Here at The Future of Customer Engagement and Commerce, we’re always looking for what’s coming next. What will be on the minds of marketers and commerceprofessionals in 2016? That remains to be seen. But what we do know is what was on your minds in 2015.
Based on what you loved and shared with your peers from our site over the past 12 months, you had your eyes on the prize: creating world-class B2B and B2C customer experiences, and making good on the promise of omni-channel. Without further ado, we offer up our top 10 posts most-shared posts from 2015.
10. How to innovate: Create a conversation, not a presentationWhen tapping your companys brain trust to come up with new ways to tackle problems or innovate new products or services, whats the best way to move forward? If youre thinking about brainstorming, youve got a lot of company. However, I believe that while the concept of brainstorming is a good one, the traditional process should be reworked. How many of you have been in brainstorming sessions when brains were actually storming my guess is very few. [Read The Rest]
9. B2B disruption is coming fast, are you ready?Too many B2B organizations still hold fast to the idea that they can bring a knife to a gunfight. Everyone knows what Amazon is, and many have heard of AliBaba, but they fail to make the connection between what these B2C organizations do. They also overlook the fact that B2B customers are demanding similar features and functions when they make business purchases as they enjoy when they make consumer purchases from home. [Read The Rest]
8. The customer relationship doesn’t end at checkoutWhere does ongoing retail success reside? It may surprise you to know it happens on the other side of the checkout, after the customers current purchase is complete.For centuries, merchants placed their focus on bringing shoppers to the storefront. [Read The Rest]
7. The changing face of B2B marketingWere all consumers, but not all of us are marketers. Those of us with the unique perspective of being both buyer and marketer are far more aware of how consumer marketing tactics and techniques are now finding their way into the B2B environment. [Read The Rest]
6. 5 key factors in a winning omni-channel experienceFor brands that want to reach modern customers, omni-channel commerce is no longer optional. The contemporary customer makes purchasing decisions that unfold over multiple touchpointsonline, offline, via mobile andon social channels. [Read The Rest]
5. The Internet is about to take a U-turn, is your business prepared?The Internet has always been based on the pull modelthe user pulls information into their browserby searchingand following the links in those search results. The pull model is so entrenched in the Internet economy that search engine optimization (SEO) became an entire industry with its own gurus and magic. [Read The Rest]
4. How can you measure customer experience?How do you measure something thats qualitative like customer experience (or sum of discrete moments as Gartner calls it)? When you say its a great experience, how great was it, exactly? Can you give a precision metric, say 13.475 percent greater as compared to your previous experience? And what is the basis of that number? Truth is you cant. [Read The Rest]
3. Great leaders understand great customer experiencesCreating a customer experience culture is a tall order and it begins with leadership that addresses the concerns of its internal constituents.After all, happy employees equal happy customers. [Read The Rest]
2. The (old-fashioned) secret ingredient to omni-channel successWe are all familiar now with the principles of the omni-channel business model: todays customers demand seamless experiences centered on their needs, meaning that brands and businesses need to reinvent their processes and offerings to keep up. [Read The Rest]
1.3 steps to choosing a B2B e-commerce platform:The commerce platform itself is just one piece of a larger organizational structure. The individual or sub-team responsible for the commerce system wont have expertise in everything. The supply chain team will make critical decisions, and the finance group will be best equipped to make budget and capital decisions. Your IT team will determine how to manage all of the integrations. By bringing the right people to the table to make sure all stakeholders have given their input, everyone will feel that their needs were considered and that their voices were heard along the way. [Read the rest]
