This document "Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model" is composed of nine sections. Three sections are written by me, and experts in each specific domain contributed the other six sections: Wendy Soucie from Wendy Soucie Consulting; Karl Havard from pownum; Jim Sterne from Web Analytics Association; Axel Schultze from Xeesm; Rick Mans from Capgemini; and Guy Stephens from Foviance."

If your primary objective is to learn how to ride the wave of social media to enhance the customer experience within a specific touch-point or departmental function, there are already numerous blogs, articles, and publications which serve this purpose well. There is no need for you to spend time reading this document. If, however, our core messages are aligned with your most pressing concerns, it is worth investing your time in reading this paper.

Here is what we'll be covering:

This case study is contributed by the master degree students of e-Commerce and Internet Computing, Master of Science of the University of Hong Kong.

Is there any 'best practice' which could be applied universal, such as Amazon's, No Service Is The Best Service, in the domain of online customer experience? The authors show you some different perspectives. Starting from knowing who are your target customers, what are their critical needs, what are your brand values; then end up in creating an experience which delivers your brand value at the pleasure peaks, at the same time satisfies the critical needs of your target customers. This is the alternate 'best practice' suggested in this case study. To beat competition, every company should have its own unique branded experience (illustrated by different shape of Emotion Curves* inside the case study). One size doesn't fit all, with no exception in web experience, demonstrated by Broadway Circuit (BC) and United Artist (UA).

Who are your target customers
For example, BC targets at two types of customers - the movie lovers and the more general movie watchers.

This case study is contributed by the master degree students of e-Commerce and Internet Computing, Master of Science of the University of Hong Kong.

Airlines are in troubles: price-wars, strikes, rising threat from high-speed railway, just to name a few. Is 'Costs-cutting' the only way out, just as Continental cutting free food?

Customers concern service and all service-related attributes (and of course free food :)), price, on-time, to be safe and to not lose luggage, etc. There is a long list of critical needs from customers. Ryanair's always been trying to offer the lowest price and at the same time be safe, be puntual, and keep your luggages, Ryanair knows well they're (some of) the critical needs of their target customers, and also the DNA of Ryanair (i.e. reflecting Ryanair's core brand values). They focuses most resource on those critical few attributes but not all. They also understand Ryanair is not everything to everyone. You can't find good service, free food, and 'smile' from Ryanair. They focus their resources on a few things that are critical to target customers, and can reflect their differentiated brand values, so that a highly effective branded Ryanair's experience could be delivered.

H&M Vs. Marks & Spencer: A Comparison on their In-store Shopping Experiences

This case study is contributed by the master degree students of e-Commerce and Internet Computing, Master of Science of the University of Hong Kong.

It has two major shortcomings.

The results were subjective projections of the authors without vigorous research effort, and the quantity of sub-processes mapped during the in-store experience is far from adequate.

Despite its shortcomings, it does have values to read. The authors ride on the two simple Emotion Curves* of H&M and Marks & Spencer, display their understanding on three crucial matters:

1. Though both brands have similarities and differences in various aspects, readers see a straight visual comparison on the performance of in-store experience with all relevant details included: a genuine customer-centric approach from an outside-in perspective;

This paper is not written for CEOs. I intend to write to the heads and leaders of customer-facing departments, such as service, sales, CRM, CEM, contact center, retail operations, etc, to explore a pragmatic approach for them to thrive in a flat economy.

When I was delivering a CEM Master Class a couple of months ago in Amsterdam, I heard from one attendee that the whole customer experience department of a leading multinational mobile network provider in the Netherlands was axed. It is only one of the cost-cutting stories happens nowadays all over the world. Being perceived as an ‘expendable’ business unit, or a cost center, might be the logical explanation.

For the luckier executives who still keep their jobs, living in an environment with fewer resources, reducing budget, and manpower cut is almost inevitable. But they still have to maintain the service standards, beat competitions, and deliver results. Squeezing more efficient use of the limited resource is the ongoing challenge of their daily working lives.

So, how to justify your existence, maintain market share with fewer resources and still satisfy your customers?

“By applying the 80/20 rule to differentiate customers, needs, touch-points and sub-processes, you will be able to make a paradigm shift from efficiency to effectiveness in customer experience management.”

Nowadays, the challenge of customer experience management is that delivering a good experience is not good enough. You need to deliver an effective experience. Only when you’re delivering effective experience, can you survive, grow, and create customer loyalty. Effective Experience Framework 1.0 aimed to address the limitations of the conventional experience management approaches and render a pragmatic framework for the creation, delivery and assessment of effective customer experience. 2010 Effective Experience Framework 2.0, added findings of the 2009 global customer experience researches on luxuries, furniture manufacturer, mobile network operators, and retail stores, to further validate its underlying principles.

Why Good Companies Deliver Ineffective Experience

Why are conventional approaches not effective in managing customer experience? Here are the reasons to highlight the loopholes and limitations of traditional methods and tools used in measuring and managing customer experience:

* Conventional approaches usually focus on individual / uncorrelated satisfaction scores and are process-centric to improve the efficiency of operations; they typically ignore the emotional feelings of the customer;

“What should you do to drive in-store sales during a recession?”

A. Make customers feel more satisfied
B. Cut prices significantly
C. Reduce customer pain during a purchase experience
D. All of the above
E. None of the above

Keep your answer. You may think differently after I show you the findings of our In-Store Customer Experience Surveys.

More Satisfied ≠ More Purchases

“If customers are more satisfied, they will buy more.”

In a recession, most companies are trying to make their customers feel more satisfied because they believe when customers have less disposable income to spend, they will buy (and buy more) from those companies who make them feel more satisfied.

The rationale behind this approach is: “The drivers of satisfaction and purchases are the same; and satisfaction and purchases are positively correlated.”

However, the above statement is just an assumption and assumptions can be misinterpreted. Our findings from the in-store experience surveys of Louis Vuitton*1, Arwin Charisma Museum*2 (a beauty and healthcare mall in Taiwan targeting tourists), Starbucks*3, Supermarkets*4 and Automotive Showrooms all tell us a different story.

Is your company delivering an integrated total customer experience across multiple touch-points and channels? Most companies aren’t. They are using conventional approaches that drive departmental or functional silos in delivering inconsistent and disintegrated experiences; demand more and more resources in order to stay in line with competition; and deviate away from achieving designated business targets.

How do companies deliver a consistent and integrated total customer experience, which aligns with corporate objectives, and with the best use of limited resource? One new and unconventional way is to start designing a TCE (total customer experience) model by mapping touch-points and associated channels across entire customer lifecycle, assessing the current effectiveness of touch-points’ experience, and optimizing resources allocation among touch-points and channels by target objectives.

In this article, I am going to demonstrate the beauties of designing, assessing, and optimizing a TCE model, with the data and insights generated from the Global Credit Card Customer Experience Research* co-organized by CustomerThink and G-CEM.

Common Challenges of Financial Service Providers

"Paris: so much to offer in a small space."
"Sydney is a sea-side city with great people."
"New York: vibrant but be alert to situations."
"Shanghai shows two different contrasting worlds, both very energetic, and is shaping the future."
"Tokyo: people are very friendly, very respectful, very helpful."
"London: civilized, bustling and mature. Less friendly than other European cities."
"Amsterdam is a friendly safe city. Great transport, easy to get around. Easy to fill a few free hours with a museum or a canal boat ride."

The above are some of the "voice of visitors" on those cities. How about yours?

Global City Visiting Experience Research

G-CEM is partnering with CustomerThink in a research study on city visiting experiences. If you visited any one of the following ten cities in the past 12 months for leisure or business travel, please share feedback on your experience:

Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, London, New York City, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, or Tokyo.

Note: the city should be outside your normal country of residence. The online survey will take just five minutes to complete. Deadline: Dec. 31, 2009.

Fast food is in no doubt a very competitive industry, and the focus is always on price, food and location. How a branded customer experience could help the players to differentiate themselves and to win over their competitors? Would there be any other touch-points other than the in-store experience which also play a significant role in affecting consumers’ choices?

To explore the subject matter, G-CEM has organized a research study on McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC. The surveys began on January 15, 2009 and ended on March 3, 2009. A total of 4,515 valid responses were collected in Mainland China. The guiding principles and the tools for design, execution and analysis of this research are based on the U.S. patent-pending CEM (Customer Experience Management) methodologies invented by G-CEM.

Should Burger King Change her Brand Value

Respondents were asked to rate the satisfaction level of each sub-process during the entire fast food restaurant in-store experience in a natural time sequence. The average Experience Ratings (ER) of each sub-process are linked and mapped to form the three Emotion Curves* for McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC in Figure 1.