And it’s happening on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and thousands of other social sites, retail shopping apps and blogs.  Impressions are being shaped more by what your customers read from their trusted network than what they see from your traditional media, direct mail and email campaigns.  So what can you do?

Well, for starters, you can make it easy for your customers to be a net promoter.   Provide an enriched customer experience.  So enriched, in fact, that your customers will tell their friends.   This means that your marketing messages need to be as personalized and relevant as your inviting in-store experience and your carefully selected merchandising mix.

This also means that the multi-channel shopping experience must integrate well from digital to mobile to in-store to post-purchase:

1. Make it easy for your customers to bring digital data into the store.
2. Make it easy to access loyalty data, rewards and coupons on their mobile devices.
3. Make it easy to find their size or preference in stock (that’s online *or* in-store).

Oh, and do not forget to make it easy for your customers to brag about their shopping experience to their friends!

How many Joe’s walk into their favorite retail establishment every day only to end up walking out empty handed only to receive an e-mail advertising the TV later that week? In an exceedingly difficult market environment it is critical for retailers to make the most of every opportunity. Joe does not really care about the retailer’s org structure…he just wants his TV today. Why didn’t the website prominently display that his local store had no inventory on the TV he placed in his shopping cart? Could an in-store kiosk or tablet have been used to avoid the long wait? How could the smart phone app suggest alternatives that provide similar features and pricing along with great customer reviews? In addition to equipping consumers with real-time information retailers need to build virtual analytic consoles with advanced visualizations to understand who is shopping their stores to create personalized experiences.

The technologies to avoid these issues and create opportunities to “win in the moment” are readily available. It is largely a matter of organizations making the customer experience central to their business processes. The business opportunity of Enterprise 3.0 is real and the ability to execute is well within reach. In fact, most of the heavy lifting can be done taking advantage of existing technologies without the need to “rip and replace” existing applications that would take years to deliver. There are certainly organizational challenges to be overcome along with architecture and technology integration issues but they pale in comparison to the opportunity to convert the Joe’s of the world into pleased customers who are all too happy to tell their friends about the Enterprise 3.0 experience that personalizes the interaction and leaves customers feeling like their wants and needs are well understood.