Sat, 29 Oct 2011 17:09:20 -0800WeeblyWed, 13 Apr 2011 08:10:23 -0800http://www.roppen.com/1/post/2011/04/viktige-utviklingstrekk-rundt-kundeopplevelser-og-kundetilfredshet.htmlI dag publiserte Norsk Kundebarometer sin årlige undersøkelse som avdekker hvilke selskaper som har de mest og minst tilfredse kundene.

Det åpner for å dele tanker om noen typiske utviklingstrekk rundt kundeopplevelser og selve kundereisen - noen kjennetegn rundt denne enormt viktige delen av virksomheter.

1. Kundeopplevelser blir stadig viktigere etterhvert som kundene får stadig mer makt
Det faktum at en stadig større andel av kundeservicen blir digitalisert og selvbetjent bidrar til at kundene får mer makt. Samtidig som det blir større distanse til kundenes tanker og føleleser. Det stiller helt nye krav til kundehåndtering og hvordan man skal opprettholde kunnskap og oversikt over hele kundereisen. Dermed blir man utfordret på kunnskap, kompetanse og konkurransefortrinn.

2. Et stadig mer komplisert kanallandskap øker antall kontaktpunkter mot kundene og gjør kundeopplevelsen mer kompleks
Stadig nye kanaler og kontaktpunkter mot kundene utvikles samtidig som de tradisjonelle kanalene får nye roller og oppgaver. Noen eksempler på dette er den tradisjonelle billettluka som blir informasjonssenter eller bankfilialen som som blir rådgivningsenter eller postkontoret som flytter inn i matvarebutikken. Med de nye kanalene ser vi også en stadig mer sammensatt brukeradferd hos kundene. Når på døgnet de vil bli betjent for å få utrettet hva - og gjennom hvilken kanal. Og dette er intet generisk adferdsmønster men noe som både varierer med alder, utdannelse, georgrafi etc og som er i kontinuerlig bevegelse og forandring. Det stilles en god del krav til ny kunnskap, ny kompetanse og nye prioriteringer hos de som skal betjene kundene sine i dette landskapet.
 
3. Etter mange års fokus på "lean" - der man vektlegger en effektiv og strømlinjeformet kundeservice - er de mer emosjonelle behovene kanskje kommet i bakleksa
Blant annet som et resultat av stadig større bruk av teknologi tvinger det seg frem behov for å ta ut gevinsten ved bruk av ny teknologi i organisasjonene. Det har drevet frem "lean" konseptet som fokuserer på å gjøre organisasjoner og arbeidsprosesser mer kostnadseffektive. Sentralt i denne tenkingen er å skape merverdi med mindre innsats av ressurser. Digitaliseringen av kundebetjening er et eksempel på dette. Men midt oppi denne effektiviseringen er det lett å glemme eller hoppe over noen viktige dimensjoner og kriterier for å kunne levere høy kvalitet på kundeopplevelsene - nemlig de emosjonelle verdiene. Få tak i og ta hensyn til de ønsker og behov som kundene tenker og føler og matche dette med "effektiviteten". Det krever innsikt, forståelse og evne til omsette denne kunskapen til kundenetjeningsmodeller som møter kundene på dere emosjonelle hjemmebane. Det er ikke lett. Men de som får det til er de sikre vinnerne.

4. BTC vs BTB
Et tydelig trekk ved kundebarometeret er at dette er for de konsumentdrevede virksomhetene - Busines to Consumer. Det er i denne sektoren kundetilfredshet og kundeorientering har størst fokus og ligger lengst fremme. Mye tyder på at det innenfor BTB (Business to Business) sektoren holdes betydelig mer igjen og legges mindre vekt på kundeopplevelser, kundereiser og kundeorientering. Man kan spekulere i om det fremdeles er mye konvensjonell tenking som dominerer i denne sektoren der produktorientering og tradisjonelle kundebetjeningsmodeller får lov til å dominere. Det går isåfall utover salget (topplinjen), konkurransedyktigheten og lønnsomheten i denne sektoren. 

Eller er metodeverket hos Norsk Kundebarometer laget slik at det ikke fanger opp BTB virksomheter på samme nivå som BTC ?

Kanskje vi etterhvert vil se noen fremoverlente BTB selskaper dukke opp på kundebaromteret etterhvert ?


KOBRA jobber med disse komplekse problemstillingene og sitter på verktøy, erfaring og kompetanse som kan hjelpe både BTC og BTB virksomheter til å styrke sin kundeorientering og kontinuerlig forbedre kundereisen. Det krever imidlertid betydelig fokus, innsats og organisasjonsmessig vilje om man vil lykkes. Premien blir fornøyde kunder ! ]]>Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:46:25 -0800http://www.roppen.com/1/post/2009/11/why-share-office-with-colleagues.html Who I am sharing office and spending time with during the professional part of my life is not necessarily my colleagues. Actually, I rather share office with friends I know and appreciate from a personal and social perspective - people I would like to spend time with - than colleagues with limited social equality.

And in fact – the main reason for sharing office with colleagues is interaction and availability related to my profession – sharing kowledge and experiences. Guess what – in 2010 you don’t need to physically share office to interact, share or being available. As a matter of fact you can move around and locate anywhere and still be very available and easily interact with anyone – 24/7 - at no cost. You can skype with camera, audio or chat.  And if required – you can show up in person – but that is only happening occasionally. No interuptions, nobody bothering you unnecessary.

And you have fun. You share office with good friends and people you really enjoy being together with. This is motivating, inspiring and unleash lot’s of energy. Exactly what you need to perform well and deal with the daily challenges.

When do I see my colleagues ? Every day – not necessarily in person. But we share, exchange experiences and solve problems – by using tools particularly designed to do exactly that. And when required – I show up in person and meet with my colleagues. But only when required……

The old paradigm with offices to every employee located together is history. An intermediate step might be the open office solutions where you don’t have your own office or desk – you just show up and grab the first available desk. Why is that ? Because everyone is on the run moving around meeting with partners, suppliers, customers or whatever. Or they are working from home, from their summerhouse, from a café or wherever suitable. This is a compromise.

But ultimately I want full flexibility on where I locate and when - and who I spend my time with - 24/7 !

So why not share office with friends - and still work with colleagues  ?

]]>Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:05:59 -0800http://www.roppen.com/1/post/2009/10/the-front-end-formula-designguistory.htmlThe front-end section of online communication - where we actually do the interactive communication - is built on three key components - and each of them are equally important and mutually dependent to secure highly effective and engaging communication with the target audience - Design, GUI (Graphic User Interface) and the Story.


I am the first to emphasize the importance of appealing and nice look and feel of the web site. The visual impression is a critical criteria for making the first impression and setting the inspiring mode during your visit to the web site - like a background music you enjoy and inhale...Appealing design is critical.


And of course GUI is key - to enhance the efficiency and ease the use of the underlying logical functionalitIes/application - and make the navigation as intuitive and seamless as possible. Clever GUI design leads to high level of interactions which is engaging, entertaining and consequently very effective communication.


However - said all this - the real key of the matter and proof of the pudding is in the content !! CONTENT is everything. Content is all about bringing substance to the surface - about having a story and a message highly relevant to your audience. The clue is to transform content into entertaining and engaging STORYTELLING. Highly skilled use of multimedia tools such as high quality images, high quality video (very well directed and edited), well prepared text, super relevant music contributing to set the right atmosphere etc. This is where you by crawling around the www can really separate successful and effective interactive communication from mediocre monologues and super boring attempts to attract audience.


To succeed with ONLINE communication you really have to take this seriously and make sure you bring together the right set of skills and expertise to make this possible. Some environments are doing this - but far too many fail to do this right. 


Am I right ? Take a walk on the wild side !  
]]>Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:29:39 -0800http://www.roppen.com/1/post/2009/10/online-creativity.htmlCommunicating online is far more complicated and sophisticated than offline communication. In the offline world we all got pretty fast used to the technological premises and framework shaping the functional possibilities of the communication - such as colors, logo, fonts, pictures, sound etc. We fairly fast got the idea of how we could be creative and make entertaining, emotional, nice and surprising off line advertising. And it was a bit like learning swimming- once learned - you mastered the world of creative advertising !


Then the online world arrived. And the "once learned" paradigm vanished. Understanding the technical premises and framework for creating and doing entertaining, engaging, emotional, appealing and interesting communication in the online environment is a very complicated and difficult task ! The technical premises for how you can engage, surprise and enthuse your audience is not a "once learned" kind of activity.... Being creative in the online world with increasingly more bandwith, increasingly more sophisticated applications, increasingly more demanding audience and still a huge cultural gap between the world of engineers and the world of creative people makes it difficult to take out the potential of the online communication opportunity.


Establishing and making a working environment where you mix "engineers" and "creatives" is hard and takes a lot of efforts to succeed. Having technical experts working closely together with creative people to analyse, discuss and share knowledge, experience and ideas for how online communication can help their clients reach and communicate with their audience online - more precisely, relevant, entertaining, inspiring and engaging than in the offline world. By being able to combine the most relevant technical applications with nice visual design/effects, good story telling and entertaining content you are capable of creating highly effective communication in the online environment.


I have not yet seen many creative environments around who have really successfully been able to combine these skill sets and really take out the incredible potential of online communication.
 
Have you ?]]>Wed, 27 Feb 2008 02:43:33 -0800http://www.roppen.com/1/post/2008/02/go-global-with-your-creative-services.htmlTwo mega-trends are influencing and changing the DNA of the creative services sector:

1. The world becomes more and more ONE place to live, consequently marketing communication and creativity takes an even more global turn than we have seen over the last decades. What works in Europe will work in Asia and North America etc.

2. The dramatic change of technology has changed the way creative people work and the sense of creative advertising whether we talk about the tools for creating advertising, for sharing and collaboration or distributing the messages to the markets.

The multinational media groups have realized the changes going on and started adapting to the globalization of creative services. They have resources all over the world creating, producing and managing campaigns; across all media sectors and across all geographical regions. Their global labor optimization gives them a significant competitive advantage both in terms of access to expertise and speed to market, cost effectivness. The results - Very happy clients!

I believe the time has come for independent small and mid-size creative agencies to challenge the multinationals on these advantages, just like they have been doing on creativity and niche services for a long time.
If the small and mid-sized agencies don’t adapt to the globalization of creative services and fight back against the multinationals - it will be difficult to compete on both cost of services, access to brilliant people and speed of services.

Sir Martin’ Sorell’s (Chaiman of WPP) view is simple: collectively there are more than two billion people in both India and China, by the law of averages there must be some extremely creative people there. His creative company is already outsourcing graphic design and animation work to 24 hour studios in Mumbai, and moving Indian executives around his global empire.

Both India and China are presently growing at breakneck speed - with extraordinary opportunities for offshoring creative resources. So, how do the largest and most competitive creative agencies approach these opportunities. WPP’s solution has been to go captive; to buy up local firms in low cost market with highly skilled creative people. It now owns a half of India’s advertising industry.

For creative services agencies who have neither the resources, the time, nor the knowledge to follow one of the largest and leading media services companies  like WPP, Omnicom or IPG, there enabling companies that can help. Quickstart Global is offering one these enabling models (www.quickstartglobal.com). They can help you set up creative teams of a few as 5 people - to a significantly reduced cost, very low risk and extraordinary scalable.

Creating and producing interactive and digital design is a very global business. All the work is done digitally and in shared areas on server - and by using chatting, skype and other cost effective tools for collaboration. The team members can basically be located anywhere at anytime and many large creative projects are done by virtual teams where skills and availability is the driving factors rather than location. Offshoring entire projects to locations with good availability of highly skilled people to a radically lower cost is the kind of value proposition and business model some would call a “no brainer”.

Staffing highly creative and qualified teams is a resource demanding operation and no doubt these skills will be increasingly more difficult to attract over the next years. Going global with your staffing and having a global labor strategy in this sector will give an advatage. Not only the multinational media services agencies are now able to run their business around the world - now even the small and mid-sized agencies will be able to follow.

At low risk !

]]>Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:38:07 -0800http://www.roppen.com/1/post/2008/02/first-post.htmlStart blogging by creating a new post. You can edit or delete me by clicking under the comments. You can also customize your sidebar by dragging in elements from the top bar.

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