Executive
Dialogue
focus: Communications
Keeping Pace with Customers’
Don Peppers
Recognized for over a decade as
one of the leading authorities on
customer- focused business strat-
egy, Don Peppers is an acclaimed
author and a founding partner
of Peppers & Rogers Group, the
world’s premier customer-centric
management consulting firm that
provides clients with world-class
customer strategy, flawlessly ex-
ecuted, for bottom-line impact.
Richard Burdge
Richard Burdge is Chief Marketing
Officer. With 20+ years’ market-
ing strategy, communications and
CRM experience in B2B and B2C,
Richard has a successful track
record of driving profitable market-
ing programs that deliver growth
and enhance shareholder value.
Before joining Thunderhead in
January 2010, Richard worked with
organizations including Sky, HP
and Vodafone, on client and agency
sides of the fence. Richard’s spe-
cialities include digital marketing,
e-commerce and social networking.
Featuring Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.
Multichannel
Preferences
Consumers use multiple channels interchangeably; companies must create a
multithreaded dialog that maps to customers’ movement across channels.
m
any marketers don’t fully appreciate what “multichannel” means to customers.
Organizations may have multiple channels to serve their customers—and those
companies may send messages via direct mail, email, mobile, and social—but that
doesn’t make them multichannel. Interacting through multiple channels is not enough.
True multichannel means using all channels seamlessly in one platform to create a mul-
tithreaded dialogue that matches customers’ behaviors across channels.
In this 1to1 Executive Dialogue, industry thought leaders Don Peppers, Founding
Partner of Peppers & Rogers Group, and Richard Burdge, CMO of Thunderhead, will
define the optimal multichannel approach, discuss why it’s essential today, and explain
how to create a multithreaded dialogue.
Why is it so important to interact with customers seamlessly across multiple channels?
Richard Burdge: Businesses must embrace the fact that consumers are now empowered. In
the past, brands used to be able to control and manage the message. But now that consum-
ers are engaging with one another to give their opinions on brands, brands have really lost
that control. So companies have to deliver what the customer wants.
It’s time to examine, build, and execute strategies that create a strong and customer-cen-
tric presence in the marketplace. This might mean that brands need to look at their engage-
ment with customers and reprioritize.
I’ll give you a good example. I have a son who’s 12 years old. When I come home from
work he’s on the Web. But he’s not looking at websites. He’s engaged in social games across
the Web with his friends from school, or he’s discussing his math homework, for example.
He never picks up the phone and makes a paid call, and he rarely looks at websites.
I recently shared this with a group of insurance executives. Then I asked, “How are you
going to serve my son in 12 years time when he becomes an early-stage customer that you’ll
want to acquire?” He may be looking for auto insurance at that stage, and they may have
infrastructure that won’t serve him in the social environment.
It doesn’t just apply to young people. One of Facebook’s fastest growing communities is
women over 55. Brands are going to have to interact with them in those environments, as well.
Lastly, when we examine emerging markets, we find that people are now using social
banking across mobile phones. Micro financing and commerce are taking place in an entirely

focus: Communications
different manner where, in some countries,
a text message becomes a contract.
Don Peppers: The interaction that consum-
ers have with other consumers has led to
rising customer expectations. People have a
richer and more efficient experience in their
online dealings with other people, as well as
with organizations and companies, and so
their expectations are that companies will
be able to keep track of the conversation.
Imagine being on Facebook and com-
municating with someone, and then you call
them on the phone and they have no idea
what you said on Facebook. That would be a
totally nonsensical experience when you’re
dealing with a human being. Increasingly, to
customers, it’s nonsensical if that’s the reac-
tion they get from companies they deal with.
What are the possible repercussions for
businesses that are not agile enough
to have multithreaded discussions with
their customers?
Don Peppers: I think it goes to the question
of whether the customer actually trusts the
company.
Two requirements must be met before
I will be willing to trust someone. First, I
have to trust their intent to act in my inter-
est and not abuse me or abuse my privacy.
But second, I have to be confident that
they’re competent to carry out that intent.
If they’re not competent, it doesn’t matter
how good their intention is -- I still can’t
trust them. If a business is not competent
enough to recognize me when I’m online
as the same person who’s ID number was
in use at the call center the other day; or
if you can’t call up the receipt at the retail
store for the products I bought online that
I’m trying to exchange, that’s going to
destroy my confidence in you.
Richard Burdge: Don’s right, there has to
be trust. If that trust breaks down simply
because an organization can’t commu-
© 2011 Peppers & Rogers Group. All rights reserved. 1to1 Media is a division of Peppers & Rogers Group. 2
nicate in a multichannel way, then the
relationship breaks down.
We’re seeing businesses look more and
more to acquire customers through recom-
mendations or advocacy from their exist-
ing customers. An acquisition won’t work
unless the promise is fulfilled, and that is
reinforced by the advocacy that is coming
from existing customers.
“I don’t see myself as an email
customer or as a Web customer
of a particular brand.”
­—Richard Burdge,
Chief Marketing Officer, Thunderhead
You’ve got to look at your customers and
believe that you can make them advocates
of your service through differentiation
of the dialogue that you have with them,
make it much more personal, and make
it related to how they behave. If you can
drive that advocacy in your customers,
that’s going to fuel your acquisitions.
What are the first steps companies need
to take to create multithreaded dialogues
with customers?
Don Peppers: It really depends on what your
current situation is. For instance, if you
don’t have any level of integration among
your various communication channels,
then your first step has to be to design the
systems and processes that integrate your
actions so that the people at the contact
center actually have access to information
about what happened at the point of sale
or through another channel.
If you have at least some level of system
integration and information integration,
then the next step is probably going to be to
break down organizational silos. These silos
grow up naturally in every organization be-
Executive
Dialogue
Featuring Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.
cause whenever you put a function in place,
you have to put somebody in charge of that
function, and that helps create a silo.
Once the systems can communicate with
each other, then you need people to commu-
nicate with each other inside your company.
What are the key challenges that deci-
sion makers must overcome to achieve
success in providing seamless multi-
channel interactions with customers?
Richard Burdge: As Don said, all businesses
grow up with silos inside them, and those
silos of information, people and data tend
to serve consumers of one particular chan-
nel. So you’ll get the email group, the Web
group and the mobile group.
But the trouble is, that’s not how con-
sumers and customers see themselves. I
don’t see myself as an email customer or
as a Web customer of a particular brand.
I just see myself as a customer. As a
customer, I just want that experience and
that dialogue to be continuous across all of
those channels seamlessly because I’m the
customer and that’s how I behave.
Given the range of devices out there,
this will make it difficult to track audiences.
Marketers need some kind of intelligence in
a single platform that can understand where
their customers are, what their customers
want, and how they want to be served in
a multichannel way, all while maintaining
management of the brand and compliance
of standards and quality in serving that
customer.
Don Peppers: Another critical area is
the orientation of the business. Orienta-
tion goes to the heart of the attitudes of
the people are who are responsible for
carrying out the processes. Think about it:
You can’t write a line of code or a business
rule that ensures employees always try to
delight the customer; your employees have
to want to delight the customer.

focus: Communications
How can companies leverage technolo-
gies to help close communication gaps
across siloed functions and channels,
such as CRM and email systems?
Richard Burdge: The customer really doesn’t
care if their data or their information is
held in a number of silos or different
systems. What they really care about is
how they’re communicated with. So even if
companies have silos, and CRM is oper-
ated separately from email, for example,
they can layer technology over the top to
close that communication gap and give a
much richer experience to the customer.
A combination of technology, behavioral,
and people change can achieve this, and
this will move responsibility closer to the
front line and empower customer-facing
staff to become customer heroes. That’s
what the customers want them to be, some-
body who goes that extra mile to deliver ex-
actly what they want—and that means being
supported by a single platform capability to
deliver that dialogue and service.
How do you manage the compliance
and security aspects?
Richard Burdge: From compliance stand-
point, having the ability to record pertinent
information on what companies have
communicated, right down to the para-
graph or sentence with their customers, is
a powerful tool. Having a single platform
to handle all of these different communica-
tion channels for compliance can save your
organization dramatic amounts of time.
Don Peppers: I saw a survey the other
day from a research firm that looked at
call centers in the United States, and it
compiled the national, state, industry, and
union regulations that they needed to com-
ply with. Over 50 percent had to comply
with the Do Not Call laws, 32 percent with
Sarbanes-Oxley, 27 percent with HIPAA,
© 2011 Peppers & Rogers Group. All rights reserved. 1to1 Media is a division of Peppers & Rogers Group. 3
plus a slew of other regulations. This is a
major task, just being competent enough
to interact with your customers in a way
that doesn’t violate regulatory restrictions.
Is there a formula for achieving the right
balance in company customer communi-
cations between various channels?
Don Peppers: When a customer is par-
ticipating in an integrated conversation,
what’s important to you is the customer’s
impression of the conversation. The con-
versation is not integrated if the customer
doesn’t think it’s integrated. It’s in the eyes
of the beholder, and the beholder in this
case is your customer.
“Customers create all the value
associated with a business.”
—Don Peppers, founding partner,
Peppers & Rogers Group
The single most important issue is putting
yourself in the place of the customer, trying
to see your business and all the interactions
that a customer will have through the eyes
of the customers themselves. The more cus-
tomer insight you have, the better prepared
you’ll be to adopt this customer-oriented
perspective. There is no magic formula.
What are some recommended best prac-
tices in multichannel communications
with customers?
Richard Burdge: The challenge for organiza-
tions will be to integrate social media with
their existing traditional capabilities into
all facets of their business. Businesses will
need to harvest the knowledge gleaned
from customers through these networks
to deliver customer-focused communica-
tions, providing relevant information and
support where customers want it; the right
Executive
Dialogue
Featuring Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.
message, at the right time and in the right
format-over the right channel.
I’ll give you a good example. I was talking
to somebody the other day who’d purchased
some software on-line. They received a
thank you note that read, “We’re really inter-
ested to hear how you get on with it.”
And they thought that the language and
the tonality used to communicate back to the
buyer were interesting. Also, the message
had actually come in a text format rather
than through email or direct mail. This
provider had an understanding that the cus-
tomer used multiple channels and behaved
in a multithreaded way. The company also
wanted to ensure it conveyed that they wel-
comed feedback on the users’ experience.
I think this demonstrates that companies
will have to become increasingly social and
connected with their customers instead of
pushing information towards them.
How can companies measure success?
Don Peppers: Customers create all the value
associated with a business. Fundamentally,
when you’re trying to measure your suc-
cess, you’re trying to measure how much
value your customers are creating.
Customers create value in two different
ways. Customers, unlike products, have
memories. They remember you from event
to event. So how you treat a customer in
one interaction is going to have a direct
influence on the amount of value the
customer creates, not just in that interac-
tion, but in all future interactions. So when
you go to measure success, you have to tie
your metrics into your analytics.
And to the extent possible, you have to
try to measure how much their lifetime
values are going up or going down on the
basis of the day’s activities.
Who is doing multichannel well?
Richard Burdge: Best Buy has a really suc-
 Executive
Dialogue
Featuring Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.

focus: Communications

cessful social media listening program that
takes that critical next step and engages
with the customer.
But it also provides options for custom-
ers to email or call to interact with the
company in whatever manner necessary
to resolve a concern. It’s not enough just to
have the interaction. You then have to fol-
low through with the response. And that’s
the real fulfillment of genuine customer en-
gagements in a multichannel best practice.
In Forrester’s 2010 Voice of the Customer
Awards, American Express and Dell were
both cited for their active use of customer
data they collect and act on to drive that
real-time customer experience.
Amex increases customer loyalty and cus-
tomer spend by highlighting valuable things
like unused card benefits rather than hiding
them away. They’re not trying to sell custom-
ers up to the next card.
Dell uses its online community’s ratings.
They have an open policy of reviewing all
that information and identifying unmet
customer needs. This is feedback for the
business. It generates innovation and ideas
that Dell can respond to en masse, but it
also makes the customers feel that they’re
really being responded to regarding their
individual issues.
Don Peppers: JetBlue has a fairly sub-
stantial Twitter following, and when there’s
a weather problem or a flight delay, it’s not
just the deals and one-day fares that go on its
Twitter announcements. The airline announc-
es to the world its delays, and if you’re on a
connection to Albuquerque or Long Beach or
wherever, you’re going to find out quickly.
That give and take with customers is
particularly powerful for service companies,
and even more critical for companies that
may have problematic service reputations.
Carphone Warehouse is an independent
phone dealer based in Europe that had a ter-
rible reputation for service. So the company
launched a program called (CPW Cares),
Carphone Warehouse Cares—basically, to
monitor the Twitter space.
Let’s say a customer has a bad experi-
ence. She might blog about it, but then
she’ll tweet out the blog, and it’s the tweet
that gets picked up very quickly if you’re
monitoring the space. And so CPW will
reach out to them and try to solve the prob-
lem. The CPW Cares team has dramatically
reversed what was a terrible reputation.
It’s becoming much better, and CPW is
becoming known as a social media–aware
company, a cutting-edge type company
when it comes to customer feedback.
This is the new marketing, where you
take the perspective of the customer and
where the company is proactively trustwor-
thy. It’s proactively protecting the customer
from making mistakes, for example, and
that is going to be a central element of
customer service in the next decade­—
proactive trustworthiness, or what Martha
Rogers and I call trustability. n

Thunderhead changes the way companies engage with their customers, enabling mea-
surement and learning from every interaction to drive greater loyalty and profitability.
Our innovative business user-driven software, Thunderhead NOW, delivers new levels of
personalization, context and compliance with true multi-channel capability—the right information, to the right person, at the
right time, in the right format. Founded in 2001, Thunderhead now has insurance, retail banking, government and capital market
customers on three continents. They optimize their customer engagement—we help them make every communication count.

For more information, please contact: http://www.thunderhead.com/home.php.

Peppers & Rogers Group is dedicated to helping its clients improve busi-
ness performance by acquiring, retaining, and growing profitable custom-
ers. As products become commodities and globalization picks up speed, customers have become the scarcest resource in business.
They hold the keys to higher profit today and stronger enterprise value tomorrow. We help clients achieve these goals by building the
right relationships with the right customers over the right channels. We earn our keep by solving the business problems of our cli-
ents. By delivering a superior 1to1 Strategy, we remove the operational and organizational barriers that stand in the way of profitable
customer relationships. We show clients where to focus customer-facing resources to improve the performance of their marketing,
sales, and service initiatives.

For more information, please visit: www.peppersandrogersgroup.com.

© 2011 Peppers & Rogers Group. All rights reserved. 1to1 Media is a division of Peppers & Rogers Group. 4