I hate the term Big Data.  Everytime I hear it or read it, I cringe.

Its a reminder of my early days in the content management industry where much of the focus was on the massive volumes of content that already existed and were being generated each day by people and organizations.  The message was one of panic, “You have to get this under control.”

What was not heard in that voice for massive spending on storage and systems was more pragmatic advice.  Insight that said of that mass of content on corporations, only 10% was really being used (or would ever be used).  Now some of this changed with compliance regulations about storage, but if people had focused on content value rather than content volume, we might be in a different place today.

Well, now there is more and more content and more and more data, and with it comes the term I love to hate.  Big Data is a problem.  Its like being lost in a forest, overwhelmed by information and not sure what it is telling you.

I wish the focus was not on Big Data—the problem—but on Deep Insight- the solution.  If you haven’t figured out how you are going to synthesize big data, than there is really little to no value in collecting it (unless you think you’ll figure it out soon).

People are already overwhelmed with information.  In many cases, we see examples of dashboards, that have 8 or 10 different windows—almost like information cockpits.  Unfortunately, the user’s aren’t pilots, who do this every day.  Its knowledge workers who have many other duties.  It violates my ideas on designing user experiences.  It overwhelms rather than simplifies.

We keep losing sight of a problem that has been acknowledged for years, but is getting worse.  Information overload.  Even in the world of customer experience, information overload diminishes customer power.  Just as we can add value by guiding customers, we need to think the same about big data.

For big data to matter, we have to focus on the insight it will provide and how we will use that insight.  If that happens, then Big Data is a good thing.

If not, then its another arms race to collect masses of information that provide no value beyond losing focus on what matters and confusing people.  Hopefully, those are the discussions you are having about Big Data, but at the surface—where most people spend their limited time—the Big Data hype is too focused on the problem and not enough on the solution.

FINAL UPDATE: It has been a week or more since the original experience and I’ve had a few more interactions with Delta Customer Care.  I even sent a message to the CEO, talking about the importance of customer experience and the ways they could improve (Here is a great resource for that—a little dated, but still accurate for Delta).  I got no response (no surprise).

The most interesting things about the latest interaction were that Delta chastised me for not understanding all of their rules (telling me I should have clicked on the link in the smallest type at the bottom corner of the page) and telling me that they also did have medical emergency fares:

We regret that you are dissatisfied with our change fee policy. For future reference, we have Medical fares that allow you to change or cancel your reservation free of charge in the event of a medical emergency. Please click the link below for more information:

http://www.delta.com/planning_reservations/special_travel_needs/medical_fare/index.jsp

Unfortunately, the ticket you purchased is nonrefundable and has restrictions that may not be waived. However, we will waive the change fee once you provide the necessary documentation.

I decided to pull this thread a bit so I asked, if it was within their rules to:

1. Waive the change fee, given the circumstances (yes).

2. Offer the medical fare, given the circumstances (yes).

3.  Apply funds used for the non-refundable ticket to pay for the new ticket. (yes).

But they never offered that option.  Who knows what the medical fare would have been, but I do know it would have been less than the full fare—-and we would likely be thanking them for their consideration.

So now, customer care has made it clear that their own service organization did not offer us all options in a tense time.   Outstanding.

As things stand now, my wife and I won’t be flying Delta unless there are no alternatives (which may be the case, unfortunately).  When we do, our expectations will be low.

The frustrating thing is that with a little dose of common sense, a bit of empowerment, and a dash of customer trust, this could have been a positive experience.  

Its not rocket science.  But its no wonder that so many companies in so many industries are losing money and customers when they can’t guide their people to do the right thing.

UPDATE: After I posted this blog and tweeted about it, I got a very quick response from Delta’s twitter team (@DeltaAssist).  They offered to help and we exchanged some direct messages.  Unfortunately, once they learned I had contacted Customer Care, they said they could not help me, but would try to expedite my request to get a response faster than the 7 to 30 day window provided before.

Three issues here:

1. There is no indication of these Social support channels on Delta’s Customer Care page on the Web site.  I think its a hidden support option that Delta does not want you to know about.

2.  They obviously have issues with multi-channel customer care and don’t have integrated systems or practices.

3.  The disparity in response times from social and email channels is dramatic.

Back to the story.  I did get a response from Customer Care (thanks @DeltaAssist), but it was a corporate form letter response that in effect said:

1. We still don’t trust you (give us all kinds of documentation to get a fee waiver).
2. We have not taken the time to understand your request and offer you options for a resolution (whether I would like them or not).
3. Our policies are our polices…take it or leave it.

With this form letter response, I reached out to @DeltaAssist and again got a quick response.  But they can’t help me, since I’m engaged with customer care.  I’m left to wonder if I would have gotten a more customer centric response if I had started there—but I’ll never know. 

I do know that I would recommend that you never contact Delta Customer Care.  Always go through @DeltaAssist if you want a timely response (whether its a good one or not).

More updates to follow as we move toward a resolution of this saga.

Stay tuned…..

Original Post:

This is a personal rant, and the ending is yet to be determined, but so far, Delta has managed to tick off me and my whole family (and we are letting everyone we can know about it).

My wife had booked a flight to visit her father after he got home from surgery.  He lives in a fairly remote area, so there are not a lot of great options for airports, but we booked early and got a good deal.

Then, on Saturday, we find out that there had been a mistake made in the first surgery and he needed to go back in for emergency efforts—and the family should come immediately.

So, we get on the phone we Delta to see if we can change the ticket, under these circumstances. The good news was Delta offered to waive the change fee, as long as we provided documentation (luckily they did not ask for it in triplicate) on the hospital, attending physician, etc.

The bad news was we had to pay the current fare price, which added close to $1000 to the trip.  All of a sudden, the $150 change fee did not seem so bad.  Despite asking for a break under the circumstances, and having a seat or two available on the planes that left the next morning, they would not budge.  So we found another airline that involved a longer drive that would give us a decent price. 

(Personal note: She made it to see her dad and he is on the path, we hope, to recovery, but not out of the woods yet.)

Today, I contacted Delta Customer care via e-mail (which their site recommended) to share my dissatisfaction and ask for some fair way to deal with the ticket that we have now, that—at a minimum, we won’t use for one leg (and probably both since flying Delta is not something we want to do anymore).

Being someone who cares about customer experience, I shared with them the impact of their decision, the problem with not letting reps have some flexibility on policies, and their demonstrated lack of trust of their customers (all the info they asked for on her dad’s condition and the hospital).  I also documented how being reasonable would not have cost them anything in comparison to the ill will….and questioned their penalizing us for changing the ticket (of course, you are going to raise your ticket prices close to the date of travel—its one of those practices we hate).  I also told them how they might have customers for life if they had just done the right thing.

I’m now waiting to hear back from them after using their recommended method of contact.  Why?  Because they may not be able to get back to me for 30 days (they hope for 7), as the auto response email indicated:

RE: Case Number 5991469

This is an automatically generated message to acknowledge the receipt of your email. Please do not reply to this message.

Thank you for taking the time to write. On behalf of Delta Air Lines, Air France, and KLM we appreciate the opportunity to review your comments. We assure you we will reply within 30 days. Please know we strive to meet a goal of responding within 7 days, however, due to the complexity of some correspondence, we may need additional time to respond and appreciate your patience.

If you need assistance with a current reservation, please contact Reservations directly at 1-800-221-1212 or visit delta.com for our international reservation offices. They will be happy to assist you.

Sincerely,

Customer Care

Delta Air Lines

30 days..or even 7 is pretty bad.  And why would I call to talk to the same people who showed no interest in doing anything remotely involving giving a little bit more.

Now, maybe they won’t care, because we aren’t regular Delta customers (we are in the FF program, but given our local airport in Raleigh—we both end up flying lots of different airlines—personally, I try for JetBlue whenever I can.

But maybe this will help wake them up and get them to do some little things to make customers happier, empower their employees, and improve the experience.

(This is a blog that I wrote that was originally posted on Experience Delivers at Adobe.  They’ve made some changes and I don’t think its available anymore, so I’ve reposted it here).

I’ve been talking a lot about customer journeys, moments of truth, and context lately.  This weekend, I went back and revisited some information I had read on these topics  in the past, much of it is still relevant today (and possibly even moreso).

In June of 2009, David Court and several of his collegues published a paper in the McKinsey Quarterly called “The Consumer Decision Journey.”  In the paper, they talk about how the customer journey has changed as customers have become more knowleldge and empowered due to technology.  There are lots of interesting points and its definitely worth a read.

One thing in particular caught my eye in relation to customer experience, moments of truth, and context.  And that is shown in this figure from the report:

The graphic is a guide (you might need to adjust it for your industry by observing and talking to your customers) for the role your various marketing activities play in purchase decisions.  And, while this is for consumers, a similar pattern is likely to be true for business to business marketing.

The things that jumped out at me from this table were:

• Past history and knowledge of the brand plays a big role in getting you invited for consideration, but is a minor influence at the final point of purchase. 
• Independent influences plays a consistently significant role and can get you added to the evaluation and also sway a purchase decision.
• The final point of closure is critical and customers may change their mind at their point of purchase based on that final experience.

What this means to me is that today’s customer journey is rife with opportunities for distraction (yeah, I know thats kinda obvious).  These distractions will cause journey interruptions that can either delay the decision or result in you losing the business entirely. 

From a customer experience standpoint, this means you can’t let your guard down.  Even if your marketing efforts in the early stages of the journey puts you in the front-runner position, you can easily be supplanted if you get blindsided by independent reviews, tweets, or blogs or a frustrating experience at the closing point. 

On the other hand, as a competitor, you should recognize that you may have the opportunity to jump into a decision journey in the middle (or even the end) and win the business away from your competition (providing you with a nice short sales cycle). Understand the customer’s context and you will set yourself apart.

Two things that can change this dynamic in your favor is superior customer experience across all stages of the journey and a community of advocates for your products and brand.    If you are making things easier for the customer along their journey, and building trust with them–trust that is reinforced by your advocates, they’ll be less likely to be open to distractions and journey interruptions. 

From a competitive standpoint, creating experiences that delight a customer at various points of their journey can win them over.  Buying is still not, and never will be, a purely scientific process.  Emotions are always involved and a good experiences triggers positive emotions.

Netting it out.   Today’s customer is empowered and in control.  They define their own journey and they decide if they want to take you with them on their ride.  The experiences you provide determine how far that journey goes for you or if you can join mid-stream (and kick others off).  Exceed expectations and you’ll start winning business faster and creating a community of advocates.  Fail and you’ll be dumped along the side of the road.

I have posted often about my support for ideas like Geoffrey Moore’s Systems of Engagement and Gartner’s endorsement of a Pace Layering approach to IT’s management of their technology portfolio.  I just think the ideas make sense.

But I recently realized that there are two simple questions that set the minimum user experience bar for applications:

1.  Is using the application required to successfully get things done?

2.  Is the application an integral part of my daily work activities that i use frequently, or do I only use it when necessary to complete a specific task?

And the decisions that follow are fairly simple:

1. If required and frequent, make it functional.
   In this scenario, you can expect the user to go through some training to learn the application and since they use it frequently, they’ll learn how to get things done.  Internal applications like core ERP and HR probably fall into this category.  Often, the value of these apps is not mea

   

2. If required and occasional, make it intuitive.
   Intuitive applications are ones that people can quickly understand and get a feel for.  Detailed training should not be expected, and they need to be something people will feel comfortable with  quickly.  Speed is of the essence.  Self-Service applications fit this category (e.g. expense reporting).
3. If optional and occasional, make it Obvious.
   If I don’t have to use the application and only need it occasionally, I want to go beyond intuitive.  Don’t make me figure things out, make it so easy its obvious.  I would put e-commerce in this category.
4. If optional and frequent, it better be Engaging.
   Finally, if you want someone to use an optio nal application as am integral part of their work activities, it needs to engage them.  This could be the interface, but its more likely that its a combination of that and the content and functionality of the application.  It needs to entice them into seeing how it makes their work day easier.

I’d submit that applications for sales, like SFA, should fall into this category.  In reality, unless you create artificial mandates (you must use the system), they aren’t truly required to close business—-they are there to help.   

The unfortunate reality is most SFA applications (and yes I am picking on SFA as convenient example), tend toward being more functionally oriented, which helps explain why there are oft-cited adoption issues.

As you look at applications as a buyer (or design them as a vendor), think about the two user experience questions. I think both questions are not considered deeply enough before products are designed.  We wish and hope that people will view them as required and use them all the time, but that is not reality.

Be pragmatic and realistic and you’ll set the minimum bar for your user experience investment.  Go beyond the minimum to differentiate further or drive more user satisfaction.

I’ve long been a fan and proponent of the use of context to improve communications and customer experience.  But then again, who isn’t.  Its hard to argue with the idea of tailoring messages based on what you know about the receiver.

This idea has been talked about for a while.  In fact, Don Schultz, a Northwestern Professor known as the father of integrated marketing communications, talked about it in the early 90’s in a book he wrote with Stanley Tannebaum and Rober Lauterborn calledThe New Marketing Paradigm.  While the book may seem dated, the ideas aren’t.

In the second chapter, Don and team talked about how people process information and how communications work.  I have gone back to the models many times over the years and feel now is a great time to revisit them, as the ideas are more applicable and amplified in today’s market.

The general model of communications is depicted in the picture below (I have made some minor adaptations to the version in the book):

For any message, there is a sender and a receiver.  The rest of the picture illustrates the other things that impact how well the message will be received:

• The circles represent “fields of experience” which I think of as a frame of reference—-the backgrounds, existing knowledge and perceptions, demographics, etc. of the sender or receiver.  The overlap reflects “shared experiences”—think if it as the sender and receiver being on the same page.
• Noise are things that get in the way.  This could be distractions, incorrect assumptions (on the part of the sender),  or other things that cause the receiver not to “get” the message.
• Feedback provides a means for the receiver to let the sender know if they go the message, and how they felt about it.

Pretty simple, huh.

Obviously, if the noise is great or the fields of experience don’t overlap much, its likely that the message won’t be received.  If the receiver provides feedback and the sender ignores it, then a different type of noise will occur, the noise of the “tune out.”

From here, its pretty easy to figure out the importance of contextual communications for both marketing and sales.  Its the converse of the last statements.

If the sender works to understand the receivers frame of reference to establish more overlap in fields of experience, then the message is more likely to be received.  If they find ways to minimize the noise and distractions (admittedly hard in today’s world) by keeping the receiver focused on them and the message, then they’ll be more effective.  Finally, if they ask for, listen, and use feedback, they can continue to expand the overlap and deliver messages successfully.  ALl of that is another word for context.

For direct sellers, this may be easier, since they are engaging directly with specific people.  For online communications, its harder, but there are so many ways to build up context about site visitors or community members that it is far from impossible.

Regardless of the path, remembering the basics of this model and using it to guide your communication efforts in marketing and sales will help you be more successful.

It's Not Easy Being Easy | Forrester Blogs

Core to great CX is getting the basics right…Make things incredibly easy…and customers will really apprecaite it.

Megan Burns describes how Kohl’s and USAA approach the task.

I keep hearing how easy things are in today’s always on, social world.  Statements like:

• “You can find anything you want at the touch of the button.” and 
• “Customers have more power than ever before (this is true,but there is a but).”

are made regularly.

And I am buying it less and less.  I’m pretty savvy about the world of the Internet, but am feeling increasingly overwhelmed and wondering if I missed anything important.  For me this amplifies in a few ways almost every day:

• Someone  tells me about a new social tool that I “have to use”
• I am away from twitter for several hours and wonder what I missed
• I find a great blog post and read some older postings at the blog and realize that there is a lot of great information.

I’d bet most of you feel the same way.

To combat this, I’ve become convinced that a key role in business today is to be a guide.  This is a logical role for sales, particularly in the B2B sales environment.

Think about it.  When you go to visit a new place, its not unusual to go on a guided tour.  The guide helps you learn about the place, builds your interest and excitement, and helps you feel more comfortable.  A great guide gets you really hooked and is often rewarded with you spending a whole lot more than you planned at the souvenir shop at the end of the tour.

Sales has the same opportunity.  They can either cede all the power (and work) to the customer and wait until they come to them with a list of needs and wants and just respond to that.

Or they can become a guide.  Instead of letting your customers wade through the mess of information that is around today (information overload never stops), become their ‘tour guide’ in your area of expertise.  Help them navigate to the stuff that is most important and cool.   Provide them with insight that they could not find on their own.  Get them excited and enthralled through your storytelling.  And finally, get them to buy your products and solutions that bring the story to life for them.

Approaching your sales role as that of a Guide is a great way to execute on Ian Brodie’s ideas of expertise based selling  and Dave Brock’s ideas about stacking the deck.

And it fits with the experience era.  While you can focus all your efforts on creating compelling digital experiences that engage and inform customers, I’d posit that that will only get you so far.   Enhancing those experiences with a sales team that is full of storytellers that act as guides will take your efforts to the next level.

I recently purchased, or better to say started purchasing, some Sonos components for my home.  I had heard of Sonos (I think) a few years back, but it seemed expensive.   Then a friend told me about it and showed me their system and I was ready to dive in.

For those that don’t know, Sonos, www.sonos.com, is a home music system.  You plug in speakers wherever you have power, and they stream music from a variety of sources (Pandora, Spotify, etc.).

I initially purchased two components.  A “bridge” to connect to my WIFI network and one speaker.  And I’m hooked.  Here is why:

1. The setup was amazing.  I have a secure network, but all I had to do was load some software on my PC (they have it for Windows, iphone/ipad, and Android) and say I wanted to add a component.  Press a button on the device, and its now part of your system.  It takes seconds.  The simplest installation ever in my life.  The only “hard” part was getting my music library on my laptop to be recognized by Sonos, but that was a Windows problem that I fixed in less than 20 minutes with some simple Web searches.
2. Expansion is easy.  Since that initial purchase, I’ve added two components.  Another speaker (in another room) and a “connect” device that lets me use my existing stereo system as another output channel.  Same simplicity of setup.
3. The software is great. As I mentioned, they Sonos app runs on PCs, Android, and iOS.  I can control music from my DROID, Kindle Fire, or PC—at the same time.  And its easy.  Play the same music in all “rooms” or different music in each.  Its really easy.
4. A better context for music services.  We all know there are lots of music services out there.  But searching them on the Web, even with referrals, can be hard.  Sonos has aggregated the top services (and continues to add more) that you can choose within a focused context.   I’ve tried more services in the past month than I had in the last 5 years (and I am a music junkie).  Two that stand out for me are Slacker Radio (www.slacker.com), which may be better than Pandora, and Wolfgangs Vault (www.wolfgangsvault.com), a source for concert recordings that are pretty amazing.

While I’ve heard that Google is coming out with a home entertainment device, I don’t care.  Sonos has me hooked.  The experience and simplicity of everything sets a bar that may be impossible to match.  (and I can also buy through Amazon, which makes things easy for me). 

If you love music, check them out.

A common theme that continues to occur is confusing customer and user experience, particularly around digital interactions.  Let me explain.

I am a qualified tester for a great service, usertesting.com.  Its a fun diversion for me. UserTesting crowdsources usability tests for Websites in a way that is very affordable.  You simply sign up for a test, describe the scenario you want tested and the questions you’d like answered, provide some basic demographics for the desired testers, and your ready to go.  The UserTesting folks sent the request out to their community of approved testers and they have at it.  Usually, you’ll have results within a few hours, or less.  Its great and lots of people have improved their sites using it.

Since some people have not done a lot of this, they provide some guidance and sample questions to ease the process. Here is an example:

The last question illustrates the issue.  It asks “how likely are you to recommend this site….”.  In most cases, the sites I have reviewed are about other goods and services that are promoted, and can be bought, on the site, but the site is not the service.

As a result, my answer is pretty consistent.

If the site has a good user experience, I say  (service example) something like “If the service delivers onthe value promised, I would recommend this site to my friends.  But if it does not, I would not recommend the site and might, in fact, complain about it to them.” 

if the site has user experience issues, I say (product example) “If the product delivers on the value promised AND you improve the site, then I would recommend it.  But if the product does not deliver the value, then no matter how you improve the site, I won’t recommend it.  If the product is really great, I might recommend the site despite usability issues telling people “once you get through the site, you’ll love the product.”

Customer Experience is about the totality of the interaction with the company.  User experience can be one aspect of it as it impacts how easy and enjoyable it is to accomplish some tasks, but a great user experience without follow through is quickly forgotten, or worse yet, remembered as yet another broken promise.

What do you think?  As digital interactions grow, are you over investing in user experience while letting other customer experience issues linger?

Executives are customers too. So, why the perception gap on what influences brand, reputation and trust? | CustomerThink

When I started working with SAP on the marketing of their Sales OnDemand application, I was quickly introduced to some research by the Sales Executive Council (note: access to some material requires you to register and membership provides even more) around sales performance during the downturn (and beyond, as it turns out).

Their findings are documented in an excellent book called, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation. Withing telling the whole story, the crux of their research found that sales reps that “Teach, Tailor, and Take Control” significantly outperform other reps, particularly reps that focused primarily on building relationships with their customers (making sure that their customers “liked” them).

This links very closely to a lot of the dialog that continues to go on about Customer Experience Management.   Many people think the key to a great experience is delighting the customer.  If I make them happy, then I’ve won.  

In reality, that is a bit short sighted.  Th first thing that matters in great customer experiences is solving a need—then things like delighting the customer can help set you apart.  Linda Ireland is one of the most vocal CEM experts who expresses concern about focusing on delighting the customer as the lead goal of experience efforts.  Here is one of her posts where she describes 7 truths that are common across all customer experiences.

For customer experience to work, it has to be of value to both the customer and the company.  One sided relationships won’t last long and are not valuable.  While I was at Adobe, I described a way to assess the value of customer experience efforts by measuring them based on the value to the customer and the ROI to the business.

There was one other interesting piece of research from the SEC where they have found that the B2B customer has completed 57% of their buying process before they every contact vendors.  57%!  The implications of this isstill being researched, but some possibilities that come to mind for me include:

• The content about your company on Web sites (your own and others) and in social media channels needs to be clear, detailed, and compelling.
• Sales better know what is available to customers. Contradicting this public information without a valid reason will cause customers to quickly lose trust.
• When sales is engaged, they better quickly find out if they are simply column fodder, in the lead, or have an opportunity to guide the customer toward a solution that is better (for the customer—and the selling company).

This redirection requires the core capabilities of a Challenger rep to be employed:

• They “teach” customers about new ideas and approaches that can help their business.  They don’t ask if they want/need something—they tell them why they need to think differently and what it can mean for their business.  This is analagous to the the role of Web and social channels in customer efforts to learn about things that can address their needs.   Its also similar to ideas I expressed about awe-ing your customers.
  

• They “tailor” their messages based on the audience.  This is all about context.  Tailoring messages personalize them to the particular needs and interests of that audience.  This helps make them more engaged and active in listening to your ideas. There is universal agreement that context is a key element of great experiences as your tailor information to your customers, show them that you know them, and generally save them time and effort.

• They “take control” of the conversation.  This is an interesting one, but to me its all about setting up the win-win environment.  If you’ve taken the time to contextually tailor ideas that are new, but high value for the customer, you’ve earned the right to guide the conversation down a path that makes it a win-win for the business.  This helps change the nature of the relationship with the customer. The control element only works if you have satisfied the customer need—the baseline element of great experiences.  If that has happened, then taking control with a win-win goal makes sense and is something customers accept willingly.

There is a ton more to the research and the ongoing discussions around the Challenger sales rep.  For folks that are worried about B2B Customer Experiences, its a great area to dive deep—as it provides new ideas that validate and guide sales efforts in the Customer Experience era.

I’ll be blogging more about these issues here and other places in the coming year.  Its a fascinating and exciting area.

- Hank (@HBonCX)

A year ago, I was just about to transition into a new role at Adobe, spending more of my time working, as my manager, Rob Pinkerton, said, “to move big rocks” in development of the new Customer Experience Management technology category and establishing Adobe’s position in it.

Thinking about what has changed in that time:

• Early in 2011, many were still questioning the importance of technology in CX strategies.  By the second half of the year, multiple analysts were writing research notes on technology platforms for customer experience.
• Geoffrey Moore’s ideas about Systems of Engagement v. Systems of Record and Gartner applying Pace Layering concepts to technology planning began to take hold.
• The understanding, really due to mobile and social, that the customer was truly in control (something many of us believed to be the case for many years, hit mainstream.  The need to be different is readily accepted.

I look at all this with pride in being a small part of the people that helped drive this change.  Big Rocks, indeed, were moved.

Then, more change happened.  The leader of our group left to run Lithium.  Much scurrying occurred as Adobe’s senior management decided what to do.  Ultimately, they folded the CEM business into the Digital Marketing group that was run by ex-Omniture team.   The focus shifted from Customer Experience as a big idea initiative to Digital Marketing as the big initiative with customer, or web, experience as a sub-element of the strategy.  

This probably makes sense for Adobe, due to their strong presence in many aspects of marketing, but it does not, personally, resonate with me.  If you truly buy into the Customer Experience phenomenon, then marketing activities should be executed based on your CX strategy and brand promise.  CX drives digital marketing, not vice versa.

This differences of opinion were moot, as I was part of the Adobe’s restructuring around Digital Marketing.  Being remote (working from a home base in NC) and a strong and visible champion of CEM probably contributed to those decisions, but that is water under the bridge.  Its time for something new and different.

One of the interesting aspects of CX is the role of sales, particularly in the B2B environment with complex products/solutions.  In those environments, sales interactions must align, complement, and build off of Web and social interactions to further increase customer understanding and accelerate their buying cycle.

Unfortunately, most CRM and SFA systems are more about process and information control and not about empowerment and engagement.  They may provide some value, but the focus is not on improving experience.

SAP seems to be looking at it differently, and I’m happy to share that I’m now working with their Sales OnDemand team to amplify those differences.  Sales OnDemand is built to enable collaborative selling—enabling sales teams to work together more fluidly to enhance the customer buying process and collaborate on solutions that challenge current assumptions and take the customer farther than they thought possible.  It integrates in-context, social collaboration (context and social collaboration—two key elements) into the sales management efforts—letting people share information easier and find it faster than ever before.

When I saw it, my reaction was “this is nothing like any SAP software I have ever seen”, and that is why I joined the team.  It really brings to life Moore’s System of Engagement ideas in an enterprise context.

Is it perfect? Not yet, its still in its early stages.  But for those looking for a different way to leverage technology to enhance sales that will help customers’ have a positive experience, it looks to me like it will start you down that path, delivering value today and more improvements tomorrow (since its a cloud product, those upgrades should be painless for customers).

2012 promises to be interesting…for this site, you might see a change to focus more on B2B and Sales related CX issues, but now you know why.