The Content Repository is the Key to Customer Experience Management

August 16th, 2012 | | Content in Context, Guest Blogger
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There is a lot of discussion around the role of the web content management system in customer experience management (CXM). Some say it’s the core, others say it’s an element, but not a driver. I say they are both right.

Let`s be very specific here, because it is important. If we were just talking purely about the online customer experience, then I would agree that the web content management system (WCM) is the core to designing and support CXM strategies. Pretty much every supporting CXM technology: marketing automation, social media monitoring, customer relationship management, analytics, personalization, social software, etc…needs to integrate with the WCM. Why? Because it stores all the content you need to manage the experience. We use to call this WebEngagement (orExperience) Management.

But customer experience management is about more than the online channels. And not all WCM platforms provide support to the offline experience. Support channels, print-based marketing, internal knowledge work activities — these things are typically done using other tools. And the content used to support these activities is, typically, stored in these other tools.

What I think brings both these views together is not the WCM itself, but the WCM repository. Or to be more generic, the content repository. I think to be successful managing the customer experience, you need to be able to quickly access and relate all elements of a customer interaction with all the internal knowledge your employees have about not only the customer, but the processes used to work with a customer. You can do that if you have a single content repository to work with.

Many content management systems today are designed to store content not as html pages, but as individual components of content that can be easily reused across different web pages, mobile sites and apps, social networks and more. Managing a single version of that content is important to ensure you are always saying the same thing to your customers. These repositories can also be leveraged by other systems to provide content as well. For example, this content repository could be used by your call center support team to help customers with issues.

Now it’s important to point out that I don’t believe you can only have one single content repository where all information needs to permanently live. I believe that content integration is the key to a well-managed content repository. So you can keep your content in the other systems you work with, but find a way to integrate your content repository with those others systems.

By doing that, you can have a single location to mine for information about your customer and their interactions with you, and to use to design and build new applications or online/offline experiences. A central content repository also allows you to develop support applications that have access to customer information easily, including any information from CRM systems, traffic information, etc…

Today’s content is not only the material you use to develop your CXM strategies, it’s also the interactions customers and prospective customers have with you. Having it all accessible in a centralized content repository will help you identify, design and refine your CXM strategies quickly. If you are required to move from system to system to gather all the intelligence and information you need, you are going to spend far more time hunting and gathering, than actually doing something.

Barb Mosher is a guest columnist for MindTouch and Managing Editor for CMSWire.com. You can follow Barb on Twitter @bmosherzinck

Social Customer Service on Sesame Street

August 3rd, 2012 | | content strategy, Customer
Sesame Street- 35th Season Opening Show

It’s a brave new world of customer service. It’s called “social customer service” and it doesn’t mean you can do away with your 1-800 number or your legion of call center agents. But it does mean there are a lot more ways to help your customers. This includes social networking on Facebook and Twitters, and communities where you can offer knowledge bases, ideation, games to reward participation and much more. The options are as varied as your customers.

To give you an idea of how your different customers like to interact with this world of social customer service, let’s talk a walk along Sesame Street and meet the people that we see each day.

Ernie: Ernie is your typically chatty Cathy. He likes to ask a lot of questions and interact with all kinds of people. So when he has a problem like why his rubber ducky keeps taking on water or what’s the best bath temperature so rubber ducky doesn’t get ruined, he’ll ask a question on Twitter or your Facebook page – actually Facebook is one of his favorite places find information and help others.

Bert: Bert’s Ernie best friend, but he’s the opposite of Ernie. He’s a bookworm (bird books are his favorite), and not overtly social. Most of his time is spent with his nose in a book, so when he has a problem, his favorite places to look for answers include your online help support or the knowledge base in your branded community. While it’s important to first find the answer he needs, his love of learning means that if you can point him to other related information like the best bird seed to put out in the winter, or where the bald eagle raises its young, you’ll have a customer for life.

Big Bird: Big Bird is the most active customer in your branded community. He is the one everyone comes to for help. He listens and helps out where ever he can. He is considered the most knowledgeable person on a variety of topics including birds, bathing and dealing with imaginary friends. Big Bird is the customer you need to pay a lot of attention to and reward well, because without him, your community would be a much quieter place.

Mr Snuffaluffagus: Snuffy is a pretty intelligent fellow, but he keeps to himself. Called shy by some, Snuffy likes to think up really cool ideas; which means if you have a way for him to make suggestions he’ll spend a lot of time there. He also likes to comment and vote on other people’s ideas. A lot of people have heard about him and appreciate all the good comments, but no one is really sure who he is.

Elmo: Ah, yes, Elmo – the happy -go-lucky little red fella who’s always giggling and happy. Elmo’s not the most knowledgeable guy, but he loves games, so whenever he can he helps out in your community providing the best information and ideas he can, commenting and voting where appropriate, hoping to win a badge or two, or earn points to put towards a discount on your products.

Maria & Louis: This husband and wife team is a bit old school. When they have a problem they still prefer to talk to someone on the phone. But at the same they understand that sometimes it’s the people around them who can help answer their questions the fastest. So while they don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, they do visit your branded community every once in a while to ask a question or do some research.

Oscar the Grouch: Oscar is your worst nightmare and potentially your biggest ally. When he has a problem you’ll know it, because he tweets it to all his friends and then he heads to your Facebook page and gives you an earful. It’s not that Oscar is a trouble-maker, it’s just that he has a problem and he wants it fixed, and to be honest, your call center agent wasn’t the most helpful person in the world (I think they made some comment about people who live in garbage cans and Oscar really didn’t appreciate that). Oscar is also the guy, that once he gets his problem solved, by you or another customer, he will let people know the answer and say nice things about you (although maybe a little grudgingly).

There are so many other people (or muppets) who live on Sesame Street who will interact with you in different ways. Most of them are helpful and want to pass their knowledge along. These are the customers you want to reach out and bring into your community, because they will help make it a success. Social customer service is about implementing new tools and technologies to provide information and support in new “social” ways. It’s also about customer “self-service” and providing ways for customers to help each other. I’ve never been a big fan of call centers personally, so this idea of customers helping customers is something I can very much relate to.

If you asked me which Sesame Street character I relate best to, it’s a cross between Bert and Snuffy, but if you asked, I would help you out any day. I’m just that kind of customer.

Barb Mosher is a guest columnist for MindTouch and Managing Editor for CMSWire.com. You can follow Barb on Twitter @bmosherzinck

3 Ways to Optimize Your Content Strategy

July 23rd, 2012 | | Content in Context, content strategy, Tech Comm
keyword

Gerry McGovern says we shouldn’t talk about content strategy, because it’s not the content that should be the primary focus but the task a user is trying to do. The content, he says, supports the task, so we need to frame it in that context.

I like how he looks at it and I do agree that we should focus our work on understanding the reasons why a user comes to a website and what tasks they are trying to achieve. But I also understand that within that task identification evolves a solid content strategy. And I understand that a solid content strategy must include how we are going to reach out across social media and search to get people to find us and come to our site to complete their task.

Krista LaRiviere, of GShiftLabs calls this an optimized content strategy, which she defines as follows:

Optimized Content Marketing is the art of understanding exactly what your prospects and customers need to know and deliberately producing optimized content based on keyword phrases that are driving organic search traffic and conversions. Then delivering that optimized content to them in a relevant and compelling way to grow your business by socializing the content through your organization’s social networks.”

So how can you write optimized content? Here are three suggestions:

1. Analyze the content that people are reading & keywords people are searching on and clean/write more content to meet those needs

This is not a new idea. It’s been around for a while now, but many organizations are still living with the “write it and forget it” mindset. Content needs to be fresh and continually updated. But not all of it. Some of it is crap and needs to be treated as such (crumpled up and thrown in the proverbial garbage can).

So how do you know what’s working, what needs to be better and what’s missing altogether? Analyze your website traffic stats. What are people looking at now, how much time are they spending on that page? What are they searching for? What pages are sending them away?

If you are focused on the task(s) a user comes to your website to do, then your content needs to be written in such a way as to help them achieve that task. The more (and better) content you write that focuses on key areas visited and key search terms, the better chance you have of helping that user achieve their goal.

If you have implemented any social features, like Tweet This, Like This, Comments, etc.. you can also use that information to help you understand what content is most helpful to people. Build more of that. Or improve the stuff that’s not if it’s critical to the task at hand.

2. Track trending topics/keywords in Google for your product/service and make sure you are including them in your content.

Not only should be you analyzing the traffic and social popularity on your own website, but you should also be tracking on the web overall. Google Trends is great for identifying popular keywords and phrases on the web right now. If you track the terms you think are popular, you’ll get a good feel if you are right. You can also track terms used by competitors and through Google search overall.

If a competitor is constantly coming before you in the Google Search results, find out why. Work to understand what they might be doing better to make them more popular in search. But before you make changes to your own content to reflect the popularity of a competitor, decide if it’s the right thing to do based on the tasks your visitors might be trying to achieve. Maybe you’ve been focused in the wrong area all along and need to refine your content.

3. Incorporate Google+ into your sharing options

Easy enough to understand that Google Search would pay close attention to content being recognized via the +1 button. And although there has been much discussion about whether it’s fair or not, the reality is Google+ is becoming an important place to be. So while you are ensuring that you have that Tweet This Button and Like This Button (Facebook), make sure you also have that Google+ button available.

You might also want to spend some time in your Google+ account discussing the content the you have written and also searching out what others have written on the same topic to see how well their content is received.

Closing Comments

These are just three ways to improve your content and get it into the hands of the people who need it. The key is that the content must support a task a user is trying to do, and it needs to be fresh and relevant, not just stacked with keywords. If a person comes to your website and is able to complete their task successfully, your work is done right.

4 Tips to Make your Customers Brand Advocates

March 6th, 2012 | | Content in Context, content strategy, Guest Blogger
voice your opinion

Everyone has customers, or they wouldn’t have a business. But not every customer you have is ready and willing to sing your praises. Yet you need as many of these customers as possible to do just that. So how can you turn a customer into a brand advocate?

Give Them a Voice

Maybe that sounds a bit obvious, because to be a brand advocate they kind of have to be saying things, but you need to do more than simply let them talk about your brand on their own personal social networks. A Brand Advocate does more than let others know how great your product/service is. Brand Advocates can also provide keen insights and suggestions to improve those products and services.

Here are four ways to encourage your customers to not only talk positively about you, but also offer you valuable information to do better.

#1: Build a Branded Community

A branded community is a great way to bring all your customers together to engage with not only you, but other customers. People can share opinions, give advice, discuss issues and more with each other. You, as the owner of the community should be doing several things: listening to what is being said, responding and engaging appropriately (and we aren’t talking marketing speak here) and rewarding those who are most active and provide useful information for others. Done right, a branded community will encourage customers to go outside of the community and continue to say good things about you across their social networks.

#2: Listen, Learn, Reward

Customers want to be heard, and not only that, they want to know that you Read more…

CXM Strategies: Too Much Personalization, Separating Online From Offline Customer Experiences

February 23rd, 2012 | | Content in Context, content strategy, Guest Blogger
Barb Mosher

What does customer experience mean to you?

For me, a great customer experience is a search box on your website — one that actually works. It’s an online chat support person who can answer your simple questions without having to ask someone else. It’s an unsubscribe button that actually unsubscribes you. It’s a website that says just a little bit more about your product than the flashy PDF brochure you can download. And it’s a store clerk who doesn’t ask you for your email address when they already have it in their database.


For others, a great customer experience might be that you remembered they were on their site last week and looked at a certain product, or that you remember that they actually already bought that product and while they don’t need the sales pitch again, it might be great to see some information on how to use it, or see related products. Read more…

Tech Salaries Rising: It’s Time to Harness Data & Share Knowledge

February 9th, 2012 | | Content in Context, Guest Blogger
Barb Mosher

A recent salary survey by Dice.com says that senior tech salaries are on the rise. There are a few things we can learn from this change in direction, and it’s not only that good tech people deserve more money.

Harnessing Data…

The Dice Salary survey was conducted online with 8,325 employed technology professionals between September 19 and November 21, 2011. The results showed an average 2% increase in annual wages over 2010 (from $79,384 to $81,327). Bonuses looked even better jumping up 8%.

The salary stats speak volumes about the importance of harnessing data properly for businesses and finding intelligent ways to both understand and use it.

It is our technical people that both create and support the systems that capture big data, and use the tools that analyze it. And it’s big data that many are saying is the key to developing truly great customer experiences. Darren Guaranccia agrees with this saying:“ Today’s analytics compress their collected data into summary statistics to save space. Big data is the promise of retaining this beautifully detailed data, and helping us plumb its depths to better engage and interact with our customers, even in real-time.” Read more…

What Dora The Explorer Can Teach Us About Great Customer Experience

February 2nd, 2012 | | Content in Context, Guest Blogger, Uncategorized

I have young children, so I get the pleasure (and sometimes the pain) of watching a lot of children’s TV shows. The more I watch these shows, I realize that they can teach us a lot about how to implement great customer experiences. It starts with a task.

Children today are taught much differently than when I was a kid. Then it was all about paper and manual processes, now it’s a much more interactive learning process. It prepares kids for what? To enter the Internet and a vendor’s website only to find that it’s still a manual, “paper-based” process?

If you don’t know who Dora the Explorer is, I suggest you find a show online and take the time to watch it. Basically though, it always starts with Dora having some problem to solve or task to complete, and then goes through the process of her solving the problem or completing the task. Now doesn’t that sound like the basic starting point for a customer or prospect as well? Exactly. Read more…

Content in Context: Support & Sell Without the Sales/Marketing Pitch

January 26th, 2012 | | Content in Context, content strategy, Guest Blogger
bmosher3

When it comes to customer support for products and services, most organizations look to support processes such as online communities, help documentation, customer forums, etc.. But are these tools being used to their best advantage? The truth is, in most cases, they aren’t.

Moving Support into Sales & Marketing

We often take for granted the content used in support processes. Take help documentation as a prime example. It’s probably one of the most hated jobs in the organization, creating help documentation. Nobody reads it, it’s impossible to keep up to date as patches, bug fixes and major updates are completed. It’s shoved in static help documentation files, and placed on CDs, DVDs or in hard to reach places on the website. Is it ever read by a customer? Do they find it useful?

Tech writers and organizations should be happy to know that it doesn’t have to be this way. Read more…

Content in Context: Content is the Tie that Binds Us

January 19th, 2012 | | Content in Context, content strategy, Guest Blogger

It’s time for a little quiz. I’m going to run 5 terms by you quickly, you have to tell me what they mean. Ready?

  1. “customer experience”
  2. “social business”
  3. “content is king”
  4. “customer is king”
  5. “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”

How did you do? Not so great I bet. If you are a business trying to sell your product or service, you probably don’t really care about all these terms marketers are throwing around. You just want to know how to give your customers and prospects the information they need to make the decision to buy from you and/or be happy in the decision they did make to buy from you.

We seem to finally be settling into a world where the customer has most of the power. What this means is that you can have all the fancy websites and marketing brochures you want, but if you aren’t thinking about what your customers need to make decisions, then you’re wasting a tidy sum. And these decisions, by the way, should be in your favor — that’s kind of important.

More Information Than You Know

The online world has become a place where people can quickly find information. But it’s not the only place they look. So you need to be sure you are consistent in your approach to providing that information. Content is the tie that binds all your marketing and support channels together. But it’s about more than great content. You have to offer that content in the right context.

Read more…