Wednesday, March 26, 2008

영어공부에 도움이 되는 미국드라마

제가 본 것 중에서 난이도별로 구분해볼게요.

[초급]
My name is Earl
정말 웃긴 시트콤입니다. 한 에피소드가 20분이에요.
정말 가볍고 편하게 볼 수 있어요~
주인공들이 교육을 많이 받지 못한 사람들이라서;ㅋ
주인공들도 어려운 단어를 몰라서 어려운 단어는 거의 안 나와요.ㅋㅋ
그런데 약간 발음이나 억양이 특이한 캐릭터들도 있어요.
그 사람들 말이 약간 알아듣기 어려울 수도 있지만
웬만하면 다 알아들을 수 있을꺼에요.(어느정도 기본이 있다면ㅋ)
정말 웃겨서 계속 보시게 될꺼에요 ㅋㅋ

[중급]
Desperate Housewives(위기의 주부들)
3번 질문을 여기서 답할께요 ㅋ
섹스엔더 시티는 중학생이 보긴 좀 그래요.
하지만 위기의 주부들은요, kbs에서 19세로 했지만
전혀 19세까지는 아니에요. 15세면 충분하다고 봅니다.
그리고 기본적으로 아셔야할께요,, 미국하구 우리나라는 문화나 정서가 많이 달라요.
미국드라마는 섹스 얘기가 캐주얼하게 나온다는걸 참고하세요 ㅋ
(드라마마다 다르지만요)
위기의 주부들은요, 발음이 정말 정확해서 좋아요!
딱부러지고 깔끔한 발음 정말 좋습니다 ㅋㅋ
수준은,, 그렇게 어려운 단어는 별로 없어요. 가끔 나오는듯..
일상회화 배우기 정말 좋은 것 같아요.
그리고 엄청 재미있어요 ㅋㅋ
시즌1이 스토리 전개도 깔끔하고 좋고요, 시즌2는 별로고
시즌3은 요새 방영중인데 다시 재미있어졌어요 ㅋㅋ
(시즌이 뭔지 아세요? 미국드라마를 안 보신것 같아 말하자면,
미국은 한 드라마가 가을에 시작해서 다음해 여름 전에 끝나요.
이렇게 1년동안 방영하는게 시즌인데요, 드라마가 재미있으면
계속 제작해서 시즌이 점점 많아지는거죠 ㅋ)

[고급]
Veronica Mars
자랑하는건 아닌데요;ㅋ 제가 웬만하면 미국드라마를 자막 없봐요..
영어 공부에 도움이 되라고...ㅋ 그런데 위기의 주부들은 발음이 깔끔하고 해서
웬만하면 다 알아듣는데 이 드라마는 그렇게 잘 안되더군요.
비유가 엄청 많아서 그런건지.. (미국드라마를 보다보니 미국인들은
일상생활에서 비유를 많이 한다고 생각하게 됐어요. 한 단어를 써도
사전적 의미와 상황에 따라 비유적인 의미를 동시에 갖고 있는 단어를 종종 쓰더군요ㅋ)
이건 여고생 탐정이야기인데, 엄청 재미있어요.
하지만 자막 없이는 이해하기 어려워요.. 그래서 고급입니다 ㅋ



Arrested Development
이건 우리나라에 많이 안 알려진 시트콤이지만
정말 재미있고요, 제 생각엔 이게 영어공부하기 가장 좋은 것 같아요.
콩가루집안 이야기인데도 상당히 가족적이고요
선정적이거나 폭력적인게 하나도 없어서 우리나라 정서에 거슬리는게 없어요 ㅋ
처음에 주인공이 불쌍해서 답답할 수도 있지만 보다보면 다 좋아집니다 ㅋ
단어도 적당하고 가끔 어려운 말도 나오고요,
발음도 괜찮게 깔끔하고요.. 이게 제일 좋다고 봐요~!

음.. 그리고 수준 정하기 애매하지만..
[중/고급] 정도 되는것들..ㅋ
Gilmore Girls
모녀의 얘기인데요, 재미있고요
이것도 우리나라 정서에 잘 맞는 편이랍니다 ㅋ
편안하고 잔잔하면서 재미있어요.
주인공이 농담을 많이하고 말이 빨라서 조금 어려울 수도 있습니다.
Ally McBeal
변호사 앨리가 사랑을 찾아가는 얘기인데요,,
중간중간 앨리의 코믹한 상상과 여러가지 재미있는 캐릭터들때문에
너무나 웃기고 재미있는 드라마에요 ㅋㅋ
변호사들 얘기라 법률용어가 간간히 많이 나와요.
발음도 좋아요.ㅋ
겉은 법률드라마이지만 전혀 딱딱하지 않고 재미있어요 ㅋ

내용보다는 영어 수준 위주로 설명해봤습니다..
위의 드라마들 모두 15세 정도 되는것들이에요.
아, arrested development 하고 gilmore girls는 12세 정도..

프렌즈는요, 재미있고요, 단어도 적당히 다양하고..
중급정도 되는 드라마같아요.. 사실 영어공부에 도움이 되라고 만드는
미국드라마는 특별히 없으니까요..
보시면서 본인이 단어를 외우려고 하는게 더 중요하다고 봐요 ㅋ

그리고 드라마를 어디서 구하시는지는 모르겠지만
미국드라마 다운받기 쉬운 사이트 알려드릴게요.

http://clubbox.co.kr/24
여기서 온갖 미국드라마 다 다운받으실수 있어요. 한글자막도 있고요.
미국 쇼 등등까지..

http://www.forom.com/indexf.php?gl=1&c=
여기서는 미국 드라마 영어자막 받으실 수 있어요
외국사이트라서 가입도 다 영어로 해야합니다

http://cafe.naver.com/freeustv.cafe

Monday, March 24, 2008

Customer satisfaction falls despite call center efforts

A focus on the customer experience over the past year is probably the cause of a significant drop in customer satisfaction levels in the contact center, according to a report issued this week.
The Global Contact Center Benchmarking report found that customer satisfaction levels dropped from 82% last year to 68%. However, that might be a good thing, according to Cara Diemont, editor of the report.

"We think it's not so much because customers are not happy, but because contact centers are doing a better job of measuring satisfaction," she said. "They're more realistic and better at understanding scores. People are paying more attention to analytics, recorded calls and automated survey options. It's a positive for the industry. It shows they're focusing on the customer experience and doing things that will make a difference."

Conducted by Dimension Data plc, a Hauppauge, N.Y.-based IT services firm, the report surveyed 403 contact centers across the globe. This was the tenth year the organization issued its report and, on top of the drop in satisfaction levels, there were some other major changes from last year.

"There was a big jump, unfortunately downwards, in the rate of first-call resolution," Diemont said. "A lot of people measure first-call resolution as a whole. That takes into account all the transfers, bumping callers from one agent to another or [to another] site."

First-call resolution on an agent level -- that is having the issue resolved by the initial agent -- dropped from 87% to 70% this year.

"While people are focused on first-call resolution, there's been quite a lot of effort to look at it as a whole," Diemont said. "Perhaps the next wave is to concentrate on the once-and-done philosophy. It's important having business rules in place, identifying who the caller is, who the best agent is, and all the routing strategies."

Internet protocol (IP) continues to be a major issue for contact centers as well. More than 60% reported they have IP-based PBX/ACDs, up from 50% last year.

"The path to IP is something contact centers continue to be walking down," Diemont said. "The top reason people give is not actually cost savings, but around the flexibility of their architecture, which says a lot of things about the way they're making decisions. They're probably trying to tie in with a broader enterprise technology strategy."

According to the report, 69% chose IP because of the flexibility of its architecture. In addition, 60% of contact centers have an architecture separate from the wider enterprise.

Staffing rules spending

Yet, for all that spending and experience, staffing continues to claim the lion's share of operational budgets, ranging from a low of 64% in Africa and Asia to a high of 74% in North America.

"At the end of the day, it is your agents who deliver that customer experience, and you need to continue to invest in them," Diemont said. Technology like quality management tools and self-service doesn't account for much of contact center spending, she noted. "The other thing that's interesting about spending patterns is you would think that with staff salaries being such a high percentage of costs, there would be more done around getting the most out of that, but attrition and absenteeism continue to be real problems."

Global agent attrition is at 24%, and in the North American market, that goes as high as 31%.

"You are replacing a quarter of your agent staff every year," Diemont said. "Recruiting costs, the time it takes for a person to become competent can be costly, and that doesn't account for the challenges of customer service. Do people get poorer customer service as a result of this attrition?"

Contact centers have become better about creating career paths for their agents, however, with 51% responding that they've focused on that.

When it comes to metrics, the more strategic types of metrics are not being used, Diemont said. Given the financial metrics, the one measured most is cost per customer per channel, but only 42% say they can measure that, according to the report. Moreover, only 29% measure sales generated per lead from the contact center, and 18% measure contact center profitability.

Some other key stats

Self-service completion rates continued to rise, with 19% compound growth on last year's completion rates.
Non-phone-based interactions constitute 22% of all inbound and outbound contact center contacts. Of those, 49% are Web-based, with the remainder split among email, fax, postal and SMS communications.
Among respondents, 69% of contact centers are recording calls, and 21% are planning to upgrade recording platforms.
Voice and self-service continue to be major areas of focus, with 27% looking to upgrade their interactive voice response systems, 25% planning on installing speech recognition, 19% planning test-to-speech applications, and 13% planning to implement voice authentication/verification applications.

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/generic/0,295582,sid11_gci1297124,00.html?Offer=CRint208

Price not the best path to customer satisfaction

Contrary to what some might expect, price is not the biggest concern for online retailers hoping to satisfy their customers.

ForeSee Results, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based customer satisfaction management company, recently released the results of its annual study of the top 100 online e-retailers. Based on the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index, the study, which ranked the vendors based on online revenue, found that Netflix, QVC.com and Amazon do the best job of serving their customers.

But it's not necessarily low prices that make the most difference. There are four key elements of online retail satisfaction: the site experience; the price; merchandise, including availability and product selection; and brand or brand image.

"When we look across the top 100, we see that price, the majority of the time, is the lowest-scoring element," said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee. "Consumers aren't all that happy with price. The instinct then is, 'I gotta lower my prices. That's where consumers score me the lowest.' "

According to the survey results, however, focusing on lowering prices may not be the best idea.

"Only 5% of the time will improving price have the biggest impact on satisfaction and behavior," Freed said. "A significant majority of the time, site experience or brand image will have the biggest impact on satisfaction and the financial results."

A key to improving that experience is maintaining consistency across channels, and when companies add in different pricing strategies, that only adds another layer of complexity and inconsistency.

"That's a reason for companies to rethink shopping policies," Freed said.

For example, most online retailers charge shipping fees above and beyond the retail price of an item. But the physical stores don't charge real estate costs or the costs of shipping.

One need only look to Best Buy (a laggard in this year's ranking, coming in at the bottom with a score of 71) to see the dangers of inconsistent pricing. The consumer electronics retailer is facing a lawsuit in Connecticut, which is charging that stores in the state attempted to trick customers by displaying one price on online sites and a higher price on look-alike sites at in-store kiosks.

For most site visitors, the Internet is not a purchasing tool but rather a research and marketing tool. Online retail conversion rates average around 3% to 5%, according to Freed. Many people have no intention of making an online purchase, but they will go to the store for the final transaction, or else they plan to make a purchase online at a later point.

The importance of customer satisfaction is even greater for organizations looking to future performance, Freed said.

"We see an incredibly strong causal relationship between satisfaction today and financial performance tomorrow," he said. "Satisfaction today is probably the best lead indicator for a business. We tend to focus on financial metrics -- abandoned carts, sales, top-line growth, bottom-line growth. All of that's obviously important, but that tells people what has happened, not what will happen."

There is an enormous amount of research showing that satisfied customers become loyal customers, which translates to further purchases and better word of mouth.

The results are in

This year's top scorers, Netflix, the online DVD rental service, and QVC.com, a multi-channel retailer, lead the way with a score of 85 on the 100-point scale. They are followed closely by Amazon.com, a pure online retailer, and the Barnes & Noble Website BN.com, a complement to a traditional bricks-and-mortar chain, with a score of 83. Each demonstrates a different business model.

"It's not the business model that puts somebody on top, it's more about business execution, about what customers need and want," Freed said.

The lowest scorers in the top 100 were PCConnection.com and PCMall.com, with scores of 67, HomeDepot.com with a 69, and Lowes.com with a 70

Gartner: Customer service a six-step process

Companies hoping to transform their business into a customer-centric organization need to view customer service not as an event but as a series of interconnected processes, and to make their IT plans accordingly, according to one Gartner analyst.

Customer service progresses through six phases: detection, preparation, transaction, measurement, understanding and improvement, according to a recent research note written by Michael Maoz, vice president and distinguished analyst with the Stamford, Conn.-based research firm. Having someone, or better yet a team of people, take the perspective of customers and their progression through these processes is a difficult but rewarding endeavor.

In fact, the customer experience is beginning to replace CRM in many places. AMR Research, for example, no longer has a CRM research group but studies customer management, and vendors are beginning to position themselves as providing customer experience management technology.

"CRM has been kicked and tossed and beaten; customer experience seems to have better resonance," Maoz said. "You can manage to sub-optimize any one piece of a series of processes and still get it all wrong. What this is talking about is let's look at it a little more from the customer's experience. Let's see how they consider the overall set of experiences."

Companies have been optimizing individual customer contact channels for years and have become adept at serving their customers individually. A customer may get good service on a Web site, then a chat session and finally a phone call, but if he has to repeat information and gets different responses at each channel, the overall experience is broken, Maoz said.

Part of the problem is that segments of the organization have taken responsibility for individual channels. The answer, Maoz suggests, is to form a team focused on the customer that touches all the parts of the organization that a customer touches -- billing, marketing, logistics, call center, partners.

"By taking a holistic approach and creating a customer experience team, you can begin looking at what a customer expects and compare it to a nonlinear or broken set of processes from the inside," Maoz said. "The idea is to change the way organizations are structured."

Another vital part of the customer experience team? Customers. Companies no longer need to rely on focus groups, surveys or follow-up calls. Particularly with large, business-to-consumer organizations, online communities with the participation of the business are providing real insight into processes and performance, he said. Companies such as Hallmark, CharlesSchwabb and HP -- with PhotoSpace, its online community of photo-taking moms -- are doing this right, according to Maoz.

But though the team is important and the concept solid, he said, it takes more than just assembling a group. It needs leadership, and that doesn't necessarily mean giving someone an empty title of chief customer officer.

"If you don't have C-level approval and budget -- meaning [that] you're being measured on it, given a bonus on it, your salary is measured on it -- then it's just lip service," Maoz said. "Generally, someone at the top says, 'Enough talk about this customer experience, our marketing is failing us.'"

It's a vital step because learning from customers and changing processes to serve them means more time and money -- a departure from the traditional focus on efficiencies and quarterly profits.

"You'd be a fool to try and change customer processes at the expense of higher service costs unless you have someone with higher authority," Maoz said.

For many organizations, IT has done as much as it can to optimize channels and purchase hardware and software. When the CFO and CTO of a company get together and decide to put an end to thinking of service as an event, things change.

And things are changing. Companies with lots of customer touch points are evolving to this, Maoz said -- investment banks in particular. Telecoms selling packages instead of bundled minutes, insurance companies, service companies and hotel chains are all getting into it, though it's far from widespread adoption.

"If you look at all businesses, maybe three to five percent truly are engaged in trying to improve the customer experience from a holistic experience," Maoz said. "Most other companies are far away from that."

ATM Machines As A Sales Channel

How many times one has deleted that email offering that free gold credit card or a pre-approved loan? How many times one has curtly disconnected the phone call from another tele-caller with a pre-approved check for that awesome holiday in Hawaii? In a market, where retail banks have exhausted almost all the channels to reach the target customers, ATM machines can be a powerful alternative for cross-selling. ATM machines also provide the opportunity to reach out to the otherwise difficult to reach customers such as expats.

So, how would it work? Almost every bank has pre-approved offers for certain customers. The bank can load the offers for some of the pre-approved customers to the server that interacts with the ATM machines. The moment the ATM recognizes a preapproved customer, it can show her the pre-approved offer through a blinker or an additional screen at the end of the transaction. If the customer is willing to go ahead with the offer, all she needs to do is to press “Y”. The moment she presses “Y”, the bank gets notified and can track the lead through different mechanisms. For example, an SMS can go to the sales manager nearest to that ATM with the customer detail, who can take up the matter further.

Surely, it’s not as easy as it sounds. While the technology for such a process is available in the market, it’s still a challenge to implement it. Prediction accuracy is another big challenge.

· It is not feasible to upload the entire set of pre-approved offers to the server. And hence the need for a model, which can forecast with high accuracy the probability of a customer visiting a cash machine.

· Each ATM screen on an average takes 5-7 seconds, which includes the time taken to interact with the server. So, the time to pitch the offers must be chosen judiciously, especially for locations with long customer queues. But restriction of timing will in turn affect the prediction accuracy.

· The ATM cannot close the sell. The completion of the process depends on further integrations of channels.

Nevertheless, ATMs can still be used as an excellent channel and in the near future itself, with the advent of technology, it can be expected to be one of the primary channels.


http://diamondinfoanalytics.com/blog1/2008/02/13/atm-machines-as-a-sales-channel/

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Poor surveys result in revenue losses

Businesses could miss out on vital data and potential revenue by conducting poor surveys, according to SPSS.

The leading provider of Predictive Analytics software has identified five ‘survey sins’ – key mistakes that many businesses need to avoid when canvassing customer opinion.

Surveys can be a great way to collect and harness customer feedback – and can lead to increased consumer satisfaction and retention, according to Heena Jethwa, Product Marketing Manager at SPSS. “But poorly designed and implemented surveys can actually do more harm than good, leaving customers bored and confused,” she advises.

The top five survey sins that SPSS identified were as follows:

1. The consumer trap

No matter how much you want your customers to tick the right box, angling questions to trick them – such as a leading question like ‘do you like this beautiful red car?’ - will only corrupt your results. Avoid emotionally-charged words like ’crisis’, ’failure’ or ‘superb’, which elicit more strongly emotional responses. Keep questions simple, clear and fair.

2. The bad, the boring and the ugly

Customers are bombarded with feedback requests. If it is dull and uninspiring, it will be overlooked. Time spent making your survey appealing can impact on the number of participants.

Content is key, but so is presentation. Include colour where possible, but no more than two, and use animations, video or sound files to make an online survey vibrant and engaging.

3. Hit and miss

Surveying customers via one method only – be it web, telephone or paper – may seem like a money-saver, but will ultimately minimise impact.

A variety of surveying methods can help to guarantee a wider demographic: the Internet grows at four to ten per cent year on year, but there are still people who prefer telephone or paper as a means of answering questions.

The wider your data collection and the more choice you give customers, the more valuable and accurate your insight can be.

4. The vague idea

Lacking in clear objectives will affect the effectiveness of your survey and ultimately produce poor results. Keep a clear goal in mind when composing your survey. Make sure you design your research so that it provides you with potential answers to your business problems.

5. Falling at the final hurdle

Confusing or poorly presented data can result in losing your overall message. Having conducted the survey, don’t ruin it by scrimping on reporting. Remember why you conducted the survey in the first place.

Clear, concise information can help to reinforce your argument. Timely results and delivering the data across the enterprise is key – feedback can impact more than one department.

Jethwa added, “It’s surprising that we still see companies making these classic mistakes.

“Given the message that a bad survey can send out, those that continue to produce sub-standard surveys should think about reviewing their strategy.

"The information that can be harnessed by surveying customers effectively can prove vital in making the right business decisions.”


From utalkmarketing.com

How to measure your marketing

Are you not taken seriously by your finance director? Dismissed as the "creative" who has lunches with agencies and left out of key strategic decisions? Ever feel like it’s hard to ever get the budget you need to do the job? Have fun made out of your black polo-neck/jacket combo?

Measuring your marketing could be the answer to your problems. OK, the first three: the black polo neck you should just keep for evenings at thought-provoking existentialist theatre in Islington.

Measuring your marketing allows you to calculate the impact that your marketing activity has on the profitability of the business your work for in the short-term, and in the long-term.

At its most complex, it involves hard-core econometric modelling everything that you and your competitors do.

However, everyone can measure their marketing in some shape or form, and build towards an objective where you have a very detailed understanding of your contribution to the success of the business. It’s better than going a bit Soho isn’t it?

Why measure your marketing?

- It drives the success of your company. If you know what works best, you can do more of it, and that will help you get a competitive edge
- It helps with the optimisation of marketing. If you can find variations in performance of certain campaigns e.g. between two banner ads, you can understand what is working with consumers. This will improve the ROI you generate for the company.
- It helps you win the respect of your peers and managers. By showing people the depth of you knowledge about marketing, they will trust your judgement more
- It can help you get more budget. If you can show that certain types of activity are profitable (search is a great example) then you can get easily campaign for more marketing budget
- How do you measure your marketing?

Simple ROI calculations

Ultimately, what you are trying to determine is the impact that your marketing has on profit. With a great deal of marketing activity (more than you think) this is very easy to calculate. With brand marketing, it is more complex.

A good way to start measuring is look at activities which are meant to drive sales in the short term, such as point of sale, online marketing and sales promotions. You can quite easily determine the profit by looking at your sales up-lift, cost of promotion and the marginal profit on each unit.

Econometric modelling

Is the gold standard of marketing measurement. Many media agencies, such as OMD Metrics offer this as part of their service. At it’s best modelling can provide an exact prediction of ROI for every part of your marketing mix.

However, they are expensive and time-consuming. A huge amount of data, including your sales, has to be disclosed. It will probably take at least a year of collecting detailed information before your model become useful. Unless you are spending significant (£3 million +) on advertising, it probably isn’t worth it.

Brand Equity Measurement

Investments in advertising will rarely pay back in the short-term. If you can’t afford or be bothered with an econometric model, you should at least be measuring your brand equity. Which part of your brand equity you think is important is up to you, but common measures are:

- Total awareness vs competitors
- Spontaneous awareness vs competitors
- Likelihood to try
- Net recommender
- Trust
- Other measures specific to your sector
- You can then put all of the information you can gather into a marketing scorecard, a handy way of presenting it to your managers.


http://www.utalkmarketing.com/Pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=319&Title=How_to_measure_your_marketing

Marketers not measuring campaign impacts

The majority of senior European marketers either do ad hoc or carried out no evaluation of their marketing campaigns, new findings from marketing software company Aprimo reveal.

Market research from the company showed 68 per cent of marketers were in the dark over the impact of their campaigns.

The lack of integration between departments systems and processes is highlighted as the single most important factor to impact the ability to measure marketing performance, according to 55%.

The survey findings identified two main challenges for marketers: increasing the productivity of marketing was the key challenge for nearly 50%, whilst 30% highlighted the lack of skilled resource.

This marketing skills shortage proved to be a challenge shared by a vast majority of 94%, whether in all departments, or just specialist areas. In fact, only 2% are fortunate enough to have no problems recruiting and retaining the right people.

However, a positive outlook was prevalent, with 66% stating “My confidence is high, times are good, the economy is booming and the outlook is positive”.

This optimism might have a link to the marketing budgets, which in the case of 60% of respondents increased in 2006-2007, and for 23%, budgets increased by more than 10%.

This bright outlook translates into the strategic goal for marketing to acquire new customers and capture a larger market share, according to 68% of respondents.

Only 6% of marketers polled believe that direct marketing is dead. Twice as many marketers gathered in the opposite corner, with 12% stating that direct marketing is now more relevant than ever.

The rest of the attendees believed there is more life in the DM industry yet, but stated that they “recognise the challenges” (48%) or “think it requires a rethink” (34%).

Marketers are recognising the challenge brought by the new age of technology and consumers, and most are planning to make changes accordingly.

The survey showed 37% are familiar with web 2.0 and that it is embedded in their marketing strategy. However, 63% confessed to either not understanding it or neglecting it in their current strategies.

This looks set to change, as 62% indicated that they are making subtle changes to their plans, and 10% said “we are having to rethink our whole marketing strategy” as a result of the changing face of consumers and its impact on marketing.

“Evaluation is an important aspect of marketing. It adds an element of accountability, and it helps inform future marketing plans. If it was quicker and easier, more people would do it,” said Director of Marketing EMEA, Aprimo, David Arrowsmith.

“This research shows us that evaluation needs to be more integrated into marketing campaigns, and marketing in turn needs to be joined up with other functions, such as sales and finance.

He added, “This would increase measurability of marketing performance without adding to the already heavy workload of the modern marketer.”


http://www.utalkmarketing.com/pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=4664&title=Marketers_not_measuring_campaign_impacts

How to measure the impact of your marketing

You can measure marketing effectiveness in many ways but the most important step you can take is to establish clearly the measurement objectives before the creative brief is agreed.

The earlier in the process this is decided, the easier it becomes for everyone concerned. If everyone ‘buys into’ and is in firm agreement with the objectives, they are more likely to be happy with the end result.

You need to work out from the offset the desired response you want from your target audience and no campaign should be started without undertaking this planning stage.

This is far more important than what the campaign looks like and part of this planning is to understand how your target audience will interact with your campaign. By spending time working out what you expect from your audience and how they will react to the campaign will enable you to set short, medium and long term measurable objectives for the campaign.

Once deliverables are set, it is essential to spend time ensuring that effective monitoring processes are in place. We all know that the measureable responses can vary - from website hits rates, to the numbers of telephone or sales calls or returned promotion forms, but whatever response you choose to measure, you must remember to track them continually against the agreed targets.

The more transparent you are in terms of campaign measurement, the more likely you will be to exceed your targets as you will know exactly the stage you are at and what you have left to achieve.

To make life easier, marketers should really plan campaign measurement before the campaign starts and integrate into this planning a way of exceeding expectations. Make sure that the responses are visible and as easy to collect as possible. Simple touches, such as setting up dedicated microsites to support a brand campaign, where hits are fully accountable to the campaign, work well; or setting up a dedicated phone number for the same purpose, greatly aid the collection of results.

However, one area that is far less simple to measure is the impact of a campaign in terms of measuring the audience’s reaction in emotional terms. Conducting in-depth focus groups or market research is one way of measuring this and new media analysts would advocate the use of Facebook research and Google trends to gauge such a response.

But the bottom line is that the market capitalisation of any brand is still around 60% unquantifiable because we cannot accurately measure ‘brand value’. An example would be the Sony Bravia campaign.

The first execution (‘balls’) had an emotional quality that left you warm to the brand. The second and third executions (‘paint’ and ‘play-doh’) have tried to apply the box-ticking qualities of the first ad, but just don’t have that initial tug.

Whether this impacts sales figures is another matter. This is one area of evaluation that will continue to evolve with improved technology and new media but with any campaign a marketer can stay one step ahead by planning in advance and sticking to the brief.

http://www.utalkmarketing.com/Pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=4303&Title=How_to_measure_the_impact_of_your_marketing

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

자기에게 반하게 하려면

자기에게 반하게 하려면

기업은 결국 사람이므로 정말 반해서 미치도록 따르는 사람 없이는
위대한 일을 할 수가 없다.
하지만 남이 자기에게 반하게 하려면
자기가 먼저 사람에게 반해야 한다.
사람에게 반하려면 따뜻한 인간미가 전제돼야 한다.
또한 남이 자기에게 반하려면 인간적인 매력이 있어야 한다.
위대한 리더가 되려면,
엄격한 신상필벌과 이성적 판단이 깔려 있으면서도
그 위에 따뜻한 인간미와 인간적 매력을 갖추어야 한다.

[출처] 자기에게 반하게 하려면...|작성자 캣짱

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Gartner suggests seven ways to improve the customer experience

Increasingly, companies are turning to customer experience initiatives to boost the bottom line, but it's an effort that requires cooperation across the organization and extends beyond just CRM, research from Gartner Inc. suggests.
In fact, targeting, attracting and retaining new customers remains a top priority for CIOs this year, a Gartner survey of 1,500 CIOs worldwide found. Yet CIOs have little involvement in customer experience initiatives, according to Ed Thompson, research vice president with the Stamford, Conn.-based analyst firm.

"None -- I can't think of one example," Thompson said. "They're not invited to the conversation. There's generally no IT presence in the meeting at all. It's usually marketing, quality improvement, CRM, and customer experience specialists."

In the past, CRM failure was often blamed on too much IT involvement and not enough backing from the business side. However, customer experience initiatives and CRM are not the same. CRM projects may be a subset of customer experience initiatives. For example, in companies where the CRM initiative went well, it's organized, funded and there is a plan for a single view of the customer, according to Thompson.

"Most companies are much more fragmented and disorganized," he said. "And in those cases, there's a bit of a vacuum and CRM is just one little piece that might help. It depends on how successful CRM was in the past."

Customer experience team structure

While customer experience initiatives are often led by someone from marketing, organizations with the best-run programs tend to have a mixture of people who are responsible for, or report on, customers across the organization.

"The main types of people you get are brand- and design-type people, then the customer satisfaction and sometimes the loyalty people, then the process improvement people," Thompson said. "When you look at that group, if you have two of the four, maybe three of the four, that's what tends to work the best."

To improve the customer experience, Gartner advises focusing on projects that are doable and critical. There are two things to keep in mind before embarking on a project.

"One thing everyone tells you is: 'There's no silver bullet,'" Thompson said. "The second thing they all say is [that] as they start to look at what they're doing already … they're sort of amazed at what's going on."

Gartner's seven key initiatives are:

Act on feedback: Companies that fail to respond to customer feedback are throwing away the chance to increase the number of satisfied and loyal customers. Changes need to be deployed throughout the company and communicated to employees and customers.
Design processes from the outside in: Organizations need to identify which processes matter most to customers rather than designing them with the objective of improving operational efficiencies.
Act as one organization to ensure consistency: Companies need to ensure that information gleaned from a customer at one interaction is not forgotten in the next channel.
Be open:Opening channels or extending hours are one way, but it can mean more, like building communities. Organizations should be transparent and clear, open-minded and inclusive.
Personalize products and experiences: Personalization can be complex, and complexity can mean costs for the company. Companies need to beware of just evaluating the costs of personalization against the sales benefits and to factor in the longer-term value of improving the customer experience when building a business case.
Alter attitudes and company behavior: Employee actions are often the most powerful actions in a customer's experience. There are three ways to alter employee behavior: recruit the right employees; ensure standards with policies, procedures and governance structures; and create training programs that incent and can modify employee behavior.
Design the complete customer experience: Organizations need to plan and design the customer experience, rather than letting it "just happen."

Companies should focus on what's already working, particularly in tough economic times.

"When you start to think about it, every part of the organization can be involved," Thompson said. "But the first thing to ask is: 'What are we already doing? What are the aspects of it? What can we fund better that's already being successful?' Often, people throw good money after bad, but how about throwing good money after good."