VOC & Customer Advisory Boards

  • Handling the Logistics of a Customer Scenario® Mapping Session

    The New CSM Guidebook: Part 2: Logistics Check List

    by Ronni Marshak
    Preparing a customer-facing engagement can be a logistics nightmare. Here is a checklist of the details required to run a successful Customer Scenario® Mapping session, which is a superset of all the logistics required for a great customer engagement.
    Apr. 12, 2012
    Strategies
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  • Social-Service Evaluation Framework

    Products that Monitor Social Posts, Identify Customers’ Questions and Problems, and Help Deliver Answers and Solutions

    by Mitchell Kramer
    Our framework for evaluating social-service products that help organizations deliver customer service to the social web has four top-level criteria: customer service best fit, analytic functionality, customer service integration, and viability.
    Apr. 5, 2012
    All Members
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  • Attensity Analyze and Attensity Respond

    Multi-Channel Monitoring, Analysis, and Interaction

    by Mitchell Kramer
    Attensity Analyze and Attensity Respond provide multi-channel (social web and internal channel) monitoring, analysis, and interaction. Powerful, patented text analytics are the offerings’ key characteristic, strength, and differentiator.
    Mar. 1, 2012
    Technologies
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  • What Stands in the Way of Successful Customer-Centric Projects?

    The Five “Gotcha’s” that Plague Most Initiatives

    by Patricia Seybold, Ronni Marshak
    Most customer projects encounter five obstacles to success: lack of resources, lack of access to the right customers, no buy-in from execs, inadequate execution, and no tangible results. Here is advice on how to overcome these internal showstoppers.
    Jan. 5, 2012
    All Members
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  • Customer (and Partner) Segment Advocates

    Patty's Dream Team: Roles and Responsibilities You'll Need for Your Customer-Centric Organization

    by Patricia Seybold
    One key to success in becoming a customer-centric organization is to have strong customer and partner advocates with clout. Here are some role models and suggested responsibilities that may help you build or refine these roles for your company.
    Sep. 13, 2011
    Strategies
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  • How Citrix Evolved Its Online Community of Customer Advisors

    How to Recruit and Manage a Private Customer Community—Patty’s Visionaries' Interviews' Series

    by Patricia Seybold
    Andrea Davidowitz tells the story of how and why she launched a private B2B online community of advisors in 2007 and what she has learned about running and managing a private customer community. Andrea manages strategic customer programs at Citrix.
    Aug. 6, 2009
    Strategies
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  • Managing Customer Advisory Board Programs

    How Do Companies Structure, Manage, and Profit from Their B2B Customer Advisory Boards?

    by Patricia Seybold
    This report provides a summary of the current practices in managing B2B CABs.
    Nov. 21, 2007
    Strategies
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  • Customer Innovation Guide: Core Competency 3

    Mastering the Third Core Competency: Customer Co-Design

    by Patricia Seybold
    Co-designing your company’s future with your customers is imperative to ensuring continuing innovation. See how far along your company is in taking advantage of customer co-design in this self-assessment guide.
    Jul. 12, 2007
    All Members
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  • Customer Innovation Guide: Taking the Fifth Step

    Open Up Your Products and Engage Customers in Peer Production

    by Patricia Seybold
    A key to innovation is to assume that customers will want to roll up their sleeves and customize your products and services to meet their needs. Make it easy for them to do so. Provide customization and configuration tools.
    Jan. 18, 2007
    All Members
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  • A Coordinated Game Plan for Business and IT Execs to Spur Outside Innovation

    Five Initiatives to Support Customer Innovation

    by Patricia Seybold
    To make rapid progress in enabling and empowering your customers to lead you toward new innovations, you need to coordinate your business strategy and your IT efforts.
    Jan. 11, 2007
    Strategies
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  • Customer Innovation Guide: Identify and Study Lead Customers

    Have You Taken the First Step towards Customer-Led Innovation?

    by Patricia Seybold
    This guide provides a self-assessment to see how far along your company is in the important first step towards customer-led innovation by identifying, interviewing, and engaging with your lead customers.
    Oct. 19, 2006
    All Members
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  • Customer Innovation Guide: Five Roles Your Customers Should Be Playing

    How Engaged Are Your Customers in Shaping the Future of Your Business?

    by Patricia Seybold
    This guide explores the five different roles that customers can play and companies can leverage to become an outside innovation organization.
    Oct. 11, 2006
    All Members
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  • Outside Innovation at the BBC

    Q&A with Matt Locke, Head of Innovation, BBC New Media

    by Patricia Seybold
    As the BBC attempts to reinvent itself as a digital media company, the company developed an externally-facing, open innovation strategy.
    Oct. 5, 2006
    Strategies
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  • Online Customer Communities Are Strategic

    Why We All Need to Build a Core Competency in Nurturing Customer Communities

    by Patricia Seybold
    Vibrant customer communities are a hallmark of businesses that lead in product and service innovation. Here are a few tips to nurturing and spawning online customer communities.
    Sep. 14, 2006
    Strategies
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  • Give Customers Important Roles to Play in Shaping Your Business

    Natural Behaviors You Can Tap to Unleash Customer Innovation

    by Patricia Seybold
    Our research in customer innovation revealed that there are five distinct roles that passionate customers naturally adopt with respect to an organization whose products and services they care about.
    Jul. 6, 2006
    Strategies
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  • Bathing Your Organization in Real-Time Customer Context

    Using Online Communities to Understand Customers’ Passions, Issues, and Needs

    by Patricia Seybold
    Learn how a number of consumer companies—Hallmark, Unilever, Kraft, RC2 and Charles Schwab—are using vibrant online customer communities to help them design and market their products.
    Jun. 22, 2006
    Strategies
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  • Staples

    Customers Help Bring a Customer Experience Promise to Life

    by Patricia Seybold
    Staples, the office supplies retailer, has outpaced its competition by deeply understanding what its target customers—small business office supplies buyers—really care about.
    Jun. 8, 2006
    Strategies
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  • Making Outside Innovation the “Path of Least Resistance” in Your Organization

    A Blueprint for Harnessing Customer-Led Innovation

    by Patricia Seybold
    Organizations that are doing a great job of harnessing their customers’ creativity to fuel innovation have five practices in common. You can leapfrog your competition by taking these five steps.
    May. 11, 2006
    Strategies
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  • National Instruments

    A 30-Year History of Enabling Customer Innovation

    by Patricia Seybold
    National Instruments fosters customer-driven innovation in many ways.
    Apr. 6, 2006
    Strategies
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  • Introduction to Outside Innovation

    The Outside Innovation Imperative

    by Patricia Seybold
    The outside innovation process involves engaging with lead users and lead customers in a variety of roles to create new products, processes, and business models. There are 7 ways in which outside innovation differs from traditional innovation processes.
    Mar. 30, 2006
    All Members
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