Execs In The Know Customer Response Summit 5, at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point Resort and Spa in Bonita Springs, Florida February 11-13, was exceptional! We were first introduced to this event in 2011, at Customer Response Summit 2. When presented with the opportunity to spend a few days with thought leaders in Social Media and Customer Engagement at CRS5, we jumped at the opportunity not only to attend and participate, but also commit to a sponsorship.
According to Stephen Ferber, Managing Partner of Golden Gate BPO Solutions, “I had the pleasure of meeting Chad McDaniel and his firm M.E.R. (McDaniel Executive Recruiters), specializing in executive search in the Customer Relationship Management Industry, at a large industry conference sometime in the late 1990’s. And, over the years it became very clear to me how genuine and committed he was in his approach to that side of the business to get things right. What made Chad and his firm such a phenomenal and genuine resource to people and executives in the CRM industry went well beyond Executive Search Services, as he also added to his people network a relentless and unselfish commitment to research and continuous awareness as to the state of our industry and its evolution. This enabled him to always share relevant and helpful information, industry data and intelligent opinions related to his business, truly answering the Voice Of the Customer. With Execs in the Know, Voice Of The Customer Radio and the Customer Response Summit events, Chad and Susan McDaniel have really taken things to a whole new level as advocates and facilitators of people helping people and companies helping companies in our ever changing industry environment.”
The Customer Response Summit 5 commenced with a tour of the Sony Customer Experience Center. The entire Sony team was exceptionally generous in allowing the whole group to understand how Sony manages their customer engagement process. Everything surrounding their contact centers, including quality assurance, training, dispatch and social media is managed there. One of the most uplifting parts of the tour was interacting with many of the Sony associates and experiencing their passion for their work, how much they truly enjoy what they do and how they put their customers first.
The next two days were filled with some engaging and interactive individual presentations, panel discussions and case study sharing with a central theme around the challenges being faced in today’s customer engagement environments. And, the opinions from a combination of some preeminent thought leaders and various executives, some in the initial stages of implementing social media plans to others much farther down the road with their strategies, proved invaluable. One thing is clear, everyone has experienced some roadblocks along the way keeping up with the ever-evolving customer support ecosystem, but we certainly walked away with a good understanding of how to avoid many of them.
Tracy Thompson added, “Everyone was also so refreshingly honest with their own assessment of their progress related to the social media piece of the customer experience, sharing their successes and failures, accomplishments and goals, and where and how they want to continuously improve on their progress. One of our key takeaways was the common understanding and acceptance that there is no one size fits all solution. Organizations are forced to navigate a landscape that changes daily.” As I tweeted: ‘The great debate, who owns social – Marketing or Customer Service?’ “I believe we learned that this is a question still being addressed day to day by most corporations at varying levels and depending upon how far down the road each organization has progressed, nonetheless, it does require a healthy working relationship between both marketing and customer service, at a minimum sharing some common ground as to the overall goals of any social media plan.”
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