experience - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

We have all walked away from a supplier because it has failed to provide the level of care we expect.

New research shows the growing importance of customer care and the role that the internet plays.

It seems that many marketers still struggle to build a rich picture of their customers. 

They could do worse than study the works of Georges Seurat, the famous French impressionist painter of the 19th century, whose techniques have interesting lessons for today’s 21st century marketers. 

The British Standards Institute (BSI) has just launched a standard addressing customer satisfaction, quoting research it commissioned to support the launch suggesting that the great British public is less than happy with much of the service they receive. 

But will a new standard help?

The fiasco that was the first month of Heathrow’s Terminal Five is a salutary lesson for any company introducing a new product or service. 

I sympathise greatly with the customers that have been delayed, lost luggage and generally experienced a level of service that few would wish on their biggest enemy but my real sympathies are reserved for another oft overlooked group – the staff.

Here, we talk to web analytics expert Avinash Kaushik about the future of web measurement, online surveys and 'visitor experience optimisation' - something he predicts will be a life or death thing for websites to adopt in the next couple of years.

It's doom and gloom, according to many of the economic commentators, but now is not the time to take your eye off the customer experience ball. 

When things get tight, a company needs any edge it can get and retaining the customers it has is one way of minimising the impact of any downturn. Here are a few things to try to hang on to those most valuable of assets – your customers.

Call me old fashioned if you will, but I still believe in the premise that when a customer places an order online, they should receive their goods within the timeframe highlighted by the retailer. Or better still, they should actually receive their order at all!

How about really stretching it and offering the customer the opportunity to choose a convenient delivery method and time?

From reading the business press it would be fair to assume that customer experience is high on the agenda of many business executives. 

But is that really the case or are too many senior managers just talking the talk and not walking the walk? Is your company one of those that is just paying lip service? 

Read on to see if your company passes this tongue in cheek test.

Many companies have invested heavily in the past twenty years in loyalty schemes, particularly in the retail and travel markets.

But recent research has suggested that this has had little impact - with only one in four UK consumers professing strong loyalty to their favourite brands. 

More interesting are the regional variations the research uncovers, with strong loyalty at 33% in the Tyne Tees area but only 20% in Scotland. Why is this?

I've just been trying to book train tickets via National Express' new booking site, and have experienced a number of major customer experience / usability issues.