The webinar, produced by ThoughtLead and sponsored by ClickFox , a maker of customer data analytics software,  had the curious effect of over-stimulating my brain and making me want to take a nap at the same time. The sheer volume of information put me on high-alert, but some of the content was so fuzzy and warm that I could have nodded off in the comfort of such phrases as “creating a memory” and “self-actualized customers.”

I bet this is how people in the trenches — with  terms like “customer care” or “customer experience” in their titles – must feel at times. There is such an onslaught of information on how to do their jobs, but much of the expert advice is so conceptual in nature that it is difficult to get a few concrete tips that can actually be deployed and measured for results.

Even Clickfox’s CEO, Marco Pacelli, agreed that the language of customer experience management can be so soft as to dilute the meaning of the message. In a follow-up interview, Pacelli said that conversations with clients can be challenging because, at its core, customer experience management “is a humanity thing.”

“It comes down to ‘how do we change the way we care?’,” Pacelli said. “Technologies can expose the issues, but at the end of the day, it is fixed by human intervention.”

True, but how do CEM practitioners turn that into successful projects, or better yet, pitch that to the CEO?

“You might not be able to go tell your CEO to create memories, but you can tell him to go experience what a customer experiences and determine on their own if it is working right,” Pacelli said.

Well said, and good luck with that. But, in the meantime, here are few nuggets from the The New Experience Economy webinar about providing a good customer experience:

Focus on creating the single-customer view. Most people already know the big CEM challenge is creating customer files with histories and links to pertinent information, but here are some numbers that show just how imperative this is:

CustomerThink, an online community, recently completed a survey of U.S. consumers and found that 80% had experienced what it calls “touchpoint amnesia,” a clunky term that refers to that experience when a returning customer calls a company with a problem and is treated like they’ve never been heard of before.

Of that 80% from the survey, 50% said they were less likely to recommend the company and between 24% and 35% were less likely to actually make a purchase because of it.

Push social media across the organization. Companies are at risk of not getting true benefit from social media-a key piece to CEM strategies — because it is controlled by marketing or communications groups. “You talk to any CEO and they’ll tell you that our focus of 2012 and 2013 is to get closer to the customer, ” said Brian Solis, principal analyst at The Altimeter Group of San Mateo, Calif. “Yet social media is already a silo within the organization.”

Solis said that while marketing and communication groups own social media, “service is at the bottom [and] CEOs and the C-suite don’t actually use any of these tools.”

Put some meaning into the term “engage.” Don’t just say you are “engaging” with customers by responding to their social media comments. Let them really talk and start using their ideas to show that you really are listening. Many companies are having success with online idea exchanges, or communities where customers can offer their ideas on improving products and services. Becky Carroll, a founder of Petra Consulting Group, is working as a contractor with Verizon, and said the new Verizon Idea Exchange is getting good results. Not only can customers submit ideas about products and services, but other customers can support those or add their own ideas to the original one.

Train contact center agents to have conversations with customers. More and more, we are hearing that scripted contact center agents are bad news. Kate Nasser, a consultant with The People-Skills Coach in New York City, related her own experience of receiving a brochure in the mail for a new cell phone. She considered switching carriers, called the one promoting the new phone and, when she attempted to ask the agent a question, was instead given a scripted sales pitch. She didn’t make the switch.

“It wasn’t as if she was being a rogue rep,” Nasser said. “There are companies where they are driven purely by metrics and scripts because they think that the way to make customer service successful is to constantly measure the cost of it. I am not against metrics, but that’s not how you succeed.”

Understand when your customer might feel vulnerable because those are the precise moments when they can turn on you. Jeanne Bliss, founder of Customer Bliss and co-founder of the Customer Experience Management Association, said it is important to get ahead of those vulnerable moments when a customer is nervous or second-guessing their buying decision. One example: Following up on the sale of an insurance policy to make sure the customer understands what they purchased before they get the bill in the mail. She offered another example that had nothing to do with technology at all. She said a hospital in a small Connecticut town recognized that most people’s stress level increases as they approach a hospital. So, it pipes in soothing music to the parking lot to help people settle down before entering the hospital building.

Richard Snow

Call centers have long been concerned with average handle times and occupancy, but the recent emphasis on retention and loyalty building have made customer experience management an imperative. Today, call centers must optimize the process and technology required to deliver an excellent customer service experience — but tight budgets and limited resources can make this a serious challenge.

 In this podcast, appropriate for call center professionals, Richard Snow, contact center analyst with Ventana Research, explains the benchmarking research he’s done on analytics in the contact center, how (and if) call centers have adapted the way they measure performance and how social networks are fitting in.

The deal leaves the market for standalone marketing automation software vendors slightly smaller and brings another traditional database/data warehouse vendor into the marketing and CRM community. In August IBM bought Unica, adding its marketing suite to a number of acquisitions around business intelligence and analytics. IBM has slowly been surrounding the CRM market without getting into the traditional entry point with sales force automation.

Teradata plans to integrate Aprimo’s marketing suite with its own database and analytics portfolio.

“Combining these visionary companies positions Teradata as a leader in Integrated Marketing Management, Marketing Resource Management, and Multi-Channel Campaign Management, providing customers an end-to-end solution available in SaaS and on-premise environments,” Mike Koehler, president and chief executive officer of Teradata, said in a statement.  “In addition, the combination will broaden our addressable customer base and fuel marketing innovation for our customers.”

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2011.