The Modern Customer Podcast

You don’t hear the word simplicity very much when it comes to customer experience. But according to Siegel+Gale CMO Margaret Molloy simplicity is the key to running a strong operation. Molloy is responsible for all marketing, communications, and business development initiatives globally. She is a modern Business-to-Business CMO with 15+ years as a marketing leader, a must-follow marketing minds on Twitter (Forbes). Molloy has led marketing organizations at Siebel Systems—where she was a member of the Siebel Systems CEO’s Circle—and served as vice president of Marketing at Telecom Ireland US (eircom). She has her MBA from Harvard Business School. In this podcast you will learn: The one customer experience challenge sitting on every CMOs' desk today The changing role of PR and advertising as consumer behavior changes Golden advice for personal brand building

This is the 2nd post in a two-part series featuring Fidelity thought leaders. Find the first post here. It seems that every innovation story you hear today comes out of a start-up. Big companies are often described as dinosaurs, slow with trouble pivoting. So what can big companies do to ensure they too make it a habit of creating an environment for disruption? Big companies today would benefit from thinking about what they can do to prepare for a new environment where business changes at ever corner. What can big companies do to make themselves more nimble, better able to pivot and competitive in the marketplace? Evan Gerber, VP of Digital Strategy and Mobile at Fidelity knows a thing or two about disruption. He believes big companies can be just as innovative and disruptive as small companies—they just need the right approach. An avid technophile and self proclaimed device geek, Gerber is fascinated by the interplay of business, technology, and consumer behavior. Evan's first engagement in the mobile space was over a decade ago, and he has been at the forefront of developing customer experiences across multiple devices ever since. In this podcast you will learn: Key patterns or trends that disruptors offer The conditions for an organization to disrupt How can brands move faster to be the disruptor, not the disrupted How large brands can leverage their size to cause disruption

Imagine a small rural village in Sweden. It’s nighttime and a new dad drops the only remaining bottle of baby formula on the floor as his hungry son wails. The closest grocery store will take at least 40 minutes round-trip. That was the moment that technology expert Robert Illiason started thinking about alternatives. He realized living in a rural part of the world, where shops close early puts a strain on customers. He came up with the idea for Näraffär (meaning “shop nearby”), the first unmanned grocery store where customers can buy small items such as baby food at any time of night or day. The store is run using a mix of cameras, apps and other technology which he describes as fairly simple to set up. In this podcast you will hear from Illiason, who is an IT consultant specializing in databases and business intelligence, mainly working with automating processes and data flows. He has worked with customers such as Ericsson, TeliaSonera and, mainly, IKEA. He is also a writer and who keeps his finger at the tech pulse for several Swedish IT magazines. In this podcast you will learn: The key components of an employee-less store Surprising insights into customer behavior Future predictions around retail technology

There’s a major challenge today facing every B2B company, and that’s customer engagement. Gallup has recently released a new guide discussing some of environmental factors causing B2B companies to ask themselves about their customer engagement strategy. The guide is based on in-depth interviews with hundreds of thousands of customers and analysis from measuring the engagement of 18 million customers. B2B companies need to work to be just as agile and ready as B2C companies when it comes to how they engage their customers—and how engaged those customers actually are. In this podcast I speak with Ed O’Boyle Gallup’s Global Practice Leader who oversees strategic vision for the company’s worksplace and marketplace practices. Ed brings more than 18 years of marketing and branding experience to Gallup. He previously served in roles in brand management, strategic planning, and innovation at Diageo, Capital One, and Frito-Lay. In this podcast you will learn: The biggest risk B2B companies face today Gain tips on how B2B companies do to improve customer engagement? How companies are playing defense because they don't know what their customers want The social media strategies of leading B2B companies What successful global B2B have that others don’t

Everywhere we look we see more people and brands raving about Snapchat. But we don't hear much about anyone using Snapchat for customer service yet. However one company has recently generated some attention in Social Media Today for actually responding to customers that need help via Snapchat. The company is called iOgrapher—a company iOgrapher sells cases, lenses, microphones, tripods, and LED lighting to turn almost any iPhone or iPad owner into a traveling video producer. The company’s motto is “Life, Camera, Action.” Founder David Basulto invented the iOgrapher ipad mini case for filmmaking. The company has generated a lot of attention—Steven Spielberg is reportedly a customer. David is a former teacher and had a successful career producing feature films and television for firms like Icon Entertainment and Lifetime Television. His films have won awards at many film festivals, including the Toronto Film Festival. After seeing the shift to digital, he dove head first into learning as many tools as possible and fell in love with the iPad. In this podcast you will learn: The art to doing customer service well on Snapchat. What big companies can learn from a start-up about killer customer service. Meeting customer expectations on Snapchat

This week on the Modern Customer Podcast we talk about all things mobile innovation. Our guest is Christophe Gillet Vice President of Product at Vimeo. In this capacity he leads the product vision for the brand, including oversight and ongoing development for Vimeo’s creator platform tools and overall viewing experience. Under his leadership, the team has introduced new subscription tools for creators selling on Vimeo On Demand, rebuilt Vimeo’s search functionality and made significant updates to Vimeo’s suite of mobile and connected TV apps. Christophe joined Vimeo in 2014 from Adap.TV, which was acquired by AOL in 2013, where he launched and led product for their programmatic linear video advertising platform. Christophe has also held product positions at Ebay, Vuze, and Ipreo. He holds six patents across media and ecommerce, and was awarded the CES Innovation Award in 2012 for the Fan TV iPad app. In this podcast you will learn: How the industry needs to rethink native mobile video products How Vimeo aggressively ramped up its mobile efforts to service both creators and audiences How the mobile digital content space is evolving

Le Tote is a lot like Netflix—you pay a monthly fee and get unlimited deliveries of clothes and accessories. This company has been growing like crazy. Le Tote shipped 1.7 million products to customers in 2015. They predict they will send out 400 million dollars worth of product in 2016. Revenue grew 600 percent last year. Over 90 percent of their customers are repeat purchasers. Not bad for a company that initially launched with the intention of allowing pregnant women to share clothes! efore Le Tote the CEO and founder Rakesh Tondon’s wife was going through her second pregnancy and they agreed it would be wonderful if pregnant women could swap clothes with one another. Women generally have to buy tons of larger clothes they only wear for a few months and then toss. Le Tote creates an option for women who would prefer to borrow clothes for this temporary physical change. Rakesh and his cofounder Brett Northart decided to go from a mainstream model offering regular women’s clothes and branch out to a niche model offering both regular clothes and maternity-wear. I had the opportunity interview to Rakesh on The Modern Customer Podcast. You won’t want to miss this one. In this podcast you will learn: The Le Tote customer service strategy vision How to create a winning customer service strategyWhy the subscription model is hot now

According to Robert Tercek, author of Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World and former President of Digital Media at the Oprah Winfrey Network “Every aspect of our economy and society is set to be reconfigured by technological forces that only a handful of increasingly powerful companies have mastered.” Tercek reveals the inner workings of the biggest cultural and economic change since the industrial revolution. Tercek is a business futurist and digital media pioneer. In his 22-year career, Tercek has launched startup ventures and served in executive leadership roles at major media companies including Sony and MTV. In this podcast he talks about how goods become information intensive they begin to lose the characteristics of physical products and take on the properties of a service. In this podcast you will learn: How has the connected consumer created the “activated audience” and the “activated consumer” When consumers are always connected, they become a force that commands the attention of marketing execs in every industry. What are the implications for brands that consumers now have the power to shape trends, influence product development and shape prices, access and product design How can brands in retail create innovative experiences including game-like experiences, digital delights and check-ins to engage the customer in the store? What does a “software-defined” society look like?

If your food could talk to you what would it say? Would it help you cook? Would it provide some tasty pairing ideas for dinner? Or would it just tell you you’ve got a devilish smile and you’re ready for a night on the town? This is precisely what Absolut, the Vodka company, is currently mulling over in pursuit of a bottle that talks to its customers. Their digital innovation manager Markus Wulff said he believes Absolut will become a more service-oriented company because of the Internet of Things. Absolutely! Many companies will follow suit. I had the chance to interview Markus on a podcast where he talked about what Absolut’s vision is for their products and the internet of things. In this podcast you will learn: -The inspiration for the internet of things program at Absolut-The landscape of the internet of things; what will those vodka bottles look like in the future?- Expert predictions around how brands of the future will engage with consumers via the internet of things

What is the purpose of a brand? This is a question I’ve been asking to a handful of thought leaders. Ryan Hanley--the VP of Marketing at TrustedChoice.com, speaker, podcaster and author of the Amazon bestseller, Content Warfare--was someone I discovered through his show on Periscope where he took it upon himself to dissect an article I had written on the purpose of a brand. The purpose of business–according to Peter Drucker one of the most popular management gurus of the 20th century–is to create a customer. But what about the purpose of a brand? How does this popular management quote apply to business today? In this podcast you will learn: How to create a successful content curation program How to be a successful content curator The modern purpose of a brand