Bob Thompson and CustomerThink

Bob Thompson has created something unique with CustomerThink, Inc, namely a forum for thought leadership on customer centricity.  CustomerThink.com is a place where CRM gurus come together to share learnings from their daily work.

CustomerThink

CustomerThink is much more than just a blog however. For one, it is a place where many bloggers come together to contribute. Therefore, posts that bubble up to the home page of CustomerThink are the crème de la crème from many thinkers. In other words: not just one exuberant guy and his blog!

CustomerThink is also much more than just a blog because it includes articles, links, to research, discussions, and more.

Thoughtful

But Bob’s oevre goes beyond CustomerThink. See for example Bob’s paper:  Customer Experience Management: A Winning Business Strategy for a Flat World. I learned something from Bob’s writings that I had not paid enough attention to before.

Namely, fans of technology such as myself have always focused on the aspects of CRM that can be automated with the help of software. We are enthusiasts when it comes to customer centric analytics and targeted marketing communications.

Yet, among Bob’s teachings is that good CRM is about much more than just the interactions that can be automated. Namely, good CRM requires working to make all of customers’ interactions with the company good experiences.

And that is precisely the tough job that Customer Experience Management aims at. I think of it as a superset of CRM. Read up on it in Bob’s paper above.

Needless to say that CRM and Customer Experience Management both require a multichannel approach because customers are multichannel beings. What good would it be to make only one channel a good experience, or to only be relevant on one channel while continuing to send spam by email, for example.

For Bob Thompson’s work and the difference he makes in the industry I humbly nominate him as another Master of Multichannel Marketing. Hope to catch Bob at one of his next keynote speaches in this space.

Master of Multichannel Marketing

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