Six Serving Men Blog

Having recently read the Forrester Wave Cross Channel Report I was reminded of a list of eight truths (Gartner) that marketers and service suppliers could benefit from acknowledging.
 

The Forrester report by Suresh Vittal @sureshvittal does provide a good overview of the state of the market with regard to service providers. In particular the "plumbing diagram" provides a good canvas for marketers to overlay their current capabilities and help identify weaknesses in their ability to provide a seamless customer service to their customers and prospects 
  


However the truths of technology related marketing are that you will never

1. Have perfect customer data
2. Analyse all your customer data 
3. Control every customer interaction.
4. Be content with your in-house marketing expertise
5. Be content with your in house IT expertise
6. Achieve the vision of one to one marketing
7. Have a centralised Marketing dashboard
8. Be immune from legislation.

This should not stop companies striving to improve how they do things and particularly with constantly evolving technology requires the discipline to reguarly evaluate what they do and why. The Econsultancy 2010 customer enagement report highlighted that 64% (249 responders) didn't even know how many touchpoints they have with their customers!

Rather than act as deterent to action the 8 truths should help determine the ongoing decision process upon how to best allocate resources to what is important - how to achive your bsuiness objectives. Otherwise (To paraphase) "If you don't know where you are now or where you are going any road will take you there".