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January 9, 2019 by Fred

2019 Predictions: CX

Hello, 2019!! Now that we’ve put 2018 behind us it is time to focus on what will drive the future of customer experiences. While I know this is a little later than “normal” for a predictions posts, but it is still January so I’m calling it still fair game. While I’ve personally done these in the past this year I’ve asked some of my industry peers, really my friends that I’ve come to know via social media, met at conferences, etc. to share their opinions. I’ve tried to bring together a perspective from all facets of Customer Experience for this predictions post. From technology, social media, governance, engagement, customer service, and more. I hope you enjoy the fun exercise of predicting the future. So let’s dive in! First up, is Katylyn.

Social Media

Katelyn Brower

Digital Marketing Manager – Global Social Media & Employee Advocacy at Dun & Bradstreet
@BrowerKDnB
G

I am thrilled to see what is in store for us on social media in 2019. My prediction is that we will continue to see big things from Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn moving into the new year. In the areas of live video and analytics, brands will be able to strengthen relationships with customers, prospects, partners, and employees on social media.

Live Video: Instagram and Twitter already have the live video capability, but 2019 will be the year LinkedIn releases their own version of live video. LinkedIn Company Pages recently got a facelift, and the reasoning behind the new look and feel positions LinkedIn to add live video. Instagram should pull back focus on IGTV and look to merge the Stories and IGTV features, this can bring further advancements for Instagram Live. Twitter needs to continue progressing their live feature. I am a fan of newly added “live audio,” but video needs to mirror competitors like Instagram and make it easier for live hosts to interact with their audiences.

Analytics: As marketing continues to become more digital, marketers need to have better analytics to make key decisions and analyze performance. After Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn, we started to see an advancement in the analytics provided for both personal and company pages. One thing we need to see in 2019 is the capability to export personal and brand data. Companies can do this via third-party tools, but the capability needs to come from LinkedIn directly. Twitter is on a mission to increase engagement and drive meaningful conversations, but in order to do that, they need to map out what those goals mean analytically – I hope to see more defined metrics from Twitter in 2019. If my prediction of Instagram merging stories and IGTV (dare to dream, right?!) comes true, then we need to see better analytics on stories and Instagram Live. With video, marketers need a better understanding of average time/percent watched – I predict Instagram to roll this out with all video options in 2019.

There’s a lot we can see from all 3 platforms next year, and while I hope it is all of my wants and desires, I know whatever comes out will help brands strengthen awareness and relationships.

Virtual Reality

Christoph Trappe

Chief Content Engagement Director
Stamats Business Media
@CTrappe

New types of content assets are worth trying. VR is one. Virtual reality is really an underused tool and partially that is because not all consumers have the headset. But given that you can watch virtual reality videos as 360 versions on a phone or app, and not very many events are using them yet, it’s the perfect time to jump right in and make this strategy a big differentiator for your company. You can now buy cameras for under $100 and they work!

Augmented Reality

Emily Smith

Digital Engagement Coordinator, Nelson Education
@EmilyRose780

In 2019, the line between the digital and the “real” will become less and less significant. As developments in the technology allow us to access, create, and share AR objects of our own with just our phones, AR will become more and more integrated into our everyday lives. We’ll use it for everything from buying Ikea furniture, to learning to count, learning to dance, and learning a language. This may be the year I’ll buy my first smart glasses. If I do, it will be because they’ll add value to my life not only through features like AR directions to new places, but because they’ll allow me to look up from my phone and have better interactions with the people around me. It’s my hope that AR developments will take us in that kind of social interaction direction in 2019. One thing we can all count on next year is that the amazing people working in augmented reality will surprise us. By this time next year when we’re making 2020 predictions, they’ll have come up with something that none of us have even dreamed of as of today.

Digital Policy & Governance

Kristina Podnar

Principal, NativeTrust Consulting, LLC
@Kpodnar

Digital transformation failures of the past several years and the recent shifts in data privacy awareness (driven by global laws & regulations) will cultivate new digital practices in 2019. We will see more rigor in digital strategies and the development of honed digital policies. This will ensure that marketing and operations are aligned with the organization’s perspective of digital opportunities and risks, which tactically translate into building of personal relationships and moving away from historical messaging around products and pricing.

Customer Service – Bots and AI

Al Hopper

Principal, Nagurra Networks
@alhopper_

I see 2019 as a year of internal changes for customer service, which will speed up the response times for customers working with agents. Companies are going to spend more money on continuing to improve agent access to knowledge bases through the use of improved search engines, or what some will call AI. This will enable agents to find answers quicker and in a more centralized and controlled manner. I also see decision bots being deployed for simpler tasks. An example of this is creating a bot logic to determine if a credit can be granted to a customer instead of having to escalate the request to a next level agent and waiting in queue for the answer. In some cases, these bots will be able to respond via chat or Messenger channels instead of engaging an agent at all, leaving the human agent to manage more complex concerns.

Mobile Disruption

Dio Favatas

Managing Director, Digital Marketing
Truth Initiative
@DioFavatas

My big prediction really is that 2019 will be the year of mobile disruption, and with 5G coming online, the media landscape, as well as smart cities and IoT/IIoT applications will finally come to fruition. And I believe the laptop/desktop is just about dead, and we’ll see renewed interest in tablets and phablets as alternatives.

My Prediction: Customer Experience Becomes a KPI

I love all the predictions of my friends. For my prediction, I believe that focus on customer experience will start to become a KPI that is measured at the highest level in an organization. We will take key metrics from different areas of our organizations from call centers to web to mobile to path-to-purchase and loyalty and use these to fuel a new KPI. I don’t know if this is a new measure of a NPS or something more complicated, but senior leadership will start to want to measure the totality of CX for their organization and how it impacts them.

So Where Will 2019 Take Us?

Take any industry and you will find the topics above are relevant. Technology is driving so much change in customer experience development that the ones we’ve been hearing about for years (AR/VR) will continue to come of age. New technology like 5G will enable more devices than ever to become part of the Internet of Things (IoT), and even more so with IIoT for manufacturers of all types of devices and machinery. Social media and the effectiveness of these channels for marketers will continue to be a staple with the increased consumption of video.

All of this won’t be effective for organizations without some rules of the road and governance. I think Kristina’s topic is one that is the unspoken part of any digital transformation and improvement of customer experiences. Finally, Al hits it on the head when it comes to customer interactions because after social media, a call center as a first line of defense for any brand. But how will bots and AI make this experience better? So let’s bring on 2019 and all its changes. One thing is for certain, everyone will be focusing on customer experience.

November 26, 2018 by Fred

As a Holiday Shopper, I Miss Toys ‘R’ Us

I didn’t want to grow up. I wanted to be a Toys ‘R’ Us kid for life. Even as I got older, I still enjoyed going into “the” toy store. I took my kids. They’d ask me every time we passed by one, “Dad, can we go to Toys ‘R’ Us?” And many times, we did. We didn’t always buy something, but we went in. Why? Not to tease my kids, but to spark their imagination. No other store had the sheer volume of toys, and that was special.

Toy Shopping is Tough This Year

Maybe it is just me, or maybe it is just the sign of the times, but toy shopping in 2018 is tough. Asking our children for ideas for Christmas, and not just for ourselves to give them as gifts, but for family members as well is like asking them if they want to go to the dentist or clean their room. It is like pulling teeth or a chore. They don’t want to do it. Please, flip through this Target catalog and circle what you want. Let’s get on Amazon and search for toys. “There isn’t anything I want.” “I can’t find anything.” “Why don’t they have more video games?” We’ve heard every excuse. My wife has even resorted to dragging them TO Target and browse the toy aisles to no avail. It’s just not the same.

No other store, short of an actual Lego store, could you find so many sets from different series, than a Toys ‘R’ Us. No other store could you just wander and find a new style of toy that might catch an interest. That’s not to say Target isn’t picking up the slack for a lack of a local Toys ‘R’ Us, but it’s not the same. And Target isn’t the only one trying to cash in.

Everyone is Trying to Capitalize on the Toys ‘R’ Us Void

This weekend I was in Home Depot getting some items for a project I was going to make for a holiday gift. As I walked in the main entrance I was not only greeted with the normal light bulbs or grills or even holiday ornaments. I was presented with a kids bicycle! Wait, what?! Then I saw a bunch of temporary displays in the aisle with coloring books, drones, kids floor mats for cars to drive on, and more. Moving through the aisles I saw more of these next to end-caps. Every open space in my normal spacious home improvement big box was now filled with non-home improvement items. Here is just a fraction of what I saw.

Now, Home Depot isn’t the first store to try to edge into the toy space, even when Toys ‘R’ Us was around. Kohl’s has been doing it for years, with a small space, and then getting larger around the holiday. For them, it is also bleeding into electronics and now the strategic partnership with Amazon to have their in-store experience certainly has helped them move beyond the department store retailer they were known for.

Amazon Can’t Fill the Void

No matter how you slice it, Amazon isn’t the answer to everything. The convenience of the e-commerce giant can’t fill the experience of flipping through a catalog and imagining playing with a toy. It can’t let you hold the box, shake it, flip it over to read the back, and imagine it in your toy room. It can’t show you, up close and personal, the entire collection in a setting, right next to each other ready for you to dream about having them all. Nope, you can just swipe through a few photos, play a video (maybe) and see if it has good reviews or not. And to boot, not every cool toy is sold on Amazon.

As a parent, yes, Amazon is great. I buy a product or ten and it shows up on my doorstep two days later. Or I need a last minute gift and I can’t get out to shop. Yep, it fills that void perfectly. Gift wrapped? Yes, please. Click, click, boom. Call me old fashion, but there is just something about walking through a store and browsing. That “discovery” process is not the same when you are clicking/swiping/tapping through screen after screen.

Don’t Call it a Comeback…Yet

So while we have entered the first real holiday season without a physical Toys ‘R’ Us store, it doesn’t mean Geoffrey the Giraffe and the brand is absent. After hedge fund investors decided to retain the name for a future endeavor, Kroger and the Geoffrey company (the subsidiary who owns the IP) brought Toys ‘R’ Us pop-ups to 600 Kroger grocery stores. I haven’t personally experienced one of these, but at least for some kids, the Giraffe is back!

It is just a start and nobody knows what it will really take to get back in the game. With all their physical stores sold and leases taken over during the liquidation, there is still a long road ahead for Geoffrey the Giraffe and the iconic Toys ‘R’ Us brand as a retailer. Compound that with the fact that staple toy makers like Mattel and Hasbro have been forced to cut new distribution deals with other outlets, it won’t be easy to bring everyone back together. So what opportunity lies ahead?

Even if Toys ‘R’ Us Makes a Come Back It Shouldn’t be the Same

There will be case study after case study written on where Toys ‘R’ Us went wrong. How it didn’t innovate enough for the in-store experience. How they could have dominated the toy industry and shopping experience. Now’s the opportunity. What makes a kid today different than a kid of my generation? In some ways, a lot! In other ways, not much is different. Sure we have more advanced technology to make gaming systems amazing. We have robotic dogs that you can interact with your voice. But, we still have kids that want a stuffed animal. We still have our imagination. We still have senses that need stimulation and engagement. And that’s where Toys ‘R’ Us can shine. Bring a new experience to the store. Host gaming competitions. Host build-offs. Bring S.T.E.M. classes in-store to teach kids how to build the next inventions. Robotics coding classes. Turn your store into a playground for the mind and soul! The opportunities are endless than to just be a “toy store.”

Just don’t forget to be a “toy store” that allow kids to pick up boxes, flip them over, see a set all put together. Let them discover and be a kid.

November 1, 2018 by Fred

Welcome to Retail’s New Holimonth – November

Well, it was bound to happen. First, we had Black Friday, the day in which retailers would traditionally go “in the black” in revenue for the year as they lead up to the holiday spending season. Then it became a shoppers holiday when marketers found a way to capitalize on it to kick off the spending season. Next came Cyber Monday when e-commerce exploded and places like Amazon became a “go-to” place for holiday shopping. Let’s face it, two days a year isn’t enough.

In 2018, welcome to the new retail holiday which I’m deeming the “holimonth” (holiday month) of November. While I’m sure we can probably argue the holimonth is really between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, I feel this year it is now the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. In the last two weeks alone I’ve been seeing headlines about retailer’s Black Friday deals starting to leak. Get your credit cards paid off folks–spending is about to kick into high gear. However, today’s mail brought me the Costco Holiday ad. Big and bold on the cover “Holiday Savings starting November 6, 2018.” Wait, what?! Sure enough, as I flipped through the ad, looking at the TVs, game systems, mozzarella sticks (I mean, who doesn’t need 5 lbs of mozzarella sticks for the holidays…if they even last that long!), and deals on 4 tires, it struck me that these deals were spread across the next four weeks leading up to Black Friday.

Share of Wallet Means Starting Earlier

As marketers, we need to be more creative to get the coveted “share of wallet.” At some point creativity isn’t about a gimmick or cool ad or experience, it is just flat out offering deals sooner than the competition.

Remember when you can get together for Thanksgiving and not worry about running home to get the kids to bed and pre-game your shopping binge run? When Black Friday started to get traction, it was all about who was open at Midnight to get the deals. How many of you have sat in line, in the cold, hours before a retailer opened to be one of the few who got the “hot deal” before they ran out? That game system that little Johnny wanted. Or the doll that little Suzy had to have. I see you’re hand raised (and your “no not me” shaking of head). We’ve all either done it or put serious thought towards it.

Retail shopping mall. — Let’s go shopping!

However, Midnight wasn’t enough. It didn’t take long before the stores started opening up on Thursday at 11:00 pm, then 9:00 pm, and now 6:00 pm! It’s gotten so bad that stores are now saying “Nope, we’re closed on Thanksgiving…spend time with your family. We’ll be open tomorrow.” It is the anti-holiday as a sign of “good faith” for your shopping behavior. The irony of that list is that Costco is closed on Thanksgiving. Maybe that’s why the deals are rolling out weeks ahead of time. However, even if you aren’t shopping in their stores, you’re online buying gifts from them. E-commerce never sleeps.

The Disease We All Exploit…Getting the Deal

Marketers and companies are no fools. They know how the game is played, especially retailers. The game is this, human behavior loves a good deal. The emotional feeling, the dopamine rush of getting the deal. It is literally a legal drug that retailers, game makers, and marketers all exploit. Do what you can to let a hit of dopamine to be released in your brain. The “feel good” drug that everyone has in their body. Get the deal. This week only. Only this time, don’t wait for the Black Friday deals to happen on Black Friday, get them weeks earlier.

In light of all of this, I firmly believe that retailers will now use the entire month to grease the wheels for the mad dash run of sales between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. It’s going to be the new trend. Welcome to November, the “Holimonth.”

October 4, 2018 by Fred

To Fuel Growth, Fill Your Gaps: Adobe Buys Marketo

There’s been an awakening. Have you felt it? I’m pretty sure every MarTech “Jedi” just felt a tremor in The Force…Adobe is purchasing Marketo for $4.7bn.

Let that sink in.

In a string of acquisitions in the last five years, nothing has come close to this price. SAP bought Hybris for $1.5bn. Salesforce purchased ExactTarget for $2.5 bn. Both in 2013. Salesforce acquired DemandWare for $2.8bn in 2016. Add to the fact that Adobe was in the running for at least two of those companies themselves…it was time to make a statement. And a statement they have made. The mic has been dropped.

via GIPHY

In a world where everyone is racing to create experiences, you need amazing software and practitioners to do it. You can either assemble a hodgepodge of solutions, or go with entire platforms (integrated or not). You can tell your IT dept you are going SaaS or IT can tell you that you need to go “On Prem.” You could decide to build the solutions yourself. In any scenario there are pros and cons. For every company, a decision on how you assemble your “stack” is very individual. There is no shortage of options for any company to use. The MarTech space is very, VERY crowded.

Over the last decade Adobe has been making changes and moves to assemble a suite of creative solutions and now marketing solutions. No other company can take you through the entire lifecycle of content creation to production to marketing to analysis than Adobe. No small feat. Not with out it’s own set of challenges. With any acquisition, integrating technologies takes planning, time, and sometimes hard work. When you are looking for growth, you need to identify where your gaps are and determine where you can acquire those skills or technology. You can either build, or buy. Adobe has done both.

Fill Your Gaps – Don’t Mind Them

I’ve been in several discussions when news broke last week that Adobe was in talks with Marketo. These sidebar conversations ranged from “Whoa, that’s interesting!” to “Doesn’t Marketo compete with Adobe Campaign?” Worthy conversations to say the least. It was a little bit of a head scratcher once the shock of name dropping of the two companies in the same sentence with the word “acquire” in there wore off. What will Adobe do with Marketo and why did they buy them? The answer is “fill gaps.” Yes, Adobe purchased Neolane in 2013 and has since rebranded it Adobe Campaign and has two versions of it. One is a grown version of the legacy Neolane product and the other is a rebuilt, rewritten version of Neolane in the cloud. Both versions do compete with Marketo to a degree. But, Marketo has features Campaign doesn’t, namely lead management (scoring, etc), account based marketing features, marketing attribution, data management and more. If you are a marketer in 2018, these are core tools in your current and future strategies. If you don’t have them implemented, they should be in your roadmap. Adobe Campaign lacks these features and I’m sure it was noticed.

When it comes to building, Adobe has their “Marketing Cloud Platform” which is a set of services, APIs, and other connective tissue beneath the surface of the larger solutions. There is no shortage of innovation going on there, which is where Adobe Sensei was born, their AI solution.

Building an Empire Means Always Evolving

Just over a week ago Forbes published the article “Why $128 Billion Adobe Is Running Scared“. Wait, what? Running scared? They are on top of every possible category as a leader for their technology. Why in the world are they running scared? Well, when you’re on top, everyone is coming for you. As Peter Carbonara wrote in that article:

The explanation for the expensive expansionism: In the rapidly changing world of software, small pieces of turf are hard to defend. There is always the risk that some larger company will either wrap a competing product into a larger suite you don’t offer or, worse, give away for free what you’re selling.

The target can’t be bigger for Adobe on their back. While it might not be advised to make two major acquisitions in the same year, let alone within four months, sometimes you need to evolve to keep pushing and leading the pack. There are few gaps left Adobe has to fill. They bolstered their marketing automation solutions today, and lack of commerce a few months ago with the purchase of Magento. Now integrating these solutions into the Experience Cloud is where Adobe can shine, bring value add, and give their customers a robust suite of solutions to connect with their customers.

65,000 Users Can’t Be Wrong

If you thought Adobe had an ecosystem of users, partners, and advocates, well…Marketo does too. The Marketing Nation conference is one of the marketing conferences to go to every year. Their customers are invested in their platform because it is such an essential tool to their “stack”. If you are going beyond basic email marketing and beyond a SMB, there are few tools to graduate to. It’s Hubspot, Marketo, CheetahDigital, and maybe a few more. To say that the Marketo Nation will fit in with the Adobe Marketing Nation is probably an understatement. I also think many, many Marketo customers use Adobe Experience Cloud solutions as well. So there is probably a more natural fit than one might think.

So, What’s Left to Buy?

So what’s left? In my opinion, CRM. One could argue that Marketo helps fill that hole, and it does a little. It buys them time, but I still think CRM is still a gap. Another gap is going to be where experiences traverse into voice, IoT, and AR/VR. While I know they have made some small purchases here, and they are indeed innovating, it has yet to be seen where it really shapes up and makes a mark. Could a DAM purchase be in their future? Adobe assets has become a solid solution, but it still has some features it lacks. That is also a byproduct of the state of content strategy, headless CMS, and where an “asset” isn’t just a document or picture. Finally, data visualization and other front-office tools. For now, their strategic relationship with Microsoft fills those holes.

So now we sit and wait. How will Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, and others respond to this news? Who knows. All I know is that Adobe Summit is going to be one hell of a time in March 2019.

Disclaimer: My employer, ICF, is a Premier Adobe Solutions Partner. The thoughts and opinions conveyed here are of my own. I do not have access to road maps or acquisition information.

This article was first published on LinkedIn.

June 10, 2018 by Fred

Something New Coming Soon

I’m just going to drop this little bumper/logo-sting (I’m getting all this video lingo down now).

Soon…