INTERFACE ADVANTAGE
Your monthly window into the front office revolution!
Thursday, March 10, 2005
In this edition: Success on the Front Line of the Front Office Revolution - QVC: Driving Sales in Real Time by Jeffrey Rayport and Bernard Jaworski, HBS Working Knowledge
- BofA's Happy Surprise, Business Week
- Channel Shift, Internet Retailer
- FedEx: Personal Touch, Baseline
- Automated Self-Service Comes To Telcos, The McKinsey Quarterly
- Finding the Right Fit, Inside 1to1
- A.T.M.'s Pick Up Web Site Tricks, The New York Times
- A Smarter Smart Cart? eWeek
QVC: DRIVING SALES IN REAL TIME BY JEFFREY F. RAYPORT AND BERNARD J. JAWORSKI
HBS Working Knowledge, January 24, 2005
Many companies touch their customers through more than one interface -- websites, ATMs, voice-activated response systems, branches, call centers, etc. As companies compete increasingly on the quality of their interactions and relationships with customers, strategy must inevitably focus on the unified systems of interfaces with customers -- indeed, interface systems are a company's ultimate expression not only of its brand but also of its strategy. The logistics of managing any single interface are daunting; coordinating these interfaces to deliver a consistent and high-quality customer experience across all of them raises the stakes even higher. Can it be done? Some companies are succeeding in reengineering their front offices so that they have efficient and effective interface systems with their customers. The key to making these systems work? Often it is a motivated individual or group of individuals who take the responsibility for pushing the company to successful implementation of interface systems and then who set up ways to monitor and refine these systems once they are in place (see Chapter 7 of Best Face Forward for our framework for meeting this challenge -- the Five A's of interface system design). This month's newsletter provides some examples of successful firms -- and managers -- on the front line of the front office revolution. This excerpt from Best Face Forward discusses how QVC maximizes sales with a highly effective hybrid approach of machine and human talent. - Read the whole story...
BOFA'S HAPPY SURPRISE
Business Week, February 7, 2005
It's a blustery Thursday morning, and Liam E. McGee is a man on a mission as he marches briskly into a Fleet Bank branch in Boston's historic district. McGee isn't here to cash a check. Rather, as president of Bank of America Corp.'s consumer and small-business division, he's making spot checks on some of the 1,500 branches the bank inherited when it bought FleetBoston Financial Corp. last April. So far, McGee's efforts to integrate FleetBoston's consumer businesses into Bank of America appear to be paying off -- much to the surprise of Wall Street. - Read the whole story...
CHANNEL SHIFT
Internet Retailer, March 1, 2005
If holiday spending is any indication, a growing share of the consumer wallet is going online, relative to other sales channels. The eSpending Report from Goldman, Sachs & Co., Harris Interactive and Nielsen/NetRatings shows that for the first five weeks of the 2004 holiday season, shoppers reported spending 22% of their gift dollars online versus 20% in 2003. Correspondingly, the percentage of gift spending that went to stores dropped to 72% from 74% the previous year, while spending on catalogs held steady at 6%. That suggests more consumer spending is going online, forcing retailers of all kinds to think carefully about where they invest their resources. And while Web sales are rising at the seeming expense of stores, it's not as simple as that, analyst say. Retailers should be cautious about knee-jerk reactions to channel shift without probing what lies underneath. - Read the whole story...
FEDEX: PERSONAL TOUCH
Baseline, January 13, 2005
FedEx already saves money by steering inquiries to its Web site, so how can it justify spending $326 million a year on call-center reps? - Read the whole story...
AUTOMATED SELF-SERVICE COMES TO TELCOS
The McKinsey Quarterly, March 1, 2005
Telecommunications companies won't be able to afford their expensive call centers much longer, given their shrinking margins. Fortunately, they can cut their customer service bills in half by following the lead of airlines and retailers that have successfully moved many of their transactions to the Web. Many customers are willing -- and some even prefer -- to deal with the telcos over the Internet, but these companies must dramatically improve their online capabilities to meet such people halfway. - Read the whole story... (requires subscription)
FINDING THE RIGHT FIT
Inside 1to1, March 1, 2005
Overall multi-channel holiday sales in November and December climbed 5.7% to $222.3 billion in 2004, the strongest showing since 1999, and an increase from 5.1% growth in 2003. In fact, 2004 marked the first year that multi-channel shoppers became a majority. Companies, retail and non-retail alike, now realize the need to provide consistent experiences for their customers across different channels. But that concept, to use teenage parlance is "so 2004." Companies leading in multi-channel customer strategy are focusing on two concepts: entanglement and migration. Integrating channels has crossed the line from an operational coordination initiative to an essential part of customer strategy, especially necessary for measuring, growing, and retaining a company's most valuable customers. - Read the whole story...
A.T.M.'S PICK UP WEB SITE TRICKS
The New York Times, March 7, 2005
Those ubiquitous A.T.M.'s are about to get considerably smarter. Wells Fargo, the Bank of America and other financial institutions are giving their painfully low-tech A.T.M.'s a dose of Internet technology aimed at speeding transactions, reducing paperwork and exposing customers to a much wider range of transactions. - Read the whole story... (requires subscription)
A SMARTER SMART CART?
eWeek, February 16, 2005
With a craving for broiled salmon, Jane quickly sifted through her spice cabinet only to find that her bottle of dill weeds was nearly empty. With a few clicks on her Bluetooth-enabled PDA, she updated her Web shopping list with the dill, and a window opened on-screen suggesting a new salmon recipe. It looked good, so she approved the recipe and her shopping list was instantly updated with all of the necessary items, omitting those that her kitchen already had in stock. Jane drove the half-mile to her local supermarket where she grabbed a smart card, scanned her loyalty card and saw her updated shopping list appear in front of her. - Read the whole story...
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