction to identify and cultivate potential customer champions and advocates.
• 27% of marketers rate their company's commitment to customer listening as needing improvement.
• Only 8% of companies are monitoring voice of the customer on social media sites; 11% monitor blogs; and only 3% monitor "grudge" sites on the internet. However, 58% claim that the internet and social media has changed customer experience and expectation around the brand.

We all get it: we are in tough times that call for marketers to focus on loyalty, retention and engaging in programs that elevate the advocates and revive and recalibrate the detractors. So why isn't anybody listening to the customer in every way possible?

These issues and more are explored in our new research, Giving Customer Voice More Volume. We were very lucky to work with customer experience experts, Satmetrix, to unearth the trends specific to customer listening, customer experience and marketing's role in building and redefining the "customer-centric culture."

It isn't as easy as putting your ear to the wall and listening. We must wrap that customer voice with real programs and solutions that build and grow customer centric behaviors. We have to measure, monitor and improve on experience as a constantly evolving and growing project.

The report is now available to download, and if you are at all interested in listening to your customers—actually hearing them and acting on their needs and expectations—we have a fantastic group of peer-experts who have shared their best practices in developing customer experience.

Until Next Month!

Liz Miller
VP, Programs & Operations
CMO Council

Engagement as the New Business Battleground

By Adam Edmunds, CEO of Allegiance, Inc.

Traditionally, businesses have competed in the battlegrounds of price, service and quality. However, with the increasing speed of change, companies are having difficulty maintaining a lead based on these elements alone. Engagement presents a new way for companies to surpass their competition. Engagement, which involves making an emotional connection with customers, provides a competitive edge that can make the difference in a company's success or failure.

True engagement goes beyond customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customers become engaged with a company or brand through the repeated and ongoing positive interactions with it. When customers are engaged with an organization, they are passionate about its products and services, as well as aligned with the purpose and direction of the organization.

Engagement is needed more than ever during tough times because it has a powerful impact on retention, growth and profits. Engaged customers demonstrate behaviors such as referring other people, buying more products more often, staying longer in a business relationship, and remaining loyal even when faced with poor customer service or a bad product experience. Customers who increase these desirable behaviors are more economically valuable. By measuring the impact of these behaviors, business managers can show how engagement activities increase revenues.

To capitalize on engagement, businesses first need to understand what drives engagement so that it can be measured. Allegiance loyalty experts have identified four primary drivers of engagement. They include Feeling Protected, Feeling Confident and Informed, Feeling Valued, and Helpful Service. These drivers are the foundation of how customers rate their emotional bond with a business. They also provide a basis for measuring and evaluating levels of customer engagement over time.

For example, customers begin to form a strong emotional bond with an organization after they experience multiple episodes of helpful and enjoyable service. Over time, exceptional service and learning experiences engender a belief and feeling that a company cares about the overall wellbeing of its customers. When this happens, customers "buy in" and "relate to" the vision and direction of the company. They gain a sense of protection and security. The result is totally engaged customers who identify and express themselves by the company's products and services they purchase and use.

Historically engagement has been elusive and hard to measure. However, there are four outcomes of customer engagement that can be measured in actual dollars:

1. Share of Wallet - Engaged customers buy more products/services, more often
2. Positive Referral - Engaged customers persuade potential customers to switch brands
3. Customer Churn - Engaged customers remain loyal and stay longer
4. Feedback Response - Engaged customers give more feedback, which allows companies the opportunity to address concerns and save potentially lost revenue

The ability to identify, measure and manage engagement cost-effectively across the enterprise is now possible with new technology, thus opening up a new opportunity for businesses. What used to be available only to companies with a culture built around the concept of engagement is now available to a much broader spectrum of organizations. To make engagement a practical reality, businesses needs to be able to collect both solicited and unsolicited feedback through a centralized system. Solicited feedback is collected through customer surveys, while unsolicited feedback is gathered from customer comments and suggestions. By managing both in a centralized system, companies can monitor engagement trends and determine further actions to increase engagement.

Even using conservative numbers, the financial benefits of engagement are substantial. Our research shows that it can be measured, and it is not as difficult as companies think. In fact, we found that improving customer engagement by a small amount, as little as one percent, can have a dramatic impact on financial results. The economics of engagement are real, and they can have a major impact on any business willing to invest the time, energy and resources in a plan of action. While most companies continue to compete on the traditional battlegrounds of price, service and quality, those that capitalize on engagement will create an unbeatable advantage.

Adam Edmunds is CEO of Allegiance Inc. Allegiance offers feedback management software to help organizations grow customer and employee loyalty and engagement. www.allegiance.com.

The Marketing Mega Opportunities of 2009
By Naseem Javed, author of Naming for Power

The daily cinema living
The hunger for moving pictures, like a global conspiracy or an underground movement, has almost killed the flat and still imagery. Every marketing or propaganda message now has to move in dimensions or it will be considered boring or dead. This change has already made a very positive impact on screen-based mediums, from hand held devices, wall size TVs to building size electronic billboards. The streets and shopping malls will eventually look like the insides of cinemas. As long as these new mediums can project and show things live and in color the world will keep on moving. The entire interiors, walls, corridors, hallways floors and ceilings would be nothing but screens with projected moving images. The dramatic reductions of the cost of projection, availability of dynamic animated contents will keep customers enticed and ring the cash registers. The more available surface the better, tackle the new shape and style of imagery, create new business models and watch the show.

The real-time-societies
Think, feel, produce and deliver all info in real time. The financial meltdown demands real-time and not yesterday's numbers. There is a constant need to see the portfolio swings in real time all over the world. The recession has become depression and depression has turned into compression of data into online streams of global news delivered via new medium. Some 100 major newspapers in the West are on sale now and majority may not make it. The newspaper cemetery will keep on getting larger. A quick jump from Newspaper-to-web-portal is one of the last ways left to survive. Asia has extra-ordinary customer base and massive distribution to hold on a bit longer. Keep away from old medium and embrace new cyber-opportunities, study the trends and create new services, use global standards and global branding quality even for the smallest venture, like a fire you could be on top, just ignite new ideas.

The new office-less offices
The digitized hyper flow of information after colliding with miniaturization of the hardware has now liberated the people from their offices and linked them to massive sources while opening their eyes for good. The traditional millions of fancy offices around the world are slowly turning into invisible office less teams showing off their magic measured in clicks and instant revenue streaming for their relative projects. The beanbag offices of the hippy past are now empty. while office buildings slowly becoming flee markets. Customers simply will not pay extra for expensive offices and uncomfortable art-deco furniture. Discover hassle free and mobile working and fill the new HR needs based on these changes

The no-logo branding
99% of the logos of today simply evaporate as now it is more to do will name-calling or name-typing and not logo-scanning or logo screaming. Just ask 10 people around if they can recall the logos of any thing major created in the last 10 years. Can you recall the logo of Youtube or Facebook? The logo masters should channel their energies on much broader graphical services and forget about global logo identities, use logo as a playmate like Google changes it daily. The free logo contests via net are becoming very popular among businesses when a single online appeal on a portal or blog gets hundreds of submissions from all over the world and some even better than what Madison Avenue currently produces. Some contest are even asking the entire image and advertising campaign, with copy, theme and the works. Invent large-scale free contests for right customers, award talents and all at no costs. Ride the new shifts of the industry.

The new agencies
Methodologies to create instant surplus cash for clients will be the real measurement and critical test for advertising and branding agencies. These agencies will be expected to deliver a finished building and not just a conceptual drawing. The dying ad industry in this global recession could get dramatically compressed like a bullet and get fired into a brand new state of the art image delivery service not yet expressed in all of the overly flashed websites of the trade...a brand new model will certainly be squeezed out. The old fashioned model of 1000 offices worldwide offering 1000 similar services to the same client will be forced to attempt a globally-dedicated-single-client-agency-model. Graphic and slogan based branding will defuse into same-day-quick-printing-services. Study the click society and rediscover real marketing power, become a leaders under new models.

The new infantries
Websites will be totally re-invented; Brand mangers will be reshuffled and Brands will be dry-cleaned, the message re-distilled and finally end-users once again respected. India will become a hot spot, with a million plus technology experts, an infantry with English fluency and free spirited creative and entrepreneurial mind on hand it would acquire the centrality toward a global ad and design center. Discover Hinglish. The Eastern model is very dynamic and there are far too many new services yet to be created for the entire Asian market.

The new cyberspace
Focusing on global image and cyber-branding trends, the option to purchase exclusive global rights to a name of your choice, now available in May 2009 from ICANN for an $185,000.00 USD fee on a first-come-non-refundable basis is a mega revolution. The price per name is high, but nothing compared to all the other traditional costs that companies pay to create a global imagery or millions fighting trademark and domain battles to secure a global position. It is the best new way to build global brands and hold cyber domination. This revolution may also be the greatest salvation for the entire advertising, branding and PR industry worldwide. The new debates over popular name targets as listed by ABC Namebank are becoming hot marketing topics. This platform is about to cut 95% of the traditional brand building costs and 95% of excessive time it takes to create global visibility. So embrace the facts, approach it correctly and lead the charge.

The new image shift
The sudden worldwide disappearance of major brands, and industrial icons will not only fuel the new creation of branding and imaging in Asia but dramatically increase the level of confidence necessary to take charge of the refined science of global image building strategies, once only reserved for the West. The meltdown of thousand plus monster brands will change the global landscape of world-class name identity holders. Asia will lead and it is time to study the region and plant new ideas. Monumental sea changes on HR training and internal placement issues are pending. Capture the essence and expand.

The new innovative nations
Nations with enforced education on the pragmatic side of life will have a chance to shine, people with new skills will have the new jobs and employers with global vision will lead for the new world, while the rest will stay very dry in very harsh surrounding. Global recession will force innovative thinking all around and to the farthest corners while ecommerce will get even more popular, deeper and powerful. Image and a new advance level of brand image marketing will become increasingly more important. Despite all the problems, there will be resilience and human skills will further sparkle, brighter new ideas will emerge while the world gets somewhat more open and wisely offers a mirror to each nation to correct itself.

Change fast but stay on course, adopt world-class rules but stay very frugal and only go for the best in everything. The world overall has turned itself into a massive junkyard and therefore the true quality will always shine. So know the difference and make the difference, transform today and become an agent of change.

Naseem Javed is a widely recognized a world-authority on corporate nomenclature and global image issues. Author of "Naming for Power," Naseem introduced The Laws of Corporate Naming in 80s and currently is lecturing on global cyber branding and the new ICANN platform.