Ben Davis is part of Econsultancy's editorial team. He blogs, manages some social media, and keeps one eye on operations. You can contact him at ben.davis@econsultancy.com or follow at @herrhuld.
I’m always impressed just how much eloquence is there for the mining on Quora. I guess it makes sense, as good answers are upvoted and people answer questions that rev their engines.
Suddenly, there’s a clarity to most threads that is addictive in its intense scrollability.
So I searched for ‘customer experience’, to see what I could find to report back with, and to shape a proto-strategy for a transforming business. Most of the interesting stuff I found can be seen more as comment on customer service, and specifically its social dimension.
Here goes….
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by Ben Davis
24 July 2013 11:10am
1 comment
Microsoft recently announced its newly branded Lab of Things. It describes this as ‘a flexible platform for experimental research that uses connected devices in homes.’
I thought I’d use this opportunity to look again at the rise of the connected device, and the future of the so-called internet of things, or IoT. Below you’ll see 10 things that you, the consumer, should expect over the next few years.
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by Ben Davis
23 July 2013 10:47am
3 comments
I recently wrote about mobile NFC being dead in the water. Since then a few dissenting voices have piped up. Understandably, some working in this area.
One of the voices was Proxama’s. It runs TapPoint, which is a cloud-based SAAS. I spoke to the MD, Miles Quitmann, and he was refreshingly honest enough to turn my oil tanker of beef around and leave me excited about the possibilities of loyalty ‘on tap’.
So here’s a summary of emerging possibilities for marketers, using the growing number of NFC enabled smartphones in the market.
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by Ben Davis
22 July 2013 10:10am
2 comments
How does Econsultancy get people to come to its events? With the Festival of Marketing set to be an intense, fun, insightful....erm..fest, here's some of the stuff we've done to market events and to make them successful on the day.
I should add, there's a ton of stuff I've missed off, here (not least, effectively segmenting your audience), as I've concentrated on creative.
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by Ben Davis
19 July 2013 10:56am
5 comments
Last week at Econsultancy London we held a roundtable discussion with some HR and L&D folks. The topic was digital business…GO!
Of course, it was Chatham House rules, but I thought I’d sum up some discussion points and some potential glints of light at the end of the tunnel, for big orgs seeking that holy grail, ‘Digital Transformation’.
Each business has different challenges and needs, but some of the following issues struck a chord.
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by Ben Davis
16 July 2013 11:24am
1 comment
Tate has always looked forward in setting its digital strategy and publishing it clearly.
Earlier this year, the strategy was updated, to lead through to 2015. The title of the document couldn’t put it any plainer, ‘Digital as a Dimension of Everything’.
This is a bold claim, and is perhaps more literal a statement than one would think at first glance.
In this post, I share the salient points, for anyone setting their own digital strategy.
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by Ben Davis
16 July 2013 10:08am
3 comments
Real-time customer service and in turn, marketing, are hard to achieve. The first step is acknowledgement of what Generation Y is actually doing to your market.
I attended Social CRM 2013 last week, hosted by Our Social Times. From some of the talks I got this feeling: we’re still on a long hike towards transparency in business, but there’s no doubt lots of companies are striding out.
In this post I wanted to collate some of my highlights of the conference. Social media isn’t the only thing changing business, but it’s a useful crucible in which we can see the spark of emerging values.
Creating value for customers, supporting them fully, and being an interesting brand are challenges which, of course, persist.
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by Ben Davis
15 July 2013 10:11am
1 comment
Alternative payment methods are pretty much the hottest topic around, and last week EE previewed its new NFC smartphone wallet. Retailers, however, are pretty adamant NFC wallets are not worth their time.
At the same time, marketers are still plugging away with new advertising campaigns using NFC technology to deliver content. Is this anything other than a fad?
In this post I look at the uses of NFC, assess some recent campaigns, and ponder what the future holds. (Major hat tip to NFC World, where I found a bunch of the campaign info).
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by Ben Davis
10 July 2013 10:50am
6 comments
Google has a unique viewpoint from which to look at mobile’s part to play in the customer journey.
SERPs, AdWords, Google Maps, Google Chrome, Google accounts – all have a part to play. And perhaps soon Google Wallet and Google Glass.
I attended Latitude’s client summit last week and listened to Harry Davies, Lead Product Marketing Manager, Large Customer Marketing, at Google (helping customers get the most from search).
I’ve tried to sum up some of what Harry had to say, giving an overview of mobile’s involvement in retail in 2013.
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by Ben Davis
08 July 2013 10:12am
4 comments
This week's infographic, brought to you by silktide, is a great example of how to make a good infographic. It's clear and piquant.
Perhaps a controversial choice, though. The topic is the EU Cookie Law, and there's certainly a leading opinion in here somewhere (maybe even a hint of invective - we don't quite condone the jibe at octogenarians).
I think most would agree that, though there may be the germ of a decent idea somewhere in this legislation, its execution has left much to be desired.
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by Ben Davis
05 July 2013 13:03pm
4 comments
