On Monday, as Oracle Corp. announced it will bundle its CRM, marketing and other software products into a suite that focuses on customer experience, news continued to spread like volcanic lava that the company’s CEO was about to buy an island.

Big nui (Hawaiian for news) indeed.  Larry Ellison had an eye on purchasing most of Lanai, an island near Maui. Word of the real estate deal broke June 20, and by Thursday, Ellison had closed the deal.

Ellison bought 88,000 acres of Lanai, about 98% of its 141 square miles. According to the Maui News, the former owner – Castle & Cooke Inc. — had asked for as much as $600 million for this American slice of paradise.

The deal landed Ellison control of the island’s tourism, as well as ownership of two golf courses, two resorts, commercial and residential buildings and lots of open space.

Meanwhile, on Monday night – with tech reporters already briefed days in advance on Oracle’s product announcement – company co-President Mark Hurd held court on a Gotham Hall stage in New York to unveil Oracle Customer Experience (CX).

The suite enables businesses to respond to a market centered on the customer experience, Anthony Lye, the company’s senior vice president of CRM, told SearchCRM in an interview. It includes familiar Oracle products — such as the Fusion CRM platform — and offerings the company recently captured through acquisitions, including FatWire, RightNow and Vitrue.

Although it couldn’t complete with visions of sun and surf, the product announcement wasn’t completely buried in the news cycle.

Tech publications covered the new strategy. And the unveiling spawned a fair share of tweets – including, “You say you want a (customer experience) revolution?” and “Is the whole greater than the parts yet?” –.

But a Google search during Monday always first offered scores of results about Ellison’s purchase. And most of Twitter was abuzz about Ellison’s new digs

Among those tweets, Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, a Web content sharing company, wrote: “The shocking news today should be that Larry Ellison didn’t previously own an island.”

And former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich offered: “Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is buying Hawaii’s 6th-largest island. Other billionaires are buying the rest of America in the 2012 election.”

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.

I think Tina Turner would have cringed. I know I did. But, it ended up making sense.

Joseph Michelli, motivational speaker, psychologist and author of such well known books as “The Starbucks Experience,” referenced Ms. Turner’s song at the ICMI ACCE conference in New Orleans to convey the importance of developing connections with customers.

Michelli is currently writing on a book about Zappos.com and related a few stories about how this online shoe company connects to the customer. First, the company really wants their call center agents to love what they are doing. He said the company requires all employees to go through rigorous training and to understand  the company’s core values as well as its goal to deliver “happiness’’ to customers.  In fact, when new call center employees completes their training, they can decide to opt out if they believe Zappos.com isn’t the right fit for them and the company will pay them up to $4,000 as a goodbye, Michelli said.

But these agents need to be really good at what they do.  Michelli recalled an instance when a customer wanted to place an order for a certain kind of sneaker. When the customer service agent discovered it was not in stock, she directed this customer to a competitor that did have the shoe by sending the customer the competitor’s link and then giving them a coupon for the next time they did business with Zappos.com.

“They want to say they are more concerned about you than that particular sale,’’ Michelli said.

Also, there is a high probability that customer will tell that story to friends, who will most likely consider Zappos.com the next time they want a pair of sneakers.

Michelli said the true art to managing the customer experience is to create “a unique, memorable and easily relatable experience.’’ It costs a lot less than traditional advertising and can have much longer lasting impact.

The author said the companies most successful at managing the customer experience are the ones who have a clear “why we serve’’ statement.

The “why we serve’’ message needs to be precise and shouldn’t be mixed up with mission statements or company values, Michelli said.

At a book signing after his speech, Michelli said a company needs to figure out this simple statement by asking itself what it is that it does very well. The call center, he added, could likely give the company great insight because it should know what is going on with the customer.

But one group wants to change that.

The Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) was launched in late April and last week reported it had built its ranks to about 200 participants. The good news is there is a big chunk of end-users in the group who are actually charged with managing customer experience programs at their companies. Although vendors are in CXPA, it isn’t just another vehicle for selling software solutions.

“The topic is so broad, there is a lot of demystification needed,’’ said Karyn Furstman, vice president of customer experience at Safeco Insurance in Seattle and a CPXA member. “For people trying to drive this work, there is a need for sharing best practices.’’

In general, customer experience management refers to the management of the full customer lifecyle, from when a customer may first be considering a product through the completion of a transaction and ongoing support. Because it addresses the full lifecycle, customer experience management hits every segment of a company‘s operations, making it a highly complex undertaking.

Industry consultants Bruce Temkin and Jeanne Bliss saw the need for a forum for customer experience professionals to exchange knowledge on what can be a very challenging topic. They created the CXPA with a group of founding members and a set of Gold ($25,000 annual fee), Silver ($10,000) and Bronze ($5,000) vendor sponsors. Annual corporate membership fees are $2,500 to $10,000, depending on revenue size and individuals can join for an annual fee of $195.

In exchange for the annual fees, members get access to resources such as white papers and webinars. Online forums and topic-specific communities are being set up for members to network and learn from each other.

For example, the CPXA plans to take on some of the thornier issues around customer experience management, such as the corporate politics that can get stirred up when an organization tries to implement a cross-functional project.

“You need teams of executives to manage the political issues, ’’ CXPA’s Bliss said. “We work to engage the executives. We ask, ‘Do you understand what it is that is growing your customer base? It is easy to say you want to do this, but here’s what it will involve: re-crafting your business.’’

Bliss acknowledges that a key sticking point is compensation. Too often divisional managers are compensated for their own team’s performance and therefore have little incentive to join a cross-functional effort. However, she also said it is a mistake to attach financial compensation to these projects at the start. “People can work the system,’’ she said.

Instead, Bliss advises companies start with simple process changes and reward managers “when customer complaints go south.’’

Adobe Systems Inc., a CXPA gold sponsor company, said it is sidestepping internal politics by relying on a small “SWAT team’’ to help implement customer experience management procedures, according to Ben Watson, a principal customer experience strategist.

Watson said his group is an off-shoot of marketing and is charged with providing customer-focused changes to a variety of teams within Adobe. “We can change a small part of a process if you simply put an outside-in focus on it. We can help people see why they weren’t being customer-centric.’’

Bliss said she thinks building a “community of like-minded people’’ will help advance the profession.

“One of the things about this work is you sometimes feel like you need a rubber room,’’ Bliss said. “So this is a community to share experiences with.’’

However, the results of the 2010 Customer Experience Impact Report by Harris Interactive and commissioned by RightNow are both interesting and not necessarily self-serving to RightNow. Plus, they include some infographics and we recently had some discussions here at work about using infographics a bit more. Here was my chance.

And here are the infographics.

As for the research, RightNow is holding its annual North American user conference this week and released some of the study results as part of the show. The data makes a pretty compelling argument for customer service’s impact on the bottom line.

For example, in addition to some of the claims in the infographics, the research notes:

• 55% of consumers became a customer of a company because of their reputation for great customer service
• 85% of consumers said they would be willing to pay more over the standard price in order to ensure a superior customer experience
• 79% of consumers that had a negative experience with a company told others about it
• 92% of consumers said they would go back to a company after a negative experience. However they wanted a follow up apology/correction, a discount or some proof of enhanced customer service.

So people will become customers thanks to your customer service reputation, pay more for your products or services, but they’ll also tell others about what you did wrong and only return if you apologize or make it up to them.

Good customer service is generally accepted as good business practice, but it’s always nice to have some research, sponsored or not, to back that up.

We sat down with Lior Arussy, president of the Strativity Group, to discuss how organizations can keep focused on the customer experience amidst these challenges.

In this 17-minute podcast, listeners will hear:

• Advice for staying focused on the customer experience despite budget cuts.
• Lessons that can be learned from companies like Dell which emerged from the last economic downturn stronger, thanks to the customer experience.
• The proper customer metrics to be focused on during a recession.
• How outsourcing and self-service applications factor into both cost cutting and the customer experience.