Week in review: Social Networking Bubble - Value of User Experience - Winston Churchill leadership lessons

Are We in a Social Networking Bubble? 
Coming back from the Bay Area, I can attest IT is on a roll again. The front stage vendors have changed and the topics making a lot of buzz are Big Data with Hadoop, Cloud Computing and PaaS with a heating battle accelerating, Mobility with a head to head competition between Apple and Google Android and of course social networking with a search for talents and executives move (100k+ job posts in the Bay Area).

All of this could make one think that we are living through a new bubble, thus I found this analysis pretty thoughtful and interesting.
Additionally, here are some recent data about VC's investment in the US: Venture capital investing hits 10-year peak, sparking bubble talk.

Volume is not enough, User Experience is key: Android's Market Share Collapses As Apple Surges Thanks To The iPhone 4S
I am a big believer in the importance of UI for user adoption and as the main User Experience differentiator. User Experience, as I did state many times, is nowadays critical to stand out in crowded world. Any business not giving some thoughts on this is exposing itself to tough competition. Apple vs. Android is a very good example of how User Experience makes a difference in a very competitive market that saw key leaders like RIM Blackberry and Nokia decline, attesting to it.

Winston Churchill's Leadership Lessons
Let's close with some lessons learned from Winston Churchill leadership, though this ebook is not that great ;-)

• Seize the day,
• Never hesitate to occupy the limelight
• Do the necessary
• Learn to be eloquent - but don’t get carried away by your own words
• Stick to your guns - but know when to compromise

Have a great week.

Productivity Future Vision: do you like this future world?

You should take the time to review this video -- produced by Microsoft -- and immerse you in this future world we are presented here.  In the beginning I was attracted but after a while I felt a bit oppressed and I guess the absence of true emotions is the reason why. You never hear anyone speak truly and the visuals are very clean, so cold.

Some ideas are very interesting but companies putting together such tentatively inspirational videos should pay attention to emotions as this is fully part of the customer experience... more, it is center stage.

Reactions?

You can see more of videos I've noticed about the future ergonomics in my future playlist on youtube.

Managing Customer Experience: the next big thing?

I am a big believer in management guru Peter Drucker saying "What gets measured gets managed". When it gets down to tracking a company's success, too many businesses tend to rely on market share, profitability, EPS growth or repeat purchases only. Don't take me wrong, you still need to track these down, but as one brilliant Berkeley Marketing guru asked: "Do you think your partner is loyal only because he's having diner every night at home? So, does the number of repeat sales indicates that your customer is loyal?" At least for the first one you must admit he's got a point.

Nowadays, customer experience is one if not the main ingredient of customer loyalty which translates into market share -- as loyal customers are the best brand advocates, profitability and EPS growth i.e. the way most businesses would define success. Then what are you doing about it?

If you're still in doubt, take the coffee business as an example. Who has been insanely successful in this business? Starbucks and Nespresso success stories -- follow the links for more -- can attest about it.

As Shaun Smith, author of Managing Customer Experience, details in his post, there are 10 best practices to create real business value:

1. Successful deployment requires the active and continuing involvement of leadership
2. Ensuring cross-functional ownership is vital
3. Focusing on your most strategically important customers
4. Finding out what these customers truly value
5. Being clear about what you stand for
6. Delivering the promise at every touch point
7. Providing branded training to ensure that employees understand the brand story
8. Designing CEM before installing CRM systems
9. Measuring the customer experience
10. Aligning KPIs with the customer experience

This is heavy duty, but social media -- as you can see in the Starbucks video in the link above -- is becoming instrumental in that regard.

I'll leave you with the five barriers to measuring customer experience, from mycustomer.com:

"Customer experience isn’t just about giving customers a good time. It’s about understanding just how good a time (or not) you are giving – and making adjustments"

1. We rely on magic numbers
2. We don’t really listen
3. Measuring word of mouth is hard
4. We have too much functional data – too little insight
5. We don’t look beyond the obvious and the superficial