Best Buy Lands In Europe

Best Buy is obviously the leader of the electronic goods retail in the United States. It owned in 2009 22.2% of marketshares, and sold for about $50 billions.

Here are some of the key factors of success of Best Buy:

• A customer centric company: This is for sure one of the best CRM case study ever. They have implemented a strategy allowing them to leverage their salesforce insights, and to create different store concepts to suit the most the zone where they have picked to settle.
  Their store concepts: Best Buy doesn’t stop to try new store concepts, to be on top of the competition.

Customer service: Once again, they have created with the Geek squad a service which provides them with a legitimacy in the high tech world.

Best Buy To Face A Great Challenge
Now the biggest challenge is that Best Buy is entering new markets where the competition is already pretty tough with large companies. Also, the market is actually plummeting in Europe. Nevertheless, Best Buy has strong arguments to establish a strong presence in Europe.
Also, Best Buy has become strong thanks to its centralized approach. They control everything, and everything is standard. But in Europe, you have great differences from a country to another, in terms of culture, customer decision making process, or even product range. This implies to have more flexibility to adapt to the local demand.

Especially, I believe they should focus a lot on creating a great ecommerce website as they have in the US to make sure to have a competitive advantage. Indeed, not so much electronic goods retailers have been able to make the best of both their online and retail presence.

I believe that thanks to their customer centricity strategy they will be able to face the competition. Let’s not forget that in 2003 when they have set this new strategy, Best Buy was struggling against Wall Mart which was cutting the prices. In order to get out of this negative spiral, they have decided to focus on customer service, providing essential extras Wall Mart would not.

Best Buy To Make Acquisitions In Europe?
It is probable to move fast in the market that Best Buy will be eager to make an acquisition, or at least a partnership.

• We have already discussed on this blog that Carrefour is looking for a partner to boost its ecommerce strategy.
• PPR’s retails Fnac and Conforama are in the market.
• Even Darty would be a potential acquisition, as Best Buy is way bigger than them.
• We have seen that Best Buy was thinking about buying Pixmania...
  

I am glad as a customer that Best Buy is coming into Europe. Now the task is tough, and it will be interesting how they’ll be able to breakout while the market is already so tough. What do you think about it?

Deezer crée Soundeezer

Deezer, la société française offrant d'écouter en ligne les titres de sa bibliothéque numérique vient de lancer un nouveau service, Soundeezer.

La technologie de Deezer permet,outre d'accéder à vos titres préférés via un moteur de recherche, de créer des playlists adaptés à vos goûts musicaux.

Ainsi Sébastien Naji, directeur général adjoint de Deezer vient d'annoncer dans le magazine de la grande distribution LSA la création d'un nouveau service, qui ambitionne de compter pour 15% du chiffre d'affaires de la société d'ici un an.

Soundeezer permettra aux enseignes et marques qui le souhaitent de créer leurs prorpes playlists pour leurs point de vente. Outre le fait que ces playlists soient adaptés à la clientèle et au positionnement de la marque, il permettra aussi d'insérer les messages spécifiques tels que des jingles ou des publicités.
D'un point de vue stratégie relation client, le marketing sensoriel, et encore plus sonore, permette d'améliorer sensiblement l'expérience shopper, mais aussi de renforcer l'image de l'entreprise auprès des consommateurs. Je n'ai pour l'instant d'informations sur les tarifs proposer, mais le gait que Deezer est déjà Mc Donald's et ses 1 161 restaurants comme premier client n'est qu'un gage de réussite.
J'aime beaucoup cette information pour 2 raisons:

• Il est très intéressant de voir une start up française réussir aussi bien. Surtout que dans le domaine du téléchargement musical, beaucoup d'autres sociétés se sont frottées aux majors sans grand succès. Le concept est très bon et je suis sûr qu'il serait exportable facilement, si ce n'est pas déjà le cas.
• J'aime beaucoup la manière dont Deezer diversifier son modèle économique. En effet, Deezer joue sur son expertise, la musique on demand, afin de conquérir de nouveau marché. Ainsi ils ont une vrai légitimité, et transmette leurs savoirs faires à d'autres secteurs d'activité.

Je souhaite à Deezer bonne chance dans cette nouvelle aventure.

Is Facebook a SEO Tool?

This is a question I have seen recently on another blog I don't recall. Hence, Facebook is now the 2nd most popular website in the world after Google, and yet no one actually talks about potential lead generation thanks to FB.

Facebook drains millions of people everyday on its website, and of course it proposes an adertising program which could help you generate traffic. As a matter of fact, about a year ago, a friend of mine made a try, and has been surprisingly happy about the number of people who saw the ad. Now, it was very limited in terms of return on investment.

In a near future Facebook aspires to become the center of someone's'internet activity and therefore, it will be more and more prohiminent in the internet traffic generation.

I believe it is a very important tool to generate traffic, even though it is not used at its full potential yet.

And you, what do you think about it?
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Les nouveaux résultats du Relationship Score sont sortis

Le Relationship score est un outil mis en place par l'AACC depuis plusieurs années (création en 2004) afin d'évaluer les efforts et la qualité de la relation client des entreprises en France. Ainsi plus de 160 entreprises ont été nôtées dans 20 secteurs d'activité différents.

Cette étude est issue d'un questionnaire de 30 questions, composé d’items retraçant les expériences concrètes des clients de chaque marque ou enseigne. Aussi elle note:

 «L’Empathie» mesure de manière réciproque la force du lien entre le client et le

prestataire de services (attachement, recommandation)

 «La Proximité» concerne la personnalisation et la prise en compte des besoins

individuels (Connaissance du client / Personnalisation / Ecoute)

 «La qualité de service / le SAV» regroupe la qualité de la gestion des

réclamations et des problèmes ainsi que l’après-vente.

 «Les Informations-Conseils» couvrent l’information/communication ainsi que la

politique d’aide/conseil

 «Le Sentiment d’être traité comme un bon client» traduit la perception d’être

globalement un client privilégié

Et ceci pour différents types d'industries:

• La distribution
• Le E commerce
• La banque/assurance...

Cette initiative est très forte, car elle montre les efforts que peuvent mettre en oeuvre les sociétés afin d'améliorer leur stratégie CRM. Ce qui est

Pour en savoir plus, vous pouvez vous rendre ici, ou bien télécharger le document ici.

Cette étude montre les variations dans le temps entre les différents classement des différentes années. Maintenant, il serait intéressant de voir qu'est ce qui a pu influer sur ces variations.

Notamment, est ce que les efforts de certaines marques dans les média sociaux ont permis d'acquérir un avantage, ou même quels sont les best practices pour améliorer ces scores. Ainsi l'empathie pour une marque peut s'apprécier fortement si la marque établit une relation via Twitter, Facebook ou un blog. De même, les informations conseils peuvent prendre une autre dimension via ces médias.

Cette étude annuelle reste l'un des meilleurs outils d'évaluation des stratégies de relation client.

VRM: When Customers Control The Relationship

I have wrote a lot on this blog about Vendor Relationship Management (VRM). This topic fascinating me. Because it goes beyond the marketing one to one concept. Already, while this One to One concept came up, the idea was that brands were not controlling the relationship as they used to, as markets were maturing and customers were becoming more and more difficult to reach.

But VRM is the idea that customers will be the ones that dictates when you will be able to access them. CRM mag has recently published an article about VRM.

Actually, Twitter and sales uses of Twitter reflects VRM: The customer follows and speak to the brand in order to get information about a product, and finally buys it. very interesting topic.

Ipad As A Customer Relationship Management Tool

The Ipad is a unique device which can't be compared to any of what we know so far. More even than the Iphone (as other smartphones allowed you to navigate on the web or to acting like multimedia players), the Iphone will change the way people interact with computers and Internet.

As Steve Jobs explained, this is a totally new way to experience media. And consumers are still figuring out the best way to make the best out of the device. Now Ipad allows companies to create their own applications. It will be very interesting to see how you can create your own application as a company to make the best out of the device.

Of course the Ipad is not a mass market product yet, and might never become, but it might be a great marketing tool to establish a strong customer relationship management program. Hence, if you are Air France, Louis Vuitton, Nespresso or other premium brands, you might find a way to develop great apps.

Do you have any ideas of apps a brand could develop? Do you ave examples?

Klout.com : Evaluating Twitter Users

New tools to evaluate your social media emerges, and this is great news for CRM managers. I have heard about Klout not so long go, actually while reading my Twitter feed.

What is interesting with clout is to understand how they have ranked these users. Actually, I believe that it is the very first time I see such a detail analysis of a Twitte account. I am sure that community managers will be able to use this tool to measure performances of their activities. Actually I think that the Klout analysis is pretty accurate in term of important information to follow.

What is a Klout Score?

The Klout Score is a numerical representation of the size and strength of a person's sphere of influence on Twitter. The scores range from 1-100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. The size of this sphere is calculated by measuring true reach (engaged followers and friends vs. spam bots, dead accounts, etc.). Strength of influence is calculated by tracking interactions across your social graph to determine the likelihood of someone listening to or acting upon any specific message.

We believe that influence is the ability to drive people to action -- "action" might be defined as a reply, a retweet or clicking on a link. We perform significant testing to ensure that the average click-through rate on links shared is highly correlated with a person's Klout Score. The final Klout Score is a representation of how successful a person is at engaging their audience and how big of an impact their messages have on people.

How is Klout Calculated?

The Klout Score is derived from measuring 25+ variables in the following categories:

True Reach -- This is the size of your engaged audience. This number will be smaller than the number of followers you have because we subtract spam followers and inactive accounts. Klout calculates influence for each individual relationship, so we also subtract the people who you have little influence over. For example, if you are followed by a person who follows 5,000 other people and you two have never interacted, share very few common friends, and generally don't tweet about the same topics, it's likely that your tweets are barely seen by this person, and you probably have little to no influence over them. On the other hand, if a person takes the time to put you on a Twitter list, it means they really value the content you produce, and will increase the influence you have over them.

True Reach is broken into the following subcategories:

• Reach
  • Are your tweets interesting and informative enough to build an audience?
  • How far has your content been spread across Twitter?
  • Are people adding you to lists and are those lists being followed?
• Demand
  • How many people did you have to follow to build your count of followers?
  • Are your follows often reciprocated?

Factors measured: Followers, Friends, Total Retweets, Follower/Follow Ratio, Followed Back %, @ Mention Count, List Count, List Followers Count.

Amplification Ability -- This is the likelihood that your message will generate retweets or spark a conversation. The ability to create content that compels others to respond, or increase the velocity of content so that it spreads into networks beyond your own is a key component of influence.

Amplification Ability is a composite of the following subcategories:

• Engagement
  • How diverse is the group that @ messages you?
  • Are you broadcasting or participating in conversation?
• Velocity
  • How likely are you to be retweeted?
  • Do a lot of people retweet you or is it always the same few followers?
• Activity
  • Are you tweeting too little or too much for your audience?
  • Are your tweets effective in generating new followers, retweets and @ replies?

Factors measured: Unique Retweeters, Unique Messages Retweeted, Follower Retweet %, Unique @ Senders, Follower Mention %, Inbound Messages Per Outbound Message, Update Count.

Network Score -- This is a measurement of how influential the people who retweet, @ mention, list and follow you. Each time a person performs one of these actions it is a testament to your authority and the quality of your content. Capturing the attention of influencers is no easy task, and those who are able to do so are typically creating spectacular content. The more influential the people who retweet, @ mention, list or follow you, the higher your Network Score will be.

Network Score looks at the Klout score of each person who interacts with you to determine:

• How influential are the people who @ message you?
• How influential are the people who retweet you?
• How influential are the people who follow you?
• How influential are the people who list you?
• How influential are the people who follow the lists you are on?

The 25+ variables used to generate scores for each of these categories are normalized across the whole data set and run through our analytics engine. After the first pass of analytics, we apply a specific weight to each data point. We then run the factors through our machine-learning analysis and calculate the final Klout Score.

Klout Score

The Klout Score is a representation of a person's overall influence. This number is generated through analysis of over 25 different variables and ranges from 1-100, with 100 being the most influential.

Reach

• Followers
  230
• Total Retweets
  0
• Friends
  79

Demand

• @ Mention Count
  2
• Follower/Follow Ratio
  1.78
• Followed Back %
  61 %

Engagement

• Follower Mention %
  1 %
• Inbound Msgs Per Outbound Msg
  0.05
• Unique @ Senders
  2

Velocity

• Unique Messages Retweeted
  0
• Unique Retweeters
  0
• Follower Retweet %
  0 %