San Francisco Seminar 2008
Day 3
Host and industry partners: Adobe Scene7, Forrester Research, 24/7 Customer, Seagate Technology
Introduction and context
This day represented a clear shift in the seminar – from product and technology focus to user experience and customer value.
Through presentations from Adobe Scene7, Forrester Research, and 24/7 Customer, participants saw how digital experiences, data-driven analytics, and global service processes are connected into one holistic value chain.
The term Customer Experience Management (CEM) became a buzzword. While Adobe demonstrated how visual experience creates engagement, Forrester and 24/7 presented how companies can build long-term relationships through effective organization, quality, and insight into the customer journey.
The seminar day also revealed a dawning realization:
Innovation doesn't just happen in products, but in the way companies organize themselves around the customer.
Program overview
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Day 3 – April 2, 2008
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Adobe Scene7 – Rich Media and e-commerce in a Web 2.0 world
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comScore / EMC² – The Multichannel Consumer
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Forrester Research – Best Practices in BPO (Business Process Outsourcing)
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24/7 Customer – Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM)
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Case presentations:
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Finance (Citibank, MBNA)
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Technology (NCR, Seagate)
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Healthcare, logistics, insurance, retail
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Main academic topics
Web 2.0 and the new customer experience
Mary Meeker's analysis (Morgan Stanley, Web 2.0 – The State of the Internet) described a new era in which content, sharing and personalization are changing how people use the web.
Adobe Scene7 took this down to a practical level and showed how interactive visual solutions – 360° product images, zoom, video and configuration – increased both conversion and average order value.
A key message was:
“Rich media isn't just decoration – it's communication.”
Multichannel and customer behavior
Multichannel and customer behavior comScore and EMC² showed how the customer journey flows seamlessly between online and in-store. 70% of those who shop in-store have done their research online first. This gave rise to the term click-to-brick – the digital impact on brick-and-mortar sales.
Outsourcing and global value chain
Forrester Research (John McCarthy and Scott Rousseau) pointed out that BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) has moved from cost reduction to value creation. The most successful businesses are those that delegate routine processes but retain ownership of the customer experience.
Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM)
24/7 Customer presented its concept for holistic management of the customer journey – from sales and onboarding to support, loyalty and repeat purchases. This was supported by a set of cases that showed how outsourcing actually increased customer satisfaction and reduced costs at the same time.
Case studies
Citibank and MBNA (telesales and finance)
24/7 Customer handled both credit card and insurance processes for major global banks.
By combining soft skills training and open sales dialogues, the sales rate increased by over 20%, while the cost per customer was reduced by 30%.
NCR (technology and support)
24/7 took over technical support for global supplier NCR, with results such as:
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40% cost reduction
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Increased customer satisfaction (CSAT) from 86% to 90%
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Reduction in average response time from 55 to 35 seconds
This was highlighted as an example of “smart outsourcing” where quality increases in parallel with efficiency improvements.
European car dealership chain (UK)
By moving customer dialogue and follow-up to 24/7's platforms, the chain achieved 35% cost savings and 50% faster response time.
Seagate Technology
Alan W. Clark, Senior Director at Seagate, presented how the company outsourced its global warranty system to 24/7 Customer.
After three months, the results were:
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Abandonment rate below 5%
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60,000 calls handled
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Cost reduction of 40%
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Complaints reduced from hundreds to two per month
Clark summarized the experience thus:
"The challenge is not outsourcing – it's learning how to manage success across continents."
Reflections and discussion:
The discussions that day were about the balance between proximity and efficiency. Several of the participants pointed out that outsourcing can lead to distance between customer and company – but also free up time for innovation and strategic work. It became clear that customer experience is a chain of touchpoints, not one department.
Digital technology enables personalization, but the value lies in the interaction between people and systems.
International perspectives
Indian players such as 24/7 Customer and Infosys illustrated how knowledge-intensive services had become a new export industry. While many Western companies saw outsourcing as a cost-cutting project, Indian suppliers showed that the value lies in learning, process and quality.
Forrester described India as “the world's innovation lab for process improvement”.
This also marks the start of a new economic era – where customer data and digital flow became as important as the production of goods.
What did we take home with us?
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A deeper understanding of the customer journey as a value chain – from communication to lifecycle.
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Insight into how Web 2.0 and outsourcing can work together to enhance both customer experience and profitability.
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Proof that customer-centric innovation can be organized globally.
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Inspiration from companies like Adobe and Seagate that combine technology, insight, and leadership.
Relevance today
Much of what was presented in 2008 points directly to today's reality:
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Adobe Scene7 is now integrated into Adobe Experience Cloud.
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24/7 Customer later became part of [24]7.ai, which uses artificial intelligence for predictive customer service.
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Web 2.0's interactivity is the precursor to today's social media and AI-driven personalization.
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The seminar day thus appears as a precursor to the digital customer revolution we see today in both the private and public sectors.
Peder Inge Furseth
Peder Inge Furseth was a central academic driving force behind the San Francisco seminars and helped make the meeting with Silicon Valley relevant for Norwegian and European businesses. Through his role as professor at BI and as academic director of the program, he helped the participants put the lectures into a larger context – where technology, innovation, business development and people had to be seen in context.
In San Francisco, participants met entrepreneurs, researchers, technology leaders and investors from some of the world's most innovative environments. Furseth's strength was his ability to connect these experiences to practical challenges and opportunities in Norwegian businesses. He helped translate Silicon Valley's ideas and working methods into a Nordic context where collaboration, trust and long-term value creation are strong.
Throughout the entire seminar series, he was an important bridge builder between research, business and technology. For many participants, he therefore became more than a professional leader – he also became a mentor who inspired new thinking about innovation, digitalization and commercialization.
Read more about Peder Inge Furseth here
From studies and seminars to today's professional universe
The studies, seminars and field trips documented on this page are part of the knowledge base behind The Invisible Capital. Topics such as customers, technology, innovation, digitalization and value creation have followed developments over several decades – but the disciplines have also continued to develop.
At The Invisible Capital, we are therefore continuing to work on these questions in our own subject series. Here, we connect previous theory, research and experiences with newer knowledge, new technologies and today's challenges for people and businesses.
Innovation
Innovation is not just about new ideas. Value is created when knowledge, technology and ideas are developed into products, services, processes, organizational forms and business models that are actually used. The series on innovation goes from Schumpeter to modern innovation research and covers, among other things, incremental, radical, disruptive, open and user-driven innovation.
→ Explore the Innovation Series
The customer
The customer is not just the recipient of what the business produces. In a competitive market, the customer is a crucial determinant of whether the business actually succeeds in creating value. The series about the customer goes deeper into customer orientation, customer insight, customer experience, satisfaction, loyalty, trust and the encounter between people.
→ Read the customer series
Value creation
What does it really mean to create value – and who creates it? The series on value creation moves from economic theory and key researchers to a broader understanding of how people, expertise, institutions, businesses and the public sector contribute to value creation.
→ Read the series on value creation
Digitization
Digitalization has evolved from stand-alone technologies to a fundamental part of how businesses work and create value. The Digitalization from A–Z series follows developments through internet, web, e-commerce, search, UX, social, mobile, omnichannel, cloud, data, platforms and digital transformation – up to today’s AI First developments.
→ Read the series Digitization from A–Z
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence represents the next chapter in digital evolution. In our own AI universe, we investigate how artificial intelligence works, how AI finds and uses information, how it evaluates sources and websites, and what the development can mean for people, businesses, and value creation.
→ Go to the articles about artificial intelligence
Recommended literature
Outside In
Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine from Forrester Research explain how businesses can create competitive advantage through customer experience and customer centricity. The book shows how organizations must be built around customer needs, expectations, and experiences to succeed in a digital and increasingly competitive economy.
