Archive

Personas: Raising the Bar for Customer Experiences

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013

Personas represent each of the major target audience segments for a marketing program or solution and encapsulate the target audiences’ demographic, psychographic, and technographic data. Smart marketers use personas or customer archetypes to help their organizations focus on their customers’ needs, create consensus and priority around how to support customers, and prioritize investment decisions.

At Wire Stone, we use personas to architect effective marketing programs and solutions including branding initiatives, advertising campaigns, websites, mobile applications, social media programs, etc.

We inform personas through a rigorous process crested on research. Here is a snapshot of our persona approach in the context of a website refresh for one of our Fortune 100 clients.

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The New Customer Satisfaction Scorecard

Monday, June 11th, 2012

Today, the Customer Satisfaction Scorecard is changing at break-neck speed and many brands are being left in the dust.

What is causing the change in the scorecard’s DNA? Consumer expectations that go beyond the traditional bare bones of customer satisfaction categories: product/service, delivery, price, customer services, etc.  This new set of expectations is being driven by consumers’ participation in the digital space – from social networks, to gaming platforms, to mobile devices.

The new Customer Satisfaction Scorecard categories include brands’ ability to play in the digital space and:

  • Show up and bring their A game: Consumers expect brands to “show up” whether it’s the social network du jour or mobile device of their choice.  They expect brands to bring their A game by employing  creativity in everything from innovative user experiences on Facebook,  to engaging contests on Pinterest, to full-fledged shopping experiences via smartphone or tablet….and at minimum, they expect optimized mobile websites. (more…)

The 4 things flash sale sites need to do to stay relevant in 2012

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

Between Groupon, Living Social, Woot, and now Inc. Deals, I’m being flashed several times a day. Groupon even flashed me bright and early on Christmas Day; hours before the torrent of Day after Christmas sale promotions hit my inbox. Don’t get me wrong; I love a good flash sale. However, as a consumer and strategy planner, I expect more. I expect less flashing and more matching.

Why is there so little matching? To begin with, the daily deal site landscape is way too crowded. Yipit, an aggregator owned by Groupon, collects daily deals from 792 daily deal sites. There is little chance for true differentiation, most daily deals are for food and personal grooming – how many chemical peels can a girl have before her face has been burnt like toast? And don’t get me started with the lack of personalization – guys do you really like getting those Brazilian blowout offers? I didn’t think so.

Deal of the day sites don’t make refunds. When I’ve had buyer’s remorse, I’ve given the offers away. But according to a Rice University study, 20 percent of coupons are never redeemed.  So what should flash sales sites do? While I was getting my second pedicure (flash deal) this month (during non-sandal season), I thought about four things they can do:

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