Conference testimonials
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You think you're on top of what’s happening in marketing? You think you know what's cooking in the digital marketing world? Then don't come to Fusion Marketing Experience. I go there to listen & learn from great people that are DOING it. I know a lot, but I keep learning at Fusion Marketing Experience, every time.
The Fusion Marketing Experience conference is what it says: a real experience with probably the strongest program of all marketing events in Belgium. I am a big fan and will be there again. Top speakers, top content, a special atmosphere and excellent networking, Fusion Marketing Experience has it all. After just two events, Fusion Marketing Experience became the place to be.
Marketing conferences are usually more of the same: the usual suspects as keynotes, the obligatory panel discussion and more of that. Fusion Marketing Experience was a relief: knowledgeable speakers with real content at an unusual location. And what attracted me most was the atmosphere, the feeling that participants were not present just for a chat and a drink, but actually wanted to use the insights into their daily business.
Fusion Marketing Experience is the only event in Belgium that really joins the channels together. A perfect fusion between top notch speakers, great networking opportunities and possibilities to share ideas with other peers in your industry or expertise. An event not to miss... I like! (or + or pin....).
The Fusion Marketing Experience events are a great opportunity to listen to and learn from subject-matter experts, no commercial pitches, only top speakers with top content. In a fast-changing business environment, my challenge is to keep learning and sharing with other peers in our industry …..that's exactly what the "Fusion Marketing Experience platform" helps me with.
When I saw Olivier Blanchard was giving a two-day workshop in Belgium in May 2012, I didn’t have to hesitate to enroll. As you can assume, I already knew Olivier. I have read his book Social Media ROI, and I found it to be one of the best Social Media books. When I noticed it was organized by J-P De Clerck, I knew the workshop would be good value since I already attended several seminars and events, organized by J-P and the Fusion Marketing Experience he launched. And I always came home with valuable insights and inspiration. Why Olivier? He is really focused on how to integrate social media into business. He starts from within the organization, not from the social media. It all comes down to grow your business. Don’t start building a social media program before you find an answer to “What will social media do for my company?”. As I’m working into B2B, understanding the business value of social media, the ROI is a real must. Once you’ve got that straight, once you have got your targets, you can share it within your company. Than the process starts of sharing, listening and educating. Olivier really helped me during the workshops how to sell the social media program to my management and how to start the process. I will never forget his story about the ‘culture of dudes’. If you look for inspiration on how to overcome objections, he is the man. During the 2 days many key topics on how to set up and execute a social media program were discussed. The organization of the workshop was - as usual - flawless. The location and the infrastructure were very good. I had a pleasant and inspiring two days.
Doing Business as Unusual: Networked Expertise and Customer Service
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Dr Nicola Millard
I’ve just been reading an excellent whitepaper, providing new views on customer service, authored by Dr. Nicola J. Millard, Customer Experience Futurologist with BT. Dr. Millard recently penned a whitepaper titled “Clouds, Crowds and Customers: Doing Business as Unusual” and it’s full of enough great insight to span more than just one post here.
While many of the points the doctor makes in the whitepaper resonate with me, one or two stand out. She states that it’s not important what technology does, but what people do with it. And she also says that companies can’t simply use new technology to prop up the status quo – they have to change the way they think and operate – it’s no longer business as usual.
Let’s take a look at customer service in the multi-channel world as Dr. Millard sees it. Providing customers with automated self help solutions does not mean that the more expensive call centres and face-to-face channels will no longer be used. She contends that mostly what goes to the self help channels are the simpler issues and transactional stuff. This leaves the call centre staff to deal with the more complex issues. So, you have front line agents who don’t have the knowledge, training or resources to deal with these kinds of issues and your customers find your support is lacking.
Customer time is the standard, not corporate time: customer-service in a real-time world
Millard suggests corporations must adopt a “speed dating” system for clients, which matches them with the appropriate expert within the company. This is called “networked expertise.” She writes about “networked expertise” and the technology to support it in more detail in the whitepaper.
Today, no one can know everything, but organizations have a large pool of expertise to draw on. The problem is that there is usually no way to connect those experts directly with customers and transfer knowledge. The call centre is a bottle neck which restricts that information from flowing to the right people.
A more decentralized approach can be much more effective. We have the technology today which will support this new way of doing business if we are open to new ways of thinking about how we do business.
Using unified communications, remote workers and a robust CRM solution, networked expertise can provide faster and more accurate answers resulting in happier clients. She claims this kind of approach can result in a 70-75% increase in first contact resolution rates. There’s got to be a huge cost saving there when you consider how expensive it is for people to keep calling back over and over looking for a resolution to the same issue and having to start all over again.
Of course you have to employ technology to manage the access to your team of experts so that the load is spread out and no single expert is overwhelmed. Obviously these people have other work to do in a day and if that is impeded, they probably won’t be keen on this approach.
It’s a great read and may drastically change the way you view customer service in today’s world where customer time is the standard and not corporate time.
