Here is the presentation:

and here is the video:

The post Personalizing and Differentiating Your Customer Experience to Actively Compete in Today’s Market appeared first on Digital Exploration.

Just this past week, I visited 2 stores in the Charlotte area. These 2 stores have performed markedly different this year. Store #1 is down single digits in comp sales. Store #2 is up double digits.

The stores had much of the same product on the shelves at the same price. What was the key ingredient that was fueling the difference in performance? Personalization.

Store #1’s manager took a very product and promotion oriented approach to business. Clearance signs everywhere. Product crammed into every corner. All meant to try to have whatever potential customers may want on hand.

Store #2 on the other hand, took a personalized approach to business. The associates all took the time to personally connect with the customers as they walked in. Many were addressed by name. When I asked a department manager to name her best customers, she was able to rattle off 10 names in 5 seconds.

There is a big trend in eCommerce to personalize the shopping experience. For anyone in retail that has stores or a call center, don’t forget that you have the greatest personalization weapon already available to you: your associates. Leverage them as much as possible. Give them the tools and support they need. Empower them to develop that personal connection with their customers. I’m willing to bet all of your selling channels will benefit from this investment.

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More than 1 Manish Hirapara on Facebook

So what does all this mean? Facebook is set to conquer the global markets in a way no other has. ECommerce sites still have to deploy localized websites to transact with consumers in their language & currency of choice. Facebook on the other hand, is able to put a truly global site in place without the need to localize anything — except maybe the ads.

An agency I work with recently told me about their work with a major consumer brand in Brasil & Mexico. All the work was done on facebook.com (not facebook.com.br) and they were able to take their brand to over 250k “likes” in just a few weeks.

Facebook had its IPO recently and investors summarily beat it down. Emerging market consumers are just coming online. If Facebook can continue its phenomenal penetration into those markets, particularly with mobile consumers, it will be worth quite a bit more than the IPO value…

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http://blogs.forrester.com/mike_gualtieri/11-10-12-agile_software_is_a_cop_out_heres_whats_next

Too often, the folks that are well versed in deep technical theory are the ones that are running software development shops. What happens? Waterfall, agile, scrum, extreme programming. All are great methodologies for building functional software. They often miss the mark on user experience though.

Design and user experience is critical in the modern software world. Web 2.0 websites, optimized eCommerce sites,  iPhone, iPad,  even your car’s dashboard — they are all incredibly design sensitive. Yes, they must work and work without glitches — but they are not going to be used if the user can’t figure them out.

A systems-centric approach is often adopted by software development teams, as opposed to a user centric approach. Functional as opposed to creative. How does this happen? The mindset of treating software as a pure engineering discipline, similar to construction is at fault. It’s no longer about just sheer assembly of objects and classes.

Instead of just thinking about software as an engineering discipline, add some artistry to it. A great design experience transcends software.  If you’re using scrum, agile, etc… take some time to ensure that you have product design as a cornerstone of your software development lifecycle.

The post Software development is not engineering appeared first on Digital Exploration.

Notice how little content there is about the actual job itself? It’s all bout the culture, the lifestyle, the dream. I have no clue what I would be doing, but the post makes me want to drop everything and join their team.

Too many companies recruit solely on job responsibility, titles, and function. They tell you what you will have to do and who you will be reporting to. Sell your culture and vision in your job postings instead. You will get better applicants and much more excitement following the hire as well.

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What does the leadership team usually do in this case? Oftentimes, they draw upon their past big company experience…or worse yet, leaves it to the newly hired HR person to come up with the answer. Too often, the maturing startup sets policies that bound and limit vacation time.

So what’s the right vacation policy? Don’t focus on your vacation policy. Focus on your management structure instead. Create a great organization filled with strong leaders that are empowered to make decisions. Don’t let the bean counters in to accrue vacation time and put policies that determine vacation time by tenure, rank, or title. Instead, let employees create contracts with their managers that let employees take the appropriate amount of time off for their personal situation, as each situation is different. As long as the company and the work product are not affected, employees can take all the time they need (or as little as they need).

I put this policy into practice with my company several years ago. It was an outstanding experiment. From a cost perspective, I had nothing to track on the books — no accrual, no hours owed, no negative vacation balances. From a morale perspective, employees and managers both felt extremely empowered. Best yet, employees actually tended to take less vacation and oftentimes had to be encouraged to leave their work behind for a few days. As it turns out, even the big companies have been catching on. IBM rolled out a similar un-vacation policy several years ago too.

The post What’s the Right Vacation Policy for Growing Startups? appeared first on Digital Exploration.

IT employees: YOU can help drive business change. You are empowered. You are smart. Don’t just wait for someone else to come up with the full design of what they want to build. Engage them. Drive them. Make them think. Most of all, let them use your expertise and insight.
People that are responsible for P&L and functional design want to know the consequences of key IT decisions. Be a stakeholder in that conversation and any  product that you jointly build will turn out much better.

Whether you’re a project manager, business analyst, developer, or engineer — you’re a stakeholder. Treat yourself as a stakeholder and drive the conversation…you WILL make a difference.

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As these ordering processes migrate online, the consumer’s expectation for deals & coupons remains the same.  The big 3 online pizza eCommerce sites have all done a great job of making coupons & deals the central point of the online ordering process. Rather than making customers search for coupons on the web, they offer compelling deals up front and devote space right to deals within the shopping experience. They have also switched the up-sell and cross-sell process to become associated to deals instead of product.

In the case  of Domino’s below, they highlight your coupons and other deals throughout your entire shopping experience. You can always switch to another deal as you build your pizza — what a great way to move the consumer to a higher margin up-sell.

Domino's Coupon Screenshot

So, if you are selling products or services that consumers are used to finding deals for, explore moving away from a product-focused approach to your eCommerce site to a more deal-oriented approach.  You will find yourself able to sell quite a few more widgets or services at a nice healthy margin with the customer content that they got a scored themselves a good deal.

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