About This Blog

Hi, my name is Dale Wolf. This blog is a service of my publishing and consulting firm: The Cx Institute. We are all about freely sharing insights about customer experience and contextual marketing. The ideas are free to you and I hope you find them valuable in helping you lead a marketing transformation at your company. If I have helped make you more successful, then this project has been worthwhile.

As to my background:

I began my career as a sports journalist, where I worked closely with Sports Illustrated, and later as a reporter at the Cincinnati Enquirer and as Weekend Night Sports Editor for the Cincinnati Post. I moved on to work as a copywriter in the marketing department at Union Central Life, then one of the top 50 insurance companies in the US. From there I worked for a couple of years as a writer and account executive at a promotion agency, working for Champion Spark Plugs, Owens-Corning and Jeep. I did a stint as editor of an international trade magazine and then made the jump to marketing management at a chemical company, and later at a manufacturer of home building products.

That's when I made the big jump, opening a sales promotion agency with partners Richard Blumberg and Barron Krody. Over the next two decades we built the agency up to one of the 50 largest in the US, serving Procter & Gamble, Toshiba, Florida Power & Light, 3M, Imation, Quaker State, Pillsbury, St. Paul Insurance, among others.

Contextual Marketing

What made us most successful were the best practices we developed around what we called "contextual marketing" -- a data-driven direct marketing discipline that delivers more relevant customer-centric messages and offers across the customer lifetime. I sold the agency to join Cincom Systems -- the oldest software company still in existence -- where I work with a phenomenal group of marketers and put contextual marketing into practice everyday to play a major role in the company's seven consecutive record growth years.

Customer Experience Marketing

Contextual marketing was a discipline that enhanced the ability for companies to deliver positive customer experiences. Of late, this concept of Customer Experience Management has become the next big thing in how companies will become more successful.

History will show that thought-leaders like Shaun Smith, Joe Pine, James Gilmore and Fred Reichheld brought this concept to the forefront of what customer-centricity and contextual marketing are all about. Shaun sees the delivery of a customer experience as dependent upon three things: Customer Intimacy, Operational Excellence and Human Resources. Marketing plays an essential role in this triad, and in when done right we can deliver a branded customer experience.

Our firm, The Cx Institute, is dedicated to promoting the concepts that these initial thought-leaders brought to light. As a long-time direct marketer, I discovered long ago that relevance was the most important factor in getting mail opened. Relevance leads ultimately to customer experience. If we build organizations and marketing that is relevant to customers, the customers will find us a valued part of their lives.

If you want to email me, the address is: context7**at**gmail.com.

Comments

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[@AxelS]

I just came across your blog through the connection with John Todor. Just wanted to say hi and how much I appreciate your work "Perfect customer experience".

[Dale Wolf]

Gerard,

Thanks for the compliment ... we try to carry the banner. It was sad to learn in a recent analyst webinar how few companies have adopted Customer Experience as a core business strategy.

Glad to see you are doing it. As to your question about other Customer Experience business statements, let me see if any of our readers have any they are willing to share. I did a Google search on customer experience" business statement" and found a few.

[Gerard]

Dear Dale

I use a customer experience statement as a guideline for designing services. Any example of US companies using it. What would the definition of a effective customer experience statement?

Thank you very much for your stimulating blog

[Dale Wolf]

Didier,

My first connection with OGSM (Objectives, Goals,Strategies, Measures) was back when P&G was one of the largest clients for our promotional marketing agency. If you have a contact at P&G, they could give you a wealth of information.

Also, I took the easy way out and Googled OGSM and found a lot of excellent resources, including a PDF that appears to be a comprehensive discussion.

Good luck with your teaching.

[Didier Delaval]

Great blog, great eperience. Do you know where I could get literature about OGSM. I need this for my University students. Here in Thailand I have access to none and the web does not show much. Thanks

[Robert Howard]

Dale, you've put together a great site! I would like to also make you aware of a site that offers do-it-yourself consulting advice for improving the customer experience. You can learn more at:

www.clearbrick.com.

Robert Howard