Category Archives: marketing

Rise of the Change Marketing Agency

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, where technological innovation and rapidly evolving consumer expectations are the norm, organizations need to manage change more adeptly than ever before. Introducing unique products or transforming internal processes is not just about logistics anymore; it’s also about aligning emotional, perceptual, and experiential shifts among stakeholders. This is where the nascent concept of a “Change Marketing Agency” comes into play — a specialized entity that bridges the gap between traditional change management and strategic marketing.

Understanding Change Marketing

Traditionally, change management has focused on the frameworks and toolsets that help an organization steer through the tumultuous waters of transformation. However, the human-centered aspect of change often takes a back seat. Enter change marketing — a philosophy and practice that utilizes marketing principles to enable effective change by addressing the emotional and behavioral aspects of the transformation journey.

Change marketing is not about selling a product, but about securing buy-in and engagement for transformative initiatives from stakeholders. It’s about narrating a compelling story that aligns vision, communicates benefits, and inspires action. As such, a Change Marketing Agency can play a decisive role in ensuring that change resonates with the inherent values and expectations of both internal and external stakeholders.

Difference Between Change Marketing and Change Communications

While change marketing and change communications are related, they serve different purposes and utilize different strategies. Here’s a breakdown of the key differences:

Objective:
- Change Communications focuses on the dissemination of information necessary for awareness and understanding.
- Change Marketing aims to build desire, alignment, and engagement, often by tapping into emotional and psychological triggers.
Approach:
- Change Communications typically involves one-way communication to inform and instruct stakeholders.
- Change Marketing uses a multi-channel, interactive strategy designed to engage stakeholders through storytelling and experiential campaigns.
Key Tools:
- Change Communications may employ memos, emails, FAQs, and newsletters to share updates.
- Change Marketing leverages branding, narrative development, workshops, multimedia content, and feedback loops.
End Goal:
- Change Communications strives for clarity and understanding among stakeholders.
- Change Marketing is focused on creating advocates and fostering a shared sense of purpose around the change initiative.

The Emerging Role of Change Marketing Agencies

The necessity for such agencies is increasingly clear as organizations recognize the limits of traditional change management methodologies. With new demands to personalize and humanize change, companies need partners adept in storytelling, audience segmentation, and behavioral psychology.

Change Marketing Agencies deliver services that range from crafting narrative-driven communication plans, creating engaging content that aligns with company culture, to analyzing stakeholder response and refining strategies dynamically. By integrating these services, they help organizations facilitate smoother transitions during times of change.

Case Study 1: The Digital Shift of a Legacy Publishing House

Imagine a traditional publishing house, steeped in decades of heritage, transitioning to a digital-first model. The challenge was not only technological but also cultural. Employees accustomed to paper-based processes were resistant, stakeholders questioned the shift’s efficacy, and long-time readers were apprehensive about abandoning the tactile experience of a physical book.

Enter the Change Marketing Agency. They embarked on a campaign that highlighted the richness of digital storytelling. Through a series of engaging multimedia experiences showcasing enhanced storytelling possible with digital tools, they shifted the narrative from a departure from tradition to an evolution of it. Internally, workshops and storytelling sessions were organized to visualize the new possibilities for employees, turning apprehension into curiosity and eventually enthusiasm.

Externally, the agency crafted a series of customer stories showcasing individuals enjoying enriched reading experiences in the digital ecosystem—aligning the change with customer lifestyles. This multi-layered narrative approach not only facilitated the transition but redefined the brand’s image, leading to a spike in digital subscriptions and an embrace of digital-first culture by resistant employees.

Case Study 2: Retail Giant’s Sustainability Transformation

Another compelling example is a major retail company, whose goal was to rebrand its image around sustainability and eco-friendliness. Despite comprehensive internal policies and sustainability initiatives, both employees and consumers were skeptical about the company’s genuine commitment to these values.

The Change Marketing Agency did not simply broadcast the changes; they nurtured a movement. They launched a transparent campaign sharing stories from every level of the company, emphasizing transparency and genuine impact. By spotlighting employee-led green initiatives and community collaborations, they personalized the brand’s sustainability narrative.

For the consumer base, they designed interactive experiences that allowed customers to see the environmental impact of their purchase decisions, fostering a sense of participation in the larger sustainability mission. As a result, the company observed not just an enhancement in public perception but tangible employee engagement, manifesting in innovative, ground-up sustainability projects internally.

Conclusion

The rise of Change Marketing Agencies highlights an evolving recognition of the power of integrated human-centered narratives in managing change. By marrying the art of marketing with the science of change management, they do not just manage transitions—they animate them. For organizations, this means deeper engagement, less friction, and transformative change that resonates on a personal level.

As we forge into an era marked by continuous change, the role of such agencies will likely expand. Their ability to humanize, narrate, and communicate complex transformations stands poised to redefine how organizations and individuals embrace the evolving future.

In closing, I encourage all change leaders and enthusiasts to continuously pursue learning and adaptation. Engage with new methodologies, share your stories, and remain open to experimentation. The future of change management rests in our ability to be both innovative and empathetic facilitators of transformation. One great place to start is to get a copy of Braden’s best-selling book Charting Change, which is now in its Second Edition with several new chapters!

And, if you need help marketing your change, please let me know.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Audacious

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How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World

Exclusive Interview with Mark Schaefer

Mark W Schaefer The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to a tsunami of AI-generated content, and according to Gemini these are some of the concerns for marketers:

Erosion of Brand Authenticity: AI can generate marketing copy, social media posts, and even personalized emails. The fear is that over-reliance on AI-generated content could lead to a loss of genuine brand voice and connection with customers, making marketing feel impersonal and manufactured.

Decreased Content Quality and Creativity: While AI can produce grammatically correct and seemingly relevant content, it may struggle with nuanced storytelling, truly innovative ideas, and emotionally resonant messaging that connects deeply with human audiences. This could lead to a decline in the overall quality and impact of marketing content.

Over-Saturation of Generic Content: If many marketers use similar AI tools and prompts, there’s a risk of the internet becoming flooded with repetitive and unoriginal content. This could make it harder for brands to stand out and capture attention in a crowded digital landscape.

Misuse for Deceptive Marketing Tactics: AI could be used to create highly targeted but deceptive marketing campaigns, such as generating fake reviews, creating convincing but misleading product descriptions, or even impersonating real people or brands. This could erode consumer trust and damage the reputation of ethical marketing practices.

Loss of Control Over Brand Messaging: While AI can assist with content creation, marketers may find it challenging to maintain complete control over the messaging and tone of AI-generated content. This could lead to inconsistencies in branding and potentially even PR crises if the AI produces something inappropriate or off-brand.

Now that we’ve got the ironic bit out of the way of asking AI to tell us what marketers have to fear from AI (in italics), let’s dive into the heart of this article and hear from the humans.

The Audaciousness of Humans

I had the opportunity recently to interview Mark Schaefer, a globally-acclaimed author, keynote speaker, and marketing consultant. He is a faculty member of Rutgers University and one of the top business bloggers and podcasters in the world. Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World is his eleventh book, exploring how companies can create more effective marketing by being audacious.

Below is the text of my interview with Mark and a preview of the kinds of insights you’ll find in Audacious presented in a Q&A format:

1. We are seeing a marketing evolution from messages to stories, agree or disagree? Or is the evolution to something else?

This is an interesting question. Marketing is about creating customers. Our ability to do that has been dramatically changed by technology.

Let’s say 50 years ago, messages and taglines were about our only options. Advertising is expensive. Space was limited.

But in the Internet age, we have virtually unlimited space to tell a story at no cost. And stories can be created by anyone. I think the evolution of marketing right now is when we can do something so worthy, so memorable, so useful, that our customers can’t wait to tell the stories for us.

2. What impact are we seeing from AI on marketing?

There are two types of marketing – performance and brand marketing.

Performance marketing is about repetitive acts like ads that create traffic for the top of the funnel. These activities will almost certainly be dominated by AI.

Brand marketing creates meaning – an emotional expectation for your company or product. In this respect, AI can still have a major impact on creativity and planning, but I forecast that there will still be a human role to play for years to come.

The most effective connections still come from relationships with people!

3. Product, service, solution, experience… In today’s world, which is the most important?

The beauty of our world is that it is filled with people who have diverse perspectives and needs! Some people might buy on value, some might buy on performance, or even the status they feel when they own a product.

However, at the very highest level, I think experience is an interesting opportunity for brands. Let’s look at Patagonia, for example, it does not product the cheapest clothes, or the most functional or beautiful. But the brand MEANS something to a devoted fans because of a shared experience or responsible outdoor recreation.

4. With people drowning in content, how are marketers supposed to reach their target customers?

This question really cuts the heart of my research and writing over the last 15 years and it is the theme of my new book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

The book reveals research that shows that the vast majority of marketing and advertising is boring and ineffective and AI is making it more so. I would say we are in a pandemic of dull.

Competent doesn’t cut it. Competent is ignorable. So we need to ignite human creativity in a new way by disrupting traditions and norms. Changing HOW we tell a story. Changing WHERE we tell a story. Changing WHO tells the story.

It is time for audacity in our marketing. That is the only way we’ll cut through the clutter to be seen and heard. Audacity is now a survival skill.

5. Shock and Awe, which one should marketers focus on and why?

I actually address both of these in the new book!

Awe is an under-appreciated source of success in marketing. It’s not just about something that is vast and overwhelming. It can be something as simple as bringing people together in a meaningful new way that creates a shared experience. Wouldn’t it be amazing if people added more awe to their marketing?

Shock is also an overlooked idea. I don’t mean being offensive or reckless, but just waking up the sense to something completely different. A good example of this is Liquid Death, the fastest-growing beverage brand in America.

Nobody calls their product “Death.” So right from the start they have your attention. Their advertising features water boarding and kids chugging glasses of sugar. It is difficult to watch. But you don’t forget it, either.

6. You’re in charge of marketing the iPhone 17 and it’s basically the same as the iPhone 16, except now it’s available in Magenta. How would you change the marketing for a product that basically hasn’t changed?

This product introduction might actually work, but not for everyone.

You might recall that Apple introduced a black “U2” iPod many years ago. It sold out. It only worked because Apple already had a massive base of loyal fans – and so did U2! So even though the product wasn’t very different, the meaning for the fanbase was.

Normally, introducing a product with no discernible new value would be foolish but it is possible if the brand has meaning.

An example from my book is the game Cards Against Humanity. People invested in a hole in the ground and dried cow turds because they just wanted to be part of the fun. The value was in the meaning, not the product.

7. What does disruptive marketing look like now and in the future? What will become normalized?

The irony is, disruptive marketing is rapidly normalized. Here’s what I mean. The cover of my book is a world first – a QR code that creates an evolving, morphing cover based on the stories in the book. That is disruptive.

But you can only be disruptive once. From here on out, anybody who has QR code book cover will simply be copying me. The disruption has been normalized. You can only be audacious once.

8. Why are there so many damn QR codes in the book? 😉 (wink)

My book is full of “oh wow” moments. But a lot of them are better viewed than described. For example, a star of the book is Michael Krivicka, the king of viral video. I have never met a person with a keener sense of storytelling. There is no way you can appreciate his skill without seeing a video, so I provided QR code links so everyone has the chance to do that!

9. Where should marketers be careful as they challenge the standard ways of marketing, to be audacious?

There are lots of reasons why marketers should be conservative and traditional, especially when following laws and regulations.

However – if you’re staying in a boring box because there is fear in your organization, because dull is normal in your industry, or simply afraid, then you are vulnerable. The AI bots are here. They are competent, and in most cases more than competent. But you still own crazy. The companies that unleash the unique human fireworks of creativity will thrive in the AI era!

Conclusion

Thank you for the great conversation Mark!

I hope everyone has enjoyed this peek into the mind of the man behind the inspiring new title Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World!

Image credits: BusinessesGrow.com (Mark W Schaefer)

Content Authenticity Statement: If it wasn’t clear above, the short section in italics was written by Google’s Gemini and the rest of this article is from the minds of Mark Schaefer and Braden Kelley.

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Which Go to Market Playbook Should You Choose?

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Which Go To Market Playbook Should You Choose?

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

Life-cycle go-to-market has been the focus of much of my life’s work, and I had the opportunity to recap that experience at a recent chalk talk at the HackerDoJo in Mountain View. It turned out that most of what I had to say was captured on a single slide. For readers over the age of X, this may be familiar territory; for those under the age of Y, it may prove new.

This framework highlights four different go-to-market playbooks, each optimized for a different stage of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle. The two key takeaways are:

The playbook that creates success in any given stage will under-perform at any of the other three, and
The playbooks do not blend; instead, they actually undercut each other when combined.

Thus, the number one job of the go-to-market strategy-setting leader is to get the entire team aligned around one, and only one, playbook.

Now, full disclosure, because different segments of the market can be in different phases of the life cycle, a go-to-market organization can be running more than one play at the same time. What they must not do is run more than one at the same time in the same place!

The Early Market Playbook

The focus of this play is to engage with a visionary customer executive who wants to leverage disruptive technology to change the world. Because your technology has yet to be adopted, the category does not yet exist, and thus there is no budget for your product. As a result, it must be funded as a project, and the customer executive has to be senior enough to have the clout to extract the necessary funds from the enterprise’s existing resource pool. Your job is to inspire that executive, hence the emphasis on thought leadership marketing to connect your breakthrough technology to their compelling business vision. It makes for a wild ride, to be sure, but when successful, it puts your company on the map as the company that did what!?!? There still is no market, there still is no budget, but there is buzz, and that buzz is associated with you, provided, that is, that your target customer is a marquee brand that people look up to. For Salesforce in its early days, this was Merrill Lynch. For Amazon Web Services in its early days, this was the CIA. For OpenAI recently, this was Microsoft.

The Bowling Alley Playbook

This is the playbook described in Crossing the Chasm. Its focus is to engage with a pragmatic business manager who is responsible for a deteriorating business process that is causing increasing problems for their enterprise, and thus, urgently needs a fix. All the conventional approaches have been found wanting, and so this prospect is open to a disruptive approach, but only if it commits to solving its specific problem. There is budget to spend here although at present it is allocated to traditional approaches. As a result, the sales cycle begins with winning the right to redirect that spend. Sales success depends on your company demonstrating a deep understanding of the problem state followed by a clear explanation of why your technology can succeed where traditional approaches fail. Implementation success depends on bringing together a team that can solve the problem end to end, leveraging domain expertise with technological leverage, to deliver what Ted Levitt taught us to call the whole product (the minimum set of products and services needed to eliminate the problem). From a market development strategy point of view, the key is to focus on a single use case in a single industry in a single geography, the goal being to develop a congregation of successful companies that will serve as a reference base as well as a loyal customer base. That is how desktop publishing helped give birth to the Mac Faithful.

The Tornado Playbook

This is the playbook that drives The Gorilla Game, a market share land grab that catapults a single company to stratospheric valuation, dragging a cohort of close contenders in its wake, resulting in the gigantic market caps that motivate early-stage venture capital investing. It is triggered by a tipping point in the adoption life cycle when pragmatic customers’ resistance to early adoption is overcome by their fear of missing out. In a flash, the new paradigm becomes the new mandate—we must have mobile apps, we must transition to cloud computing, we must procure software as a service. Budgets sprout up everywhere like mushrooms, and they are there for the picking. All this rewards a “Just win, baby” approach to go-to-market, characterized by as broad a coverage model as possible combined with highly disciplined sales tactics. RFPs (Requests for Proposals) are prevalent, driving both pilot projects and bake-offs, with marketing focusing primarily on competitive differentiation and pricing discounts. Importantly, whichever vendor wins the first pick becomes that customer’s incumbent, giving it privileged access to future purchases. Just as importantly, if one company becomes the clear market share leader, then the ecosystem of supporting companies rallies around it, elevating its competitive advantage to gorilla status.

The Main Street Playbook

This is the playbook that drives sustained earnings growth in markets that have adopted the new technology and now seek to maintain it over as long a useful lifetime as possible. At this stage, customers prefer to work with their incumbent vendors and over time to consolidate around a smaller set of integrated suites. These suites serve as platforms for ongoing innovations that are sustaining rather than disruptive, something that bores visionaries but appeals greatly to pragmatists and even more so to conservatives. In the land-and-expand as-a-service business model, we are in the expansion phase, and the growth goal is to cross-sell and up-sell new service transactions, and the earnings goal is to maximize renewals and minimize attrition. Telemetry about user adoption and feature usage is mission-critical to this effort, enabling both account managers as well as the software itself to guide the customer’s buying decisions. Product-led growth supported by self-service transactions is mission-critical for consumer applications and other user-driven offers. For enterprise sales, packaging up sets of requirements and aligning with the customer’s procurement cycle calls for the kind of account management we used to call farming and now call customer success.

Final Takeaway

Each of these playbooks makes distinctly different demands of the marketing, sales, and services teams running the go-to-market effort. People talented at one type of play may struggle with another. Our tendency as human beings is to want to stick with what we are good at, so it is usually wise to empower a new leader whenever you change playbooks.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pixabay

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The Real Winners of Mega Events

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From the Super Bowl to Rock Concerts

The Real Winners of Mega Events

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Fans who attend major sporting events and concerts may have memories to last a lifetime. The owners of the sports teams and producers of major music events may smile as they look at a sold-out crowd. The athletes and musicians are well-paid for their performances. And we can’t forget the sponsors who pay large sums of money to be affiliated with events, enjoy brand recognition and see a return on their advertising dollars. But there’s one other “happy customer” that many people don’t think about: the city that gets the honor of hosting these events.

The Super Bowl is next month, and for many, it is a festive occasion. For the city that hosts the biggest sporting event of the year, it’s a windfall in economic benefit. This year, that city was Las Vegas. Even before the Super Bowl was hosted in its new stadium, the city profited from major sporting events. People flock to Vegas to party, gamble and enjoy their favorite major sporting events on the gigantic screens in the casinos around the city. Although the NBA championship may be played in a different city, it’s still hard to find a room at a high-end hotel like Bellagio, Wynn or Caesars.

The point is that the host city receives a huge economic impact beyond the game, even if its main street is not lined with casinos. Two years ago, Major League Baseball’s World Series pitted the Houston Astros against the Arizona Diamondbacks. There was an economic windfall for the two cities.

According to a local economy study, Houston First Corp. found that each game played in Houston was worth $12.5 million. In Phoenix, where the D-Backs play, the numbers are similar. Even though fans want their team to win quickly and decisively, there is an economic benefit to the best-of-seven match going the distance. Restaurants, hotels and more benefit, and the taxes charged benefit the cities and states.

The NCAA March Madness “Final Four” basketball tournament is ironically played in April. Last year’s “winning city,” regardless of the teams playing, is Phoenix. The last time Phoenix hosted the tournament was in 2017, and a Seidman Research Institute study at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business found an estimated 59,761 visitors stayed an average of 4.16 nights and spent an average of $487.19 per day, with a total economic impact of $324.5 million.

The benefits of sporting and entertainment events for their respective cities can’t be ignored. Be it sports, concerts, festivals, art shows, etc., these events are not just enjoyed by people attending. The trickling benefit of a boom to the area makes the effort to produce and host the events worthwhile.

Last year I met with Steve Schankman, the president of Contemporary Productions, who has produced concerts, special events and music festivals for more than 50 years. His events range from high-school venues where he booked Chuck Berry in the ’60s and ’70s, to the Super Bowl halftime show with U-2, to major music festivals starring Elton John, The Beach Boys and many other music icons, with millions in attendance throughout the years.

A couple of years ago, Schankman, with his partner Joe Litvag, produced Evolution Festival, a two-day summer music festival in St. Louis, with the goal of bringing the local community together to enjoy a talent lineup that featured Brandi Carlile, The Black Keys, Ice Cube, the Sugarhill Gang and more. If the lineup seems eclectic, that was purposeful, as Schankman’s dream was to unite music fans from every part of the area. “Music should bring people together, regardless of color, religion and sex,” says Schankman. More than 25,000 people—7,500 from outside the St. Louis area—enjoyed the festival. But it’s more than just entertainment for music fans, and he can’t wait to do it again with a lineup even more exciting and diverse than the first year’s festival.

In an article recapping the inaugural Evolution Music Festival, Schankman said, “I got 600 people working here. Besides that, we have employment taxes, we have sales taxes. We’ll do seven figures in concession sales. Seven figures in ticket sales. So just the taxes alone for the state and the city are great.”

The Metro St. Louis area, with a population of more than 2.7 million people, profits from a major music event like Evolution Festival just like it would from a major sporting event. Looking beyond the fun-filled weekend, the financial side of the sports and entertainment industry benefits more than just the talent on the field, court, or stage. Even though a concert experience like Evolution Festival doesn’t have the same financial impact as a Super Bowl championship or Final Four tournament, there are still similar benefits.

According to Brian Hall, chief marketing officer at Explore St. Louis, the average travel party to St. Louis consists of three guests staying 2.4 nights and spending $969 on hotel rooms, restaurants, attractions, etc. Then you add on ticket sales for the event, food and beverage, and souvenirs, and the numbers grow. With approximately 7,500 out-of-towners attending the Evolution Festival, the city and state enjoy a windfall of tax revenue to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, there are future benefits. Hall says, “Visitation to a community is a precursor to economic development, including moving, relocating a company or starting a business in St. Louis.”

The events business, be it sports, a concert/music festival or any other large public affair, always has support from local, national and international sponsors. Large brands like AT&T, American Express and Anheuser-Busch put millions into major sporting events. While Schankman won’t compare the Evolution Festival to the Super Bowl, he said, “Cities like St. Louis offer sponsors the chance to be seen by a geographically targeted audience. The festival created 31 million impressions through the in-person experience, on social media and with our traditional advertising and marketing.”

Several times Schankman emphasized bringing people from all walks of life together. At the end of our interview, he summed it up by saying, “At a time when we’re experiencing racial and religious tension, political divide and terrifying world events, let’s remember what Beatles drummer Ringo Starr is known for preaching, ‘Peace and love!’ That’s what Evolution Festival is all about, and the businesses and brands that support it should want to be a part of something that special!”

Image Credits: Pixabay

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com.

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Uncertainty Isn’t Always Bad

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Uncertainty Isn't Always Bad

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you think you understand what your customers want, you don’t.

If you’re developing a new product for new customers, you know less.

If you’re developing a new technology for a new product for new customers, you know even less.

If you think you know how much growth a new product will deliver, you don’t.

If that new product will serve new customers, you know less.

If that new product will require a new technology, you know even less.

If you have to choose between project A and B, you’ll choose the one that’s most like what you did last time.

If project A will change the game and B will grow sales by 5%, you’ll play the game you played last time.

If project A and B will serve new customers, you’ll change one of them to serve existing customers and do that one.

If you think you know how the market will respond to a new product, it won’t make much of a difference.

If you don’t know how the market will respond, you may be onto something.

If you don’t know which market the product will serve, there’s a chance to create a whole new one.

If you know how the market will respond, do something else.

When we have a choice between certainty and upside, the choice is certain.

When we choose certainty over upside, we forget that the up-starts will choose differently.

When we have a lot to lose, we chose certainty.

And once it’s lost, we start over and choose uncertainty.

Image credits: Pexels

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Creating A Connected Human Experience

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Empathy Meets Technology

Creating A Connected Human Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Because of AI, so much has changed in the way companies do business. The technology hit a tipping point when ChatGPT and other generative AI solutions moved from behind the scenes to public awareness in November 2022. Even if the public didn’t know exactly what ChatGPT-type products were, they had an idea. This created both excitement and fear. For companies and brands, it created opportunities to employ more powerful technology at a lower price. It also created confusion about which technology to choose, how to implement it quickly and whether to implement something as new as this at all.

One company that quickly adapted and transformed itself is C1, a technology solutions provider that serves nearly half of the Fortune 500 (and many others) and partners with more than 140 technology vendors that they help match to their clients’ needs. I had a chance to sit down with Jeffrey Russell, formerly a “transformation leader” and president of Accenture Canada, and now the CEO of C1, who shared how he is leading his company to grow through acquisition and meeting the company’s and its customers’ ever-changing goals.

In our interview on Amazing Business Radio, Russell shared, “In a financial restructuring, you really need to have your story right from the outset.” His formula is simple.

Know what you’re really good at—your company’s superpowers.
Know how you want the organization to change and how you plan to get there. Clarity is essential to getting an ownership group and other stakeholders to support your plan.
Everyone on the team must tell the same story and communicate it clearly. You can’t afford miscommunication. You want to communicate the company’s vision and its long-term value and demonstrate confidence in the company’s future success.
Finally, you must have patience. Over-communicate throughout the process to keep everyone aligned as you move forward.

Russell states, “In the end, leading a change like this is about taking control of your destiny so you can come out on the other end as a financially stronger organization in a better market position to innovate, deliver value to customers and sustain growth.”

While leading C1’s growth and transformation in the era of the AI technology boom, Russell never took his eye off what was most important to a company: the human experience. In addition to taking us through that overview, he also shared how to create a powerful connected human experience for both customers and employees, which is the focus of what follows. Below are his ideas (in bold) followed by my commentary:

Two words that aren’t typically found in the same sentence are technology and empathy. Russell says, “Technology is stark. It’s cold, and often a barrier between the company and its customers.” The easiest way to explain this is that companies must find a balance between technology and the human-to-human (H2H) experience. While technology expands capabilities, you can’t afford to do it at the cost of the relationship. The concept of empathy means understanding what matters to customers. People must be the No. 1 consideration in a plan to acquire and implement new technology.
Ensure technology serves human needs. As you seek a balance between tech and H2H, consider how the technology helps people. Does it make life easier for both customers and employees? And, to emphasize Russell’s concern about the overuse of tech, will it enable better connections?
Use human experience to add new levels of business value. Without technology, what would the experience look like? Then, after implementing the technology, be sure it supports rather than disrupts the experience.
Walk in the shoes of your customer! As “cool” as technology can be, pretend you’re the customer who isn’t quite as savvy with technology as you are. What’s the experience like? It must be easy, intuitive and almost human-like.

As we came to the end of the interview, Russell shared three A’s people should consider when referring to AI:

Authentic Intelligence: Even if it is artificial, does the solution promote an authentic experience? Or will the technology come across to the customer as cold or stark?
Augmented Intelligence: Think of augmented reality and how it enhances the virtual experience. AI augments intelligence. It may or may not work by itself, but when combined with the H2H experience, it supports and makes it easier for employees to help customers with their questions and problems.
Actionable Intelligence: When you activate artificial intelligence, the implementation process should begin with what happens to the customer experience when it is applied. Just having something new or cool isn’t the reason to implement it. This concept takes us back to how the best companies seem to master the balancing act between technology and the H2H experience.

Rapid advances in AI technology bring both opportunities and challenges for businesses. As companies and brands explore, experiment and make their choices for what works best, Russell emphasizes never losing focus on creating a meaningful and connected experience. By balancing technology with empathy and understanding, businesses can not only survive but thrive in this new era.

Image Credits: Pixabay

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024

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After a week of torrid voting and much passionate support, along with a lot of gut-wrenching consideration and jostling during the judging round, I am proud to announce your Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024:

Greg Satell
Greg Satell is a popular speaker and consultant. His first book, Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age, was selected as one of the best business books in 2017. Follow his blog at Digital Tonto or on Twitter @Digital Tonto.

Janet Sernack
Janet Sernack is the Founder and CEO of ImagineNation™ which provides innovation consulting services to help organizations adapt, innovate and grow through disruption by challenging businesses to be, think and act differently to co-create a world where people matter & innovation is the norm.

Mike Shipulski
Mike Shipulski brings together people, culture, and tools to change engineering behavior. He writes daily on Twitter as @MikeShipulski and weekly on his blog Shipulski On Design.

Robyn Bolton
Robyn M. Bolton works with leaders of mid and large sized companies to use innovation to repeatably and sustainably grow their businesses.
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Pete Foley
A twenty-five year Procter & Gamble veteran, Pete has spent the last 8+ years applying insights from psychology and behavioral science to innovation, product design, and brand communication. He spent 17 years as a serial innovator, creating novel products, perfume delivery systems, cleaning technologies, devices and many other consumer-centric innovations, resulting in well over 100 granted or published patents. Find him at pete.mindmatters@gmail.com

Geoffrey A. Moore
Geoffrey A. Moore is an author, speaker and business advisor to many of the leading companies in the high-tech sector, including Cisco, Cognizant, Compuware, HP, Microsoft, SAP, and Yahoo! Best known for Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win with the latest book being The Infinite Staircase. Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners. Chairman Emeritus Chasm Group & Chasm Institute

Shep Hyken
Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times, bestselling business author. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

David Burkus
Dr. David Burkus is an organizational psychologist and best-selling author. Recognized as one of the world’s leading business thinkers, his forward-thinking ideas and books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever. David is the author of five books about business and leadership and he’s been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and more. A former business school professor turned sought-after international speaker, he’s worked with organizations of all sizes and across all industries.

John Bessant
John Bessant has been active in research, teaching, and consulting in technology and innovation management for over 25 years. Today, he is Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Research Director, at Exeter University. In 2003, he was awarded a Fellowship with the Advanced Institute for Management Research and was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy of Management. He has acted as advisor to various national governments and international bodies including the United Nations, The World Bank, and the OECD. John has authored many books including Managing innovation and High Involvement Innovation (Wiley). Follow @johnbessant

Braden Kelley
Braden Kelley is a Human-Centered Experience, Innovation and Transformation consultant at HCL Technologies, a popular innovation speaker, workshop leader, and creator of the Human-Centered Change™ methodology. He is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons and Charting Change from Palgrave Macmillan. Follow him on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Howard Tiersky
Howard Tiersky is an inspiring and passionate speaker, the Founder and CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, innovation consultant, serial entrepreneur, and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. IDG named him one of the “10 Digital Transformation Influencers to Follow Today”, and Enterprise Management 360 named Howard “One of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers That Will Change Your World.”

Stefan Lindegaard
Stefan Lindegaard is an author, speaker and strategic advisor. His work focuses on corporate transformation based on disruption, digitalization and innovation in large corporations, government organizations and smaller companies. Stefan believes that business today requires an open and global perspective, and his work takes him to Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia.

Dainora Jociute
Dainora (a.k.a. Dee) creates customer-centric content at Viima. Viima is the most widely used and highest rated innovation management software in the world. Passionate about environmental issues, Dee writes about sustainable innovation hoping to save the world – one article at the time.

Teresa Spangler
Teresa Spangler is the CEO of PlazaBridge Group has been a driving force behind innovation and growth for more than 30 years. Today, she wears multiple hats as a social entrepreneur, innovation expert, growth strategist, author and speaker (not to mention mother, wife, band-leader and so much more). She is especially passionate about helping CEOs understand and value the role human capital plays in innovation, and the impact that innovation has on humanity; in our ever-increasing artificial/cyber world.

Soren Kaplan
Soren Kaplan is the bestselling and award-winning author of Leapfrogging and The Invisible Advantage, an affiliated professor at USC’s Center for Effective Organizations, a former corporate executive, and a co-founder of UpBOARD. He has been recognized by the Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top keynote speakers and thought leaders in business strategy and innovation.

Diana Porumboiu
Diana heads marketing at Viima, the most widely used and highest rated innovation management software in the world, and has a passion for innovation, and for genuine, valuable content that creates long-lasting impact. Her combination of creativity, strategic thinking and curiosity has helped organisations grow their online presence through strategic campaigns, community management and engaging content.

Steve Blank
Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and Senior Fellow for Innovation at Columbia University. He has been described as the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship, credited with launching the Lean Startup movement that changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.

Jesse Nieminen
Jesse Nieminen is the Co-founder and Chairman at Viima, the best way to collect and develop ideas. Viima’s innovation management software is already loved by thousands of organizations all the way to the Global Fortune 500. He’s passionate about helping leaders drive innovation in their organizations and frequently writes on the topic, usually in Viima’s blog.

Robert B Tucker
Robert B. Tucker is the President of The Innovation Resource Consulting Group. He is a speaker, seminar leader and an expert in the management of innovation and assisting companies in accelerating ideas to market.

Dennis Stauffer
Dennis Stauffer is an author, independent researcher, and expert on personal innovativeness. He is the founder of Innovator Mindset LLC which helps individuals, teams, and organizations enhance and accelerate innovation success. by shifting mindset. Follow @DennisStauffer

Arlen Meyers
Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, an instructor at the University of Colorado-Denver Business School and cofounding President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs at www.sopenet.org. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameyers/

Ayelet Baron
Ayelet Baron is a pioneering futurist reminding us we are powerful creators through award winning books, daily blog and thinking of what is possible. Former global tech executive who sees trust, relationships and community as our building blocks to a healthy world.

Leo Chan
Leo is the founder of Abound Innovation Inc. He’s a people and heart-first entrepreneur who believes everyone can be an innovator. An innovator himself, with 55 US patents and over 20 years of experience, Leo has come alongside organizations like Chick-fil-A and guided them to unleash the innovative potential of their employees by transforming them into confident innovators.

Rachel Audige
Rachel Audige is an Innovation Architect who helps organisations embed inventive thinking as well as a certified Systematic Inventive Thinking Facilitator, based in Melbourne.

Art Inteligencia
Art Inteligencia is the lead futurist at Inteligencia Ltd. He is passionate about content creation and thinks about it as more science than art. Art travels the world at the speed of light, over mountains and under oceans. His favorite numbers are one and zero.

Paul Sloane
Paul Sloane writes, speaks and leads workshops on creativity, innovation and leadership. He is the author of The Innovative Leader and editor of A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing, both published by Kogan-Page.

Phil McKinney
Phil McKinney is the Author of “Beyond The Obvious”, Host of the Killer Innovations Podcast and Syndicated Radio Show, a Keynote Speaker, President & CEO CableLabs and an Innovation Mentor and Coach.

Ralph Christian Ohr
Dr. Ralph-Christian Ohr has extensive experience in product/innovation management for international technology-based companies. His particular interest is targeted at the intersection of organizational and human innovation capabilities. You can follow him on Twitter @Ralph_Ohr.

Jeffrey Phillips
Jeffrey Phillips has over 15 years of experience leading innovation in Fortune 500 companies, federal government agencies and non-profits. He is experienced in innovation strategy, defining and implementing front end processes, tools and teams and leading innovation projects. He is the author of Relentless Innovation and OutManeuver. Jeffrey writes the popular Innovate on Purpose blog. Follow him @ovoinnovation

Dean and Linda Anderson
Dr. Dean Anderson and Dr. Linda Ackerman Anderson lead BeingFirst, a consultancy focused on educating the marketplace about what’s possible in personal, organizational and community transformation and how to achieve them. Each has been advising clients and training professionals for more than 40 years.

Shilpi Kumar
Shilpi Kumar an inquisitive researcher, designer, strategist and an educator with over 15 years of experience, who truly believes that we can design a better world by understanding human behavior. I work with organizations to identify strategic opportunities and offer user-centric solutions.

Scott Anthony
Scott Anthony is a strategic advisor, writer and speaker on topics of growth and innovation. He has been based in Singapore since 2010, and currently serves at the Managing Director of Innosight’s Asia-Pacific operations.

Anthony Mills
Anthony Mills is the Founder & CEO of Legacy Innovation Group (www.legacyinnova.com), a world-leading strategic innovation consulting firm working with organizations all over the world. Anthony is also the Executive Director of GInI – Global Innovation Institute (www.gini.org), the world’s foremost certification, accreditation, and membership organization in the field of innovation. Anthony has advised leaders from around the world on how to successfully drive long-term growth and resilience through new innovation. Learn more at www.anthonymills.com. Anthony can be reached directly at anthony@anthonymills.com.

Paul Hobcraft
Paul Hobcraft runs Agility Innovation, an advisory business that stimulates sound innovation practice, researches topics that relate to innovation for the future, as well as aligning innovation to organizations core capabilities. Follow @paul4innovating

Jorge Barba
Jorge Barba is a strategist and entrepreneur, who helps companies build new puzzles using human skills. He is a global Innovation Insurgent and author of the innovation blog www.Game-Changer.net

Chateau G Pato
Chateau G Pato is a senior futurist at Inteligencia Ltd. She is passionate about content creation and thinks about it as more science than art. Chateau travels the world at the speed of light, over mountains and under oceans. Her favorite numbers are one and zero.

Douglas Ferguson
Douglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist. He is the founder and president of Voltage Control, an Austin-based change agency that helps enterprises spark, accelerate, and sustain innovation. He specializes in helping teams work better together through participatory decision making and design inspired facilitation techniques.

Alain Thys
As an experience architect, Alain helps leaders craft customer, employee and shareholder experiences for profit, reinvention and transformation. He does this through his personal consultancy Alain Thys & Co as well as the transformative venture studio Agents of A.W.E. Together with his teams, Alain has influenced the experience of over 500 million customers and 350,000 employees. Follow his blog or connect on Linkedin.

Bruce Fairley
Bruce Fairley is the CEO and Founder of The Narrative Group, a firm dedicated to helping C-Suite executives build enterprise value. Through smart, human-powered digital transformation, Bruce optimizes the business-technology relationship. His innovative profit over pitfalls approach and customized programs are part of Bruce’s mission to build sustainable ‘best-future’ outcomes for visionary leaders. Having spearheaded large scale change initiatives across four continents, he and his skilled, diverse team elevate process, culture, and the bottom line for medium to large firms worldwide.

Tom Stafford
Tom Stafford studies learning and decision making. His main focus is the movement system – the idea being that if we can understand the intelligence of simple actions we will have an excellent handle on intelligence more generally. His research looks at simple decision making, and simple skill learning, using measures of behaviour informed by the computational, robotics and neuroscience work done in the wider group.

If your favorite didn’t make the list, then next year try to rally more votes for them or convince them to increase the quality and quantity of their contributions.

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2015
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2016
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2017
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2018
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2019
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023

Download PDF versions of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 lists here:

. . .

. . .

Happy New Year everyone!

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The Innovation Danger of All-or-Nothing Thinking

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The Innovation Danger of All-or-Nothing Thinking

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

All-or-nothing thinking is exciting – we’ll launch a whole new product family all at once and take the market by storm! But it’s also dangerous – if we have one small hiccup, “all” turns into “nothing” in a heartbeat. When you take an all-or-nothing approach, it’s likely you’ll have far too little “all” and far too much “nothing”.

Instead of trying to realize the perfection of “all”, it’s far better to turn nothing into something. Here’s the math for an all-or-nothing launch of product family launch consisting of four products, where each product will create $1 million in revenue and the probability of launching each product is 0.5 (or 50%).

1 product x $1 million x 0.5 = $500K

2 products x $1 million x 0.5 x 0.5 = $500K

3 products x $1 million x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 = $375K

4 products x $1 million x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 = $250K

In the all-or-nothing scheme, the launch of each product is contingent on all the others. And if the probability of each launch is 0.5, the launch of the whole product family is like a chain of four links, where each link has a 50% chance of breaking. When a single link of a chain breaks, there’s no chain. And it’s the same with an all-or-nothing launch – if a single product isn’t ready for launch, there are no product launches.

But the math is worse than that. Assume there’s new technology in all the products and there are five new failure modes that must be overcome. With all-or-nothing, if a single failure mode of a single product is a problem, there are no launches.

But the math is even more deadly than that. If there are four use models (customer segments that use the product differently) and only one of those use models creates a problem with one of the twenty failure modes (five failure modes times four products) there can be no launches. In that way, if 25% of the customers have one problem with a single failure mode, there are can be no launches. Taken to an extreme, if one customer has one problem with one product, there can be no launches.

The problem with all-or-nothing is there’s no partial credit – you either launch four products or you launch none. Instead of all-or-nothing, think “secure the launch”. What must we do to secure the launch of a single product? And once that one’s launched, the money starts to flow. And once we launch the first one, what must we do to secure the launch the second? (More money flows.) And, once we launch the third one…. you get the picture. Don’t try to launch four at once, launch a single product four times in a row. Instead of all-or-nothing, think one-in-a-row, where revenue is achieved after each launch of a single launch.

And there’s another benefit to launching one at a time. The second launch is informed by learning from the first launch. And the third is informed by the first two. With one-in-a-row, the team gets smarter and each launch gets better.

Where all-or-nothing is glamorous, one-in-a-row is achievable. Where all-or-nothing is exciting, one-in-row is achievable. And where all-or-nothing is highly improbable, one-in-a-row is highly profitable.

Image credits: Unsplash

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Be Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With

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Be Ridiculously Easy To Do Business With

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

You can’t argue with the evidence. Being easy to do business with attracts new customers, keeps existing customers and gives you a competitive advantage. Consider what we learned in our customer service and Customer Experience research (sponsored by RingCentral). Each year, convenience ranks as the most important customer service experience. These findings from the study back this up:

94% of customers feel convenience is important
70% are willing to pay more if the experience is more convenient
87% will likely recommend a brand or company if it provides a convenient service experience

David Avrin’s latest book, Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With, is filled with tip after tip on how to avoid friction that loses customers. The book’s subject is one I’ve been studying and endorsing for years. In 2018, I wrote The Convenience Revolution, which featured the five convenience principles: eliminating friction, providing self-service solutions, using technology, delivery and access (location, hours of operation, etc.). Avrin’s addition to the very few but important books on the topic goes in-depth with very specific ways any business can be easier to work with. With that in mind, here are seven of the many ideas and tactics he shares in the book. Make it ridiculously easy …

1. To cancel, return or change your mind. An easy return or exchange policy reduces the customer’s risk and increases trust in the brand. Easy and hassle-free returns are one of the top reasons customers come back.

2. To provide feedback. When your customers provide you with feedback, both good and bad, it’s a gift. They’ve taken the time to share their thoughts, so don’t make it hard for them to do so.

3. To be easy to reach. If a customer has a question, and you make it hard for them to find your contact information, what do you think happens next? They continue their search with a different company. We suggest to our clients that contact information (phone, email, etc.) is available, at least in the footer, on every page of their website. Really, it should be easy to find on anything that has your company or brand’s name on it.

4. To navigate the website. One of the reasons people love shopping with Amazon is how easy it is to do business with, and it starts with a 100% self-service solution. They make it easy to compare products, pricing and more. Most importantly, it is an intuitive experience. You know where to go. It’s easy to get to the shopping cart, and to check out. While not every company can be like Amazon, they can take lessons from how its website is designed. If nothing else, remember that a website is designed by people to be used by people.

5. To pay you. Avrin shared a great example of a vending machine that required him to use a QR code to pay for his snack. Traditional machines have the option of cash or credit card, but making a QR code the only way to pay requires extra steps. It can be an option, but taking away what’s most convenient could hurt sales.

6. To track the status of your order. Let your customers know when their order is shipped and when they can expect to receive it. And, so there’s no hassle in checking on the order, include tracking information. Once an order leaves the warehouse, one of the major carriers typically takes over, such as FedEx, UPS or the USPS. It’s much easier for your customer to click a button and enter a tracking number than to search for your phone number, call you, wait on hold and eventually ask an agent, “When will I receive my package?”

7. To resolve issues. When a customer has a problem, do you offer self-service solutions? Do they need to call? It doesn’t matter what channel the customer uses to get their problem resolved, they just want it to be easy and fast. I refer to a metric I call “Time to Happiness.” The shorter the time, with little (or no) friction, the better.

Why do we make the effort to be easy to do business with? The answer is summed up in Chapter 25. When you create an easy and frictionless experience, you make it ridiculously easy to choose you over your competition!

Image Credits: Pixabay

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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Growing Your Conversational Commerce Capability

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How to Optimize the Latest Major Digital Touchpoint

GUEST POST from Howard Tiersky

Conversational commerce means interacting with your customer in an automated dialog via voice or text.

Usage of voice-based conversational interfaces such as Alexa and Siri have been exploding for years. Meanwhile, over 100,000 active bots were created on FaceBook’s messenger platform during its first year several years ago.

“Digital” began to truly scale with the web, then expanded even further via apps and social. Is conversational commerce (CC) the next major touchpoint? Conversational commerce is defined as interacting with your customer in an automated dialog via voice or text. Based on our experience consulting large brands on the implementation of their digital innovations, and given trends on consumer adoption and technology-readiness, it is fair to say that we are at the dawn of the first wave of the broad implementation of conversational commerce.

For several years, IBM has been painting a fanciful picture of its Watson technology’s ability to digest volumes of information, understand questions, and provide truly insightful answers. Meanwhile, consumers are becoming more and more comfortable with dialog-style interactions via Siri, Google voice search, and Alexa.

In fact:

The number of commands (“skills”) that Alexa can respond has increased past 100,000
34 percent of all smartphone users say they turn to Siri and Google voice search at least weekly.

But conversational commerce does not necessarily have to involve voice recognition.

2017 represented the one-year anniversary of the launch of Facebook’s chatbots, which enable brands to engage in text-based automated interactions with their customers and audience. In 2017 its Messenger platform alone had already reached about 100,000 active bots, and a survey then found that nearly 80 percent of companies use or plan to use chatbots by 2020.

At the Shoptalk conference a few years ago, eBay President and CEO Devin Wenig announced the launch of eBay’s new chatbot called ShopBot, which advises customers on items they might like to buy via automated chat dialog.

This pattern makes sense, as we see that millennials — 38 percent of whom prefer texting as their number one form of interaction, according to a study from Think with Google — have elevated this type of communication to an art form.

Will Siri or SMS-like automated dialog with your brand become the next big consumer touchpoint? If so, what do you need to do to prepare?

The answer, as some of the stats above suggest, is that conversational commerce is poised to be a major and preferred interaction model for many future brand interactions.

The good news is that if your brand has built a reasonably flexible and integrated digital stack, it can often be quickly leveraged to enable high-value CC capabilities without requiring that you install “Deep Blue” in your data center.

Here are five key things to know about getting started with conversational commerce:

1. The Core of Conversational Commerce is Very Similar to Search.

If you already have a strong search platform that permits parametrization, you can use it to drive a key portion of your chat experience. When you tell eBay’s chatbot you are looking to buy a voice recorder; it asks you questions such as the size and memory capacity you need. These questions are simply the metadata parameters eBay has available for voice recorders. You can utilize the product metadata in your existing catalog to make your chatbot appear to ask smart questions, and even more importantly help the customer find what they need, but in reality, the results are very similar to what they would experience if they simply entered structured search queries.

Of course, not all queries involve the quest for a product. Some may be asking a question, such as about your return or cancellation policies, but this too is very similar to search. You can parse chat questions against your full-text index and return intelligent answers by, again, leveraging your search engine.

2. The Next Step of Conversational Commerce is About Enabling Transactions.

Once a customer has found what they are looking for, they may wish to buy, reserve, add to a wish list, or take some other action. Your chat flow needs to know when to pivot from searching to asking the customer to take action. In many cases, or in your initial releases, you may simply choose to branch to existing web screens to complete transactions, as eBay is doing with ShopBot. More sophisticated conversational commerce implementations allow the customer to take action via voice or text, such as Domino’s, which allows the customer to order a pizza by text.

3. In Text Conversations, You Generally Know Your Customer.

One of the advantages of most forms of conversational commerce, such as SMS or Facebook Messenger, is that your customer is identifiable. If the customer has a profile in your system, you can use this knowledge to make the conversational interaction simpler — and also smarter. Picking up again on our Domino’s example, when the customer texts them a pizza emoji, the bot matches their telephone number to its database and confirms that it will be placing the order with toppings based on their past preferences, and will deliver it to their home address on file. The customer will then have the opportunity to override any of these defaults if they are in the mood for Hawaiian pizza that day.

4. You Can Make the Language Parsing Easier by Giving Multiple-choice Options.

Many successful chatbots are more of a string of multiple-choice questions than a free-form dialog. This substantially reduces the challenge of “comprehending” the customer and furthermore reduces typing for users on mobile devices. Naturally, you will want to support customer-entered text strings, but a considerable number of interactions can be handled via a series of multiple-choice questions. In some ways, chat is similar to IVR systems at call centers, and can often use similar types of decision trees.

5. It Doesn’t Have to be Perfect.

There is still some novelty to automated interactions, so customers don’t expect them to be perfect. Furthermore, as with any digital platform, you have the opportunity to improve it over time iteratively. Siri has grown tremendously over the last few years in the range of queries it can handle.

A fantastic resource to help guide your prioritization of new capabilities are the chat logs themselves, which will give you a sense of the types of interactions that your customers are attempting that may not yet be supported by your platform. And in the meantime, as you become aware of such chat or voice requests, you can create short text responses to those categories of inquiries, letting the customer know what other touchpoints currently support that action. So if a customer, for example, uses a chatbot to check their account balance but then wants to transfer funds, and that is not yet supported via conversational commerce, you can supply the URL for the website or app and the toll-free number to call, so they know where to go next.

6. Develop a Core Conversational Engine, and Leverage it Across Many Different Touchpoints

It makes sense to invest in conversational commerce platforms and tie them to your existing catalog, customer data, business logic and transaction capabilities. In doing so, think of creating one central CC “engine” that will connect to a variety of conversational endpoints. To begin with, you may want to focus on enabling a chatbot on your website(s) and in your apps, and integrating with the Facebook chatbot API to allow customers to chat with your automated system via Messenger the same way they would chat with their friends. But in future iterations, it makes sense to support SMS, Skype, WeChat (if you do business in Asia), and possibly other similar platforms. Longer term, as Apple’s Siri, Google Voice, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa continue to open up their APIs, the same conversational engine you created for text can be leveraged with relatively small modifications to support voice interactions.

Conversational commerce is already here, and most major brands have either implemented or are in some stage of planning around an implementation. You can probably leverage existing systems and data sets to create a reasonable starting point for conversational interaction without requiring sophisticated AI or language parsing. Over time, you can learn from your customers’ queries how they want to interact with you and evolve your conversational capabilities accordingly.

This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog

Image Credits: Pixabay

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