Once again, I’m a co-producer and active participant at the 4th Annual Voice of the Customer Conference near Boston. Now in its fourth year, the First Wednesday Group’s annual conference has built a strong reputation as the place for leading-edge insights from the support world’s smartest people. Some of these smart people are on stage with microphones; others are part of our audience of hands-on support managers and professionals–people who are eager to share their ideas and experiences with their colleagues in an intimate, friendly retreat away from office distractions.

Find out more at: http://www.first-wednesday.com/conference/

After almost 4 weeks of travel (just crossed the 100,000 mile mark with United Airlines this past weekend), I’m back in Boston for a few weeks.

One of the reasons I’m back is the Third Annual Voice of the Customer conference hosted by the First Wednesday Group. There is a terrific lineup of speakers and participants. If the past two years were any indication, it should be a fun event with a lot of provocative ideas. I’m looking forward to seeing many friends, colleagues and customers there.

 (Disclaimer, I am one of the producers of the First Wednesday Group.)

The Voice of the Customer Conference 2009
Boston, November 3-4

 Some of the strongest, most active communities in the social media world are based on post-sale customer support relationships. User groups, online forums, advisory boards, expert networks, survey panels–a growing number of “voice of the customer” channels now provide a rich dialog between companies and their customers.

 A great place to learn more about how social media is influencing the support world is the First Wednesday Group’s annual Voice of the Customer conference, which will take place Nov. 3-4 at a conference center outside of Boston.

This is a boutique event–highly interactive, small in scale, with an impressive lineup of expert speakers and an audience of managers with a good deal of hands-on experience with social media in a customer support environment.

If you’re looking for great conversations and lots of real-world data, this is the place to be.

 Registration is $385/day. For speaker and program details, please visit

http://www.first-wednesday.com/support_conference.html

Boston, MA — Drawing on an impressive lineup of speakers, the 2009 “Voice of the Customer Conference” will focus on leading-edge issues in building end-user communities, improving satisfaction metrics, and creating customer-centric organizations. The conference, produced by the First Wednesday Roundtable, will take place in Bolton, Mass. on Nov. 3 with a day of optional workshops on Nov. 4.

Registration for the Nov. 3 conference is $385 per person. Additional information about the program and post-conference workshops can be found on the First Wednesday Web site:
http://www.first-wednesday.com/support_conference.html

Yesterday’s second annual Voice of the Customer retreat in Bolton was a nice affair, at the classy International country club in Bolton, just outside Boston. One of the most memorable quotes was from Marlene Bessette, VP for Strategy and Customer Loyalty at Xerox. “Culture eats strategy for lunch every time.” So true.

During the open mike session, I asked if anyone had success creating a common company-wide vocabulary regarding Voice of the Customer – even something as basic as who the most ‘important’ customer was. The answer was ‘no’ from all but the smallest (or single product) companies. Shows how long a way we have to go before we truly start embedding the Voice of the Customer into everything we do.

Speakers and topics for the October 7 “Voice of the Customer” retreat will explore a range of leading-edge topics in customer satisfaction and customer interaction, according to the organizers of the event, which will be held at a country club resort outside Boston.

The agenda includes the following speakers:

• Marlene Bessette, vice president of customer loyalty at Xerox, on how her company uses satisfaction data to identify and cultivate customer champions.
• Tina Taylor, vice president of global customer care at GE Fanuc, on using satisfaction scores to measure the results of internal process improvements.
• Dale Troppito, managing partner of The Gantry Group, on a new research study that explores best practices in pay incentives for high customer satisfaction scores.
• Matt Tippets, product manager at Parature, on using a Web forum to solicit and prioritize customer-inspired product innovations.
• Ann Walker, support team manager at The MathWorks, on a way to integrate customer feedback into the product development cycle.
• Peter Holt, director of worldwide technical support at Progress Software, on capturing and acting on “outside-the-box” customer feedback.
• Renee Bochman, senior director of global customer care at Endeca Technologies, on how to link internal knowledgebases and external community expertise into a single Web portal.

“Technology companies are wrestling with all the challenges of empowering their customers,” says conference co-producer Jeffrey Tarter. “We’ve brought together a group of people who have implemented very successful solutions to these challenges, and we know the discussions will be extraordinary.”

The “Voice of the Customer” Conference will take place on October
7 at the International, a world-famous golf resort and spa in Bolton, Mass. The registration fee is $285 per person.

Additional program information and registration is available at:
       http://www.first-wednesday.com/support_conference.html

I’m helping put together the second Boston area Voice of the Customer retreat on October 7at the luxurious International club near Boston. We have a stellar group of speakers and panelists.

The first keynote will be by Marlene Bessette, VP Strategy and Customer Loyalty, Xerox. “Your ideal customers aren’t just satisfied—they become evangelists for your company.” Marlene spoke at one of our First Wednesday Group roundtable meetings and she was a huge hit with her depth of knowledge and passion for the subject.

The second keynote will be by Tina Taylor, VP Global Customer Care, GE Fanuc
By using Net Promoter “willingness to recommend” scores, GE has developed a continuous improvement process for support.

Sign up for the retreat now – contact me for a $50 discount code per person.

Interesting factoids from some of the talks – from Sean O’Driscoll, former GM of Community Support at Microsoft, now on his own. One observation was that the search tool (e.g. Google) gets most of the credit for the content that you (or your customers) have created.

Another presentation was from the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormon Church). Interesting factoid – the average age of their online knowledge base volunteers is 70!

The Euro Cup is going on, and it is wonderful to watch different communities celebrate as they win.

I’m heading off in a few hours to Berlin via Zurich, for the first ever Consortium for Service Innovation/TAUS joint conference. I’ll be doing the keynote at the event, which will be held very close to Checkpoint Charlie. For those of you read spy novels (or history), you can see why this is going to be an interesting trip on a personal level as well.

After many months of hard work by 25 volunteers, Wednesday’s MITCIO Sloan Symposium was a huge success. The event was co-sponsored by the Center for Digital Business at MIT’s Sloan School; the Sloan Alumni Club of Boston and the Society for Information Management (SIM). I was part of the content panel team that helped panel captains with their panels and also was a panel captain for the CIO keynote panel. I also was a judge for the first ever MITCIO CIO of the Year Award for IT Innovation.

The CIO keynote panel comprised of Gerri Martin-Flickinger from Adobe Systems Incorporated, Molly ONeill from the EPA, Stuart McGuigan from Liberty Mutual Group and Andre V. Mendes from Special Olympics. The session was moderated by Erik Brynjolfsson, a noted professor from MIT’s Sloan School of Business.

Met a number of interesting people (organizers as well as vendors/attendees/CIOs/students and had some stimulating conversations on a variety of topics. Will probably help out again next year.