The Customer Experience Edge News and Reviews
Customer Experience Innovation Helps Coop@home Thrive in a Down Retail Climate
By Reza Soudagar, Loyalty 360, July 24, 2012
When last we spoke to Ellen Brasse of Swiss grocer Coop, she told us how her team had successfully launched in 2009 an mobile grocery home delivery app for smartphone-wielding consumers who did not have time to get to the store. We profiled that Coop@home success story in an in-depth case study in our book, The Customer Experience Edge: Technology and Techniques for Delivering an Enduring, Profitable and Positive Experience to Your Customers.
It’s the Customer, Silly! Gaining the Competitive Edge
By Christian Molinari, Business News Americas, April 27, 2012
Business News Americas caught up with Volker Hildebrand, who was visiting Chile to discuss SAP’s roadmap for CRM solutions.
SAP and Big Data—At the Controls of the 360 Degree Customer Experience
By Peter Bernstein, TMCnet.com, April 5, 2012
Peter Bernstein of TMCnet spoke with Vinay Iyer and two SAP customers, Hillel Zafir, CTO of EMIYoshi, a provider of premium disposable plastic serving ware, and Kristen Woodard, global sales and marketing at Welch Allyn, a global provider of the manufacture of medical devices. The topic: how the findings in The Customer Experience Edge are being put to practical use by leading-edge customers.
Hoffman’s Hot Seat: Examining the Future of CRM
By Tom Hoffman, 1to1 Media, April 3, 2012
1to1 Media’s Tom Hoffman speaks with Vinay Iyer, vice president of global marketing at SAP, about the evolution of customer relationship management.
CRM Magazine Speaks to Vinay Iyer of SAP
By Kelly Liyakasa, CRM Magazine, March 15, 2012
CRM Magazine’s Kelly Liyakasa chatted with Vinay Iyer, vice president of global marketing at SAP, at the Gartner Customer 360 event in Orlando, Florida, about customer experience, The Customer Experience Edge book he coauthored, and disruptive technology at Gartner Customer 360.
Turning Unprofitable Customers into Profitable Relationships
By Reza Soudagar, DesitnationCRM.com, March 23, 2012
How can you establish a profitable relationship with the problem child of customer segments: the frequent and unprofitable customer? Reza Soudagar delves into this problem and presents examples and key actions to take in order to turn these customers into profitable relationships.
Why Operational Excellence Is Mission Critical: Lessons Learned from Best Buy and Coop
By Volker G. Hildebrand, TMCnet.com, March 13, 2012
Many blogs, articles and books have been written and published about Customer Experience that provide many good reasons why it is important to deliver a great customer experience – and most authors provide valuable advice for organizations on improving the customer experience: listen to your customers, deliver great customer service, and provide a consistent experience across multiple channels (and don’t ignore the social media channels)!
Book Review: The Customer Experience Edge
By Sonu Chandiram, Biz India, February 2012
Vinay Iyer, Vice President of SAP CRM Global Marketing, discusses how customer
experience management (CXM) is aiding and extending CRM—and offers expert
advice in how to advance CXM beyond a conceptual customer strategy using
software technology and techniques in ways that make CX sustainable and
profitable.
Treat Customers Well, but Stay Profitable—Book Excerpt
By Reza Soudagar, Vinay Iyer, and Dr. Volker G. Hildebrand, SearchCRM, February 2012
The authors of this highly valuable book have done a thorough job of proving essential knowledge and their unique collective insight to assist concerned company executives develop their resources and sharpen their tools in providing superior service to make and keep their customers happy.
SAP Thought Leader Vinay Iyer in His Own Words:
Customer Experience—Using Technology to Make CX Sustainable and Profitable (Podcast)
By Chuck Schaeffer, CRM Search, January 24, 2012
Vinay Iyer, Vice President of SAP CRM Global Marketing, discusses how Customer Experience Management (CXM) is aiding and extending CRM—and offers expert advice in how to advance CXM beyond a conceptual customer strategy using software technology and techniques in ways that make CX sustainable and profitable.
Listen to the Podcast and Read Key Takeaways >
Dave Gardner’s “Thank God It’s Monday”
By Dave Gardner, Business Execution Insights, January 23, 2012
A colleague reports that, after hosting a session about the customer
experience, some employees reported being “uncomfortable” with what they heard.
My, oh my. It can be eye-opening to look at things from a customer’s perspective.
Customer Experience Problems: More Diagnoses Than Prescriptions
By Denis Pombriant, CRM Buyer, January 18, 2012
Customer experience is under the microscope at SAP and RightNow, both of which have recently released research publications on the topic. Each is well-written, but it seems that both place more emphasis on diagnosis than on prescription. Still, if I
was trying to figure out the customer experience, I’d check out both.
Three Tier Books: The One for Thought Leaders
By Dr. Liz Alexander, The Insourcer, January 11, 2012
When I read a nonfiction book it gets mentally shelved—in terms of how well it engages me from page one—as “truly dreadful,” “worthy but boring,” or “absorbing: do not disturb.” These are what I call my “three tiers.”
The Customer Experience Edge is offered up as an example of a Tier One book that “established empathy with the reader’s key issue—the reason why they’re reading your book in the first place. In this example, you’re seeing another picture painted that compels you to nod your head in agreement….”
Customer Experience Management Must Be Built on Trust, SAP Exec Says
By Todd Morrison, SearchSAP, December 27, 2011
SearchSAP.com sat down with Iyer, a vice president of CRM global marketing at SAP, to talk about The Customer Experience Edge: Technology and Techniques for Delivering an Enduring, Profitable, and Positive Experience to Your Customers, what companies need to know about creating a better customer experience and why he thinks the four “pillars” of trust are important.
CRM Going Social, Mobile
By Ann All, Enterprise Apps Today, December 7, 2011
Social and mobile are two enterprise software trends that often get mentioned in the same breath—and for good reason. After all, many people interact with social applications primarily via their mobile devices. So it’s not surprising that major CRM vendors are focusing on these two areas in the coming year.
Six CRM Lessons from 2011
By Neil Davey, MyCustomer.com, December 5, 2011
As the curtain falls on another year, we take a look back at some of the news and stories that we’ve covered in the past 12 months, and consider what we’ve learned.
The Customer Experience Edge
By Volker Hildebrand, Business2Community, November 30, 2011
Clearly, no business can exist without customers. That’s why every company needs to figure out how to win and—maybe even more importantly—keep customers in order to survive…and that’s why companies have invested in ‘CRM’ initiatives and technologies—with more or less success. CRM has always been about winning and keeping customers. But today, rapidly emerging technologies have changed the game.
10 Tactics to Create a Great Customer Experience
By Cynthia Clark, 1to1 Media, November 23, 2011
“Creating the customer experience edge is most definitely a journey, not a destination,” write Reza Soudagar, Vinay Iyer, and Volker G. Hildebrand, Ph.D., in their book The Customer Experience Edge: Technology and Techniques for Delivering an Enduring, Profitable and Positive Experience to Your Customers. In fact, the authors argue, customer experience should not be considered as an end goal, but as a moving target that is driven by “changing customer behaviors and needs, constant technological improvements, and ever-improving insights culled from analysis of information.”
Achieving the Customer Experience Edge Without Breaking the Bank
By Reza Soudagar, TeleTech, November 10, 2011
Over 80 percent of the executives who participated in a recent global survey—conducted by Bloomberg (News - Alert) Businessweek Research Services—indicated that customer experience is one of their top strategic priorities. However, when they were asked to rate their current ability to deliver a differentiated customer experience only 20 percent rated themselves at an acceptable level. So how do companies succeed in creating a differentiated customer experience? How do they do this in way that leads to profitability and growth?
The Customer Experience Edge: Technology and Techniques for Delivering an Enduring, Profitable, and Positive Experience to Your Customers (Press Release)
McGraw Hill, September 2011
Overcoming the price objection is not enough anymore: After years of being conditioned to chase lower prices, consumers are starting to pay attention to their personal experiences with products and services, and are even willing to pay a premium for getting what they want – as proven by Apple, for example. Companies everywhere are therefore scurrying to design and deliver better customer experiences.
Customer Trust—What Does It Take to Win It?
Vinay Iyer, Loyalty 360 Loyalty 360, September 14, 2011
At the end of the month, Customer Experience Edge, a new how-to book on customer experience management will come to the market. The authors Vinay Iyer, Volker Hildebrand and Reza Soudagar developed a new framework that goes beyond traditional CRM based on research and over 15 customer case studies. Mark Johnson, President & CEO of Loyalty 360 spoke with Vinay Iyer, one of the authors, about their new approach to successful and profitable customer experience management.
Vinay Iyer, SAP: Customer Experience Is Beyond CRM (Interview)
Bruce Culbert, BPT Partners, September 2011
At the recent BPT Partners “Social CRM Strategies for Business” seminar in Palo Alto, California, hosted by SAP, Bruce Culbert caught up with Vinay Iyer, vice president, CRM solution marketing at SAP, where they discussed the customer experience, the emergence of social media, and what SAP’s plans are in this space.
