DAKAR, Senegal — As much of the world remains focused on the Islamic State and its horrific attacks in Paris, another radical band of extremists has, by one account, captured the infamous title of the world’s deadliest terrorist group: Boko Haram.
Boko Haram, the militant group that has tortured Nigeria and its neighbors for years, was responsible for 6,664 deaths last year, more than any other terrorist group in the world, including the Islamic State, which killed 6,073 people in 2014, according to a report released Wednesday tracking terrorist attacks globally.
The death toll in Nigeria mounted on Wednesday, with a bombing in Kano State in northern Nigeria, not even a full day after Boko Haram was suspected in an explosion that killed and injured dozens in another nearby region.
In Kano, the authorities said that two female suicide bombers detonated vests at a cellphone market at about 4 p.m., killing at least 12 people and wounding dozens. Witnesses and Red Cross officials said that as many as 50 or 60 people died, though the number could not be independently confirmed. Officials accused Boko Haram in the attacks.
In a statement Wednesday, President Muhammadu Buhari called for Nigerians to stay vigilant, saying that even his recently intensified military operation against Boko Haram could not prevent every attack.
“President Buhari reassures Nigerians that his administration is very much determined to wipe out Boko Haram in Nigeria and bring all perpetrators of these heinous crimes against humanity to justice,” the release said.
This week, Mr. Buhari accused the previous administration’s national security adviser, Sambo Dasuki, of pocketing more than $2 billion that had been allocated for warplanes, helicopters and other military gear to fight Boko Haram. Mr. Dasuki has denied the allegations.
Mr. Buhari has announced recent victories against Boko Haram, including seizing bomb-making materials and winning battles in the forest.
But still the bombings have come at a rapid clip in recent weeks, bringing death to a food market in Kano, areas of Niger and Cameroon and a village in Chad, prompting officials to call a state of emergency there.
Boko Haram has pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State, but it is unclear what support the group is giving Boko Haram beyond assisting with publicity.
Last year, the deaths attributed to Boko Haram alone increased by more than 300 percent, the report said.
The report found a drastic increase in terrorist attacks last year, with the majority occurring in three countries: Iraq, Syria and Nigeria, where other militant groups besides Boko Haram operate.
“In Nigeria, private citizens are overwhelmingly targeted, most often with firearms resulting in very high levels of deaths per attack,” the report said.
Security experts, regional authorities and Western military officials have credited Mr. Buhari’s renewed push against Boko Haram for scattering the group, which gained notoriety in the United States when it kidnapped scores of schoolgirls and seized entire towns in northern Nigeria.
They say the string of recent attacks on various public places is evidence that the group is grasping to gain real ground and is no longer as capable of holding territory. Still, attacks in crowded spots like schools and markets, long a staple of Boko Haram’s mayhem, can be extremely deadly.
This is the third year the economics and peace institute has released its Global Terrorism Index, a study of terrorist activity around the world. The index is based on data collected as part of a program run by the University of Maryland dedicated to the study of terrorism around the world.
The report estimated that $117 billion was spent worldwide to fight terrorism. It said that two countries, Cameroon and Ukraine, experienced no terrorism-related deaths in 2013 but that each had more than 500 deaths from terrorism the following year.
In Ukraine, the spike in deaths came largely from militants in the region who are suspected of shooting down a Malaysia Airlines plane, killing all on board. In Cameroon, the report said Boko Haram had expanded its reach into the country with bombings.
While Europe is on high alertagainst another murderous terrorist attack, it will be hard for Paris to look beyond the next 24 hours. But soon delegates start arriving in the French capital for preliminary meetings ahead of COP21, the United Nations climate change summit which will be launched on 30 November with all the grandeur attendant on a gathering of global leaders. There is a certain symmetry to the two events that goes beyond the nightmare task facing France’s overstretched security forces. As the UK foreign secretary Philip Hammond pointed out in an important speech in the US only days before the Paris attacks last Friday: “Unchecked climate change … could have catastrophic consequences – a rise in global temperatures … leading in turn to rising sea levels and huge movements of people fuelling conflict and instability.”
The world has learned from previous failures. The innovation of asking every country for its own intended nationally determined contributions in advance of COP21 is that they reduce the wriggle room, at least for the time being. Wednesday’sbig speech from the UK energy secretary Amber Rudd,setting a cut-off date of 2025 for coal-fired power stations, will underline that sense of commitment and should help to build some momentum ahead of the talks, even though it is only a small advance on the policies she inherited. It is also a necessary reaffirmation of the Conservatives’ pledge to green the electricity supply which had begun to seem questionable after its widely criticised decision to end subsidies to wind and solar power unexpectedly early.
Ms Rudd said she was resetting UK energy policy and if she didn’t quite do that, she did make a more or less coherent pattern from the fragments that have emerged since the election in May. It is a plan. Yet with its contradictions and conditional undertakings, it did not quite add up to a clear path through the so-called energy trilemma: the balance to be struck between security, sustainability and affordability. Take the commitment to phase out coal over the next 10 years: it came with the caveat that it would not happen unless there was a clear and reliable alternative. Given the continuing uncertainty over new nuclear (which, in the Rudd plan, is what stands between decarbonisation of electricity supply and the lights going off), that means new gas-fired power stations – less dirty than coal, but still a finite fossil fuel. The plan will also entail exploiting shale gas, which is so far entirely untested in the UK and already politically neuralgic. And if gas is to be the core of energy supply beyond 2030, when electricity is supposed to become carbon free, then serious money needs to go into developing carbon capture and storage. CCS merited just one mention in Ms Rudd’s speech.
As for the decision to phase out subsidies for renewables, it was defended as part of a necessary move towards making green energy competitive with other fuels, even though that is something nuclear power will not be for the foreseeable future. However, there was a little good news for renewables: there will be subsidy for new offshore wind, when it can compete with the cost of new nuclear. The bad news is that although off-shore generation costs have fallen by a fifth in two years, there is still a distance to travel.
Decarbonising power supply is proving hard enough. But it poses a lesser challenge than weaning the nation off its gas-fired heating, and luring it out of its diesel- and petrol-powered cars. That puts the greatest burden of reducing carbon emissions on electricity generation. The cheapest way to get there, the way that would make most difference to consumers and shrink their energy bills by the greatest amount, is to increase energy efficiency. Ms Rudd seems to have left that part of her plan in her pending tray.
Britain does have a positive message to deliver in Paris, and that can only be good news. But the world has not yet come up with a way of holding global warming below the critical 2C. The serious negotiation in Paris will be about monitoring and enforcing compliance and setting a formula to ratchet up commitments into the future. For the UK, the Rudd plan, heavy on gas and light on efficiency, will make the next step in carbon emission cuts harder than it needs to be.
Don’t think of the iPad Pro as a tablet, that would be my advice. Of course, it is a tablet, but by calling it that you allow yourself to dismiss it as a tool that’s useful for work. I’m writing this on the iPad Pro with Apple's Smart Keyboard cover, and it’s actually a far better experience than I’ve ever had before with a tablet.
I’ve tried using my iPad Mini for work, with quite limited success. The truth is, it’s just not the right size and while the keyboard I have for it is good, it’s still too small for lots of writing. Plus, there’s the lap issue. How do you balance something like that on your knees while commuting in the morning. The Pro solves this, and I tested it on my lap, and it worked just fine. It’s a little more wobbly than a laptop would be, but it’s still usable.
If you’re considering a Pro, then I think you really need to get the keyboard with it. It’s actually surprising how nice it is to type on, and throughout the day I’ve come back to it numerous times to do proper work, and it’s been absolutely perfect. There is a slight learning curve, but my speed isn’t down on what I’d get with any laptop. I’m still faster on my wonderful Corsair gaming keyboard though.
I guess a lot of people will wonder if they need the Apple Pencil. It’s a costly enough extra to give you pause for thought. Not everyone will find a use for it, and you certainly won’t suffer for not having one, but artists will adore it, and I’ve even enjoyed handwriting with it.
Of course, I’m less than 24 hours in to having an iPad Pro, so its little problems have yet to show themselves. One immediate issue is the lack of apps that have built-in support for Apple’s multitasking. I’m looking at you Google. Skype, Slack and of course Apple’s apps do though, and using the Pro with multitasking makes you wonder about the future of laptops. Sure, we’re not quite there yet, but video editing, photo manipulation and general office tasks are all possible on the iPad. Even if there is a need for performance hardware, I still have a feeling the iPad Pro could take yet another chunk out of an already wounded and bleeding PC laptop market.
And I do wonder about Apple’s Macbook too. The retina-display, low energy laptop that launched this year is amazing in its own right, but the iPad Pro offers a lot of the same, but in a much more flexible form factor. Time will tell, but 2016 is going to be a big year for the PC market.
I’ll have a proper review of the iPad Pro once I’ve spent a bit more time with it. Like many reviewers I’m actually going to use it in place of a laptop for a while and see how I get on. It should make for an interesting experience.
You don’t get to hear from Peter Woolcott all that much in public, even though he is a pivotal character in Australia’s international climate change negotiations.
The reason you don’t hear from him (and that perhaps you’ve never heard of him, full stop) is that as a civil servant working in the highly politicised and supercharged issue of climate change, public statements tend to come from politicians.
Requests for statements are routinely batted back to a ministerial office in Canberra, not necessarily because Woolcott doesn’t want to answer but because this is simply how it’s done.
Woolcott has, in his words, “spent years in the multilateral trenches” and knows that it can be “a slow-moving and frustrating business”.
Just two weeks before he heads to the major international talks in Paris, he delivered a rare and so-far-unreported speech where he set out in exhaustive detail what Australia wants from the meeting.
In an hour-long presentation to the Global Change Institute in Brisbane this week the career diplomat gave a fascinating insight into the changing world of the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCC) – the umbrella agreement under which all the UN climate deals operate.
He explained how the system of multilateral talks was “struggling to cope” with the expectations and demands of a rapidly changing world.
In Paris, he said Australia wanted a deal that would set the world on a pathway to keeping global warming below two degrees. The deal should not be seen as an end point, but as a “waypoint”.
In terms of a collective global problem, “issues do not get any bigger” than climate change, he said.
Left unchecked, it will magnify existing problems and increase pressure on resources including land, water, energy, food and fish stocks. It has the potential to erode development gains, undermine economic growth and compound human security challenges.
Last week’s terrorist attacks would, he said, “only strengthen the resolve” of the French government to come out of the talks with an ambitious deal. speculated that the success of the Paris agreement could boil down to the willingness of richer countries to commit to financing for developing countries. In exchange for this, developing nations could then sign the deal.
So here’s what Woolcott had to say about Paris; about multilateral international talks; about the UN; and about climate change.
It’s long, but think of it as a briefing for the Paris talks by the person representing the Australian government’s agenda who has been, and will be, in the room. I’ll be “outside the room” for the second week of the talks.
I’ve uploaded Woolcott’s entire talk onto Soundcloud (apologies for the scratchy audio at times) where you can also hear his thoughts on Australian government efforts to prevent the UN world heritage committee from placing the Great Barrier Reef on its “in-danger list”. Scroll to the bottom to hear it all.
Woolcott on shifting powers
Twenty years ago the US and Europe could often dictate the terms of the debate. If they wanted to push something through strongly enough, they could do so. Now it’s different and the game has changed. There are now no longer one or two hegemonic powers and power is shifting to coalitions.
Woolcott said coalitions such as Brics (China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Russia) “occupy critical positions”. Other emerging powers such as Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan and Nigeria were “similarly focused on occupying a place at the top table and preserving their political and economic freedom of movement.”
We are also dealing with a much more fluid ideological landscape. A significant number of these emerging powers want the west’s material progress but they do not want to sacrifice their own cultural identities and political traditions.
The west’s vision of modernity and human rights is under challenge. Nationalism, state sovereignty, state capitalism and religious identity are growing forces and are being used to strike at fundamental concepts such as freedom of expression and responsibility to protect.
Secondly, behind this shift in the power dynamics is the increasing pace of globalisation and the extraordinary wealth transfer from west to east.
Third, not only is there a shift in national power, but there is a shift in the very nature of power. As a result of new communications technologies exemplified by social media, power is moving to coalitions and networks that are able to effectively influence state actions, particularly in liberal democratic societies.
What characterises them is their ability for mass organisation, speed and multiple and diverse actions, and you see this very much in the environmental space. The strength of these networks whether they be civil society, sub-national entities or business groupings, will only grow and increasingly questions will arise as to how they should exercise this power and to who they are accountable.
These factors greatly complicate the decision-making and are putting significant stress on international governance, at a time when we need the system to work effectively.
Woolcott on responding to climate change
The policy response will require coordinated action in an unprecedented way across economic and ideological divides. The stakes are high and the multilateral institutional tools that are at our disposal are somewhat compromised.
Part of the problem is history. In the multilateral setting, we tend to rely on the outcomes of old battles where they be previously agreed language, or previously agreed processes or the ways of conducting themselves and they tend to dictate or try and dictate the future.
This is Ok if we are content with incremental progress, but we are not and we need to change the very basis in which we address climate change.
He said that the UNFCCC had “set up a divide between the developed world and the developing world” and that it was still struggling to shake this off.
Woolcott on what Australia wants in Paris
What Australia wants in Paris is a strong and effective legal agreement that is applicable to all countries and drives serious reductions in emissions while ensuring economic prosperity.
It has to be an agreement that reflects the real world and the way it has changed and continues to change.
We are however stuck with an outmoded convention that divides the world into the developed and developing country camps – annex 1 and non-annex 1 countries.
It assigns them very different obligations and responsibilities, all based on GDP levels from 1992. China, Singapore and Korea, for example, are all deemed developing countries for the purpose of climate action.
We have little chance of tackling climate change based on these divisions. Let me reinforce this point with a few statistics.
In 1992 only three non-annex 1 countries – or to put it simply developing countries – were among the 12 largest emitters. Today this has risen to seven.
Now non-annex 1 countries represent two-thirds of total emissions and this will be nearly three quarters of total emissions by 2030.
So not only is the engineering obsolete, the decision-making machinery is cumbersome. The 195 parties to the convention must make decisions by consensus.
While it is right that responses to global problems endorsed by most countries have a legitimacy that agreements negotiated amongst smaller groups lack, the reality in UNFCCC is that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed and decisions usually result in lowest common denominator outcomes.
So the UNFCCC reflects the microcosm of problems of the wider UN. We are between multilateral worlds. The old world dominated by the west can no longer dictate – nor finance alone – the solution.
The new world has not yet arrived and the emerging powers are reluctant to take on responsibilities which might compromise their freedom of manoeuvre and their economic developments.
Woolton on success in Paris
Success at Paris is not a given. As I said, change is hard.
There is a strong sense that the world’s largest two emitters are working collaboratively to an agreement in Paris although they have slightly different visions as to what that agreement will look like.
These are all critical differences to what unfolded in Copenhagen. There are others, in particular what is the utilisation of a clever strategy of having states announce their intended nationally determined contributions – that is their post-2020 emissions targets – before Paris. To date 161 countries have announced post-2020 targets, which include all of the G20 countries and covers over 90% of global emissions. This is quite a remarkable statistic.
While they vary in ambition and detail, it is an extraordinary number and will go higher before we reach Paris.
The deal in Paris will be built around these nationally determined targets. I should be clear here. Paris is about negotiating the agreement text. It is not about negotiating the targets.
But in setting targets in this bottom-up way we have recognised the limits of multilateralism in addressing climate change.
We have recognised that the top-down multilateralism – the old way of doing it which imposes emissions targets on countries – doesn’t work and that if we are to ensure a global, effective and durable solution then we need to set up a system whereby it might be self-determined, is subject to public and peer pressure, it is subject to review and transparency and cognisant of the science.
We have also learned that a successful climate deal needs participation before ambition. It needs all countries on the same footing for taking action before we ramp up that action. It would be pointless to have a deal on paper if the US or China won’t sign up to it.
So the agreement in Paris will be framed by what countries can accept given their national circumstances. For example we expect that only the obligation to have a target, not the target itself, will be legally binding – an approach that gets around the US difficulties of treaty verification.
So how will Paris work out? It is hard to predict, but my sense is that the real danger is not that there will be no agreement but that it will be a minimalist agreement – that Paris will tie a neat bow around the INDCS and that much of what we want in terms of transparency, accountability, durability and review may be lost.
The minister at a negotiating level will be working hard to avoid this and for an ambitious and durable agreement.
Within the UNFCC Australia has developed significant multilateral muscle. We are effective operators and play the honest broker well, especially from our role as chair of the umbrella group – the negotiating group that includes the US, Japan, Russia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway.
The outcome on how emissions targets are captured in the Paris agreement will be due in no small part to the Australia’s 2009 idea … of creating a schedule for commitments. We including the French are also engaged in seeking to manage expectations in a realistic way.
Let me repeat, Paris will not put us on track to keep global warming below two degrees. That should not lead to a Copenhagen moment with headlines the morning after saying we have failed. Paris is a waypoint, not the final destination in our efforts to tackle climate change.
What is different about Paris compared to our past efforts is that we are building a wider, silver buckshot approach which better harnesses national, bilateral and non-government efforts and builds into the agreement a dynamic and durable process that puts us all on the same floor and allows us to work within the two-degree goal.
The Paris agreement must reflect and build on the real world action that has already moved well passed old political divisions so rampant in the United Nations and establish partnerships for the future. It is a huge test for the system.
Woolton on beating 2C
The international community is guided by the science and is seeking to limit the rise in global temperatures to below two degrees Celsius.
Now there is no expectation that Paris will show that we are on track to meet that two-degree goal … But what we want the agreement to do is to set out an agreement to build global action over time which has all countries similarly engaged and provides us with a pathway to stand the two-degree goal.
Woolcott on what should be in the Paris deal
Australia has been working for three things in the agreement.
First, to seek that all countries, especially major economies, commit to mitigation efforts that are nationally determined but also meet minimum-quality criteria for mitigation.
Secondly, to ensure accountability and transparency in how states are meeting their commitments. We need this in order to judge how we are tracking collectively against the below-two degree goal, and to see whether our neighbours, trade partners and competitors are doing what they say.
This transparency will build confidence which in turn will build greater ambition.
And thirdly a durable process that will allow us to build action over time to keep within a two-degree guardrail through a regular periodic process that prompts states to revisit and update their national mitigation efforts through five-year cycles.
Developing countries have argued that this agreement must give legal status to adaptation. We understand these concerns and have sought to be constructive in addressing this. The Paris outcome should encourage the mainstreaming of adaptation and promote the sharing of best practice. We need to assist the most vulnerable to manage and adapt to the economic and security implications of climate change and we need to build disaster-response capacities and strengthen economic and governance resilience within countries.
Woolcott on Pacific islands and Australia
For the small island states, particularly in the Pacific, climate change is an existential challenge.
Our development program in the Pacific is focused on climate resilience and building in disaster-response capacities. Despite the occasional heightened rhetoric from the South Pacific, at the practical level we work closely with them in pursuit of an ambitious Paris agreement.
We also know that Australia needs to prioritise resistance to climate impacts nationally and through international partnerships.
We will produce a national climate resilience and adaptation strategy which Minister Hunt will release at Paris.
Woolcott on Paris sticking points
There are many contentious issues still to be resolved – things like loss and damage, legal form, transparency and accounting, cycles of compliance, review and long-term goals – but the two biggest issues are finance and differentiation.
These are inextricably linked. Ultimately it may well come down to the ask by the developing world in relation to climate finance in order to secure their participation in a common and legally binding agreement to tackle climate change.
Woolcott said there had already been good progress towards a commitment made in Copenhagen to make US$100bn a year available to poorer countries by 2020.
The amounts required in the future are enormous both for adaptation and for a low emissions future. A recent Bloomberg energy report has stated that up until 2040 US$12.2tn will be required for power generation and some 78% of this to the developing world. We are dealing with vast sums of money.
Much of this finance will have to come from the private sector. And will also require an expanding country donor base.
Woolcott on the role of civil society groups and business
Civil society has always played a highly constructive role and will continue to do so. They might be styled as observers but they are in fact often participants and not only pressure governments but are often part of developing countries’ negotiating teams.
What is changing dramatically now is the role of business and industry. The private sector and innovation are going to be critical if we are going to tackle climate change. They have viewed the UNFCCC as irrelevant at best ….
One of the things that has changed is that the national determination of targets has created the necessary domestic conversations with stakeholders.
Australia has seen commitments from a host of major companies – the ANZ, the National Bank, BHP Billiton and AGL – in Paris there will be a series of themed action days and non-government meetings involving business, industry, NGOs, cities and other sub-state actors.
The aim is to create a link between the on-ground action by these organisations with the political leadership that multilateral processes provide, as well as governance. The French have been exceptional in driving this change in approach which recognises the private sectors crucial roles in tackling climate change.
This more expansive approach to engendering climate action beyond just states gets around a core criticism of multilateralism – that once institutional solution is imposed, it cauterises the need to think about the problem any more.
The Paris action days will seek to turn this criticism on its head by using an institutional process to think more deeply and widely about how to act on climate change.
While it is also changing the relationship between civil society and the corporate sector – and this is a very interesting development – there is an increasing understanding that civil society and corporate Australia do not need to be on opposing sides of the divide and they need to work constructively together.
In this context I refer to the statement of principles by the Australian Climate Roundtable which really is an impressive illustration of this collaboration.
These groups have real and growing power in the multilateral system and with power comes both responsibility and accountability.
Most Americans want the U.S. to stop letting in Syrian refugees amid fears of terrorist infiltrations after the Paris attacks, siding with Republican presidential candidates, governors, and lawmakers who want to freeze the Obama administration’s resettlement program.
The findings are part of a Bloomberg Politics national poll released Wednesday that also shows the nation divided on whether to send U.S. troops to Iraq and Syria to fight the Islamic State, an idea President Barack Obama opposes, and whether the U.S. government is doing enough to protect the homeland from a comparable attack.
Fifty-three percent of U.S. adults in the survey, conducted in the days immediately following the attacks, say the nation should not continue a program to resettle up to 10,000 Syrian refugees. Just 28 percent would keep the program with the screening process as it now exists, while 11 percent said they would favor a limited program to accept only Syrian Christians while excluding Muslims, a proposal Obama has dismissed as “shameful” and un-American.
More broadly, terrorism and the Islamic State group surged to the top of Americans’ concerns immediately following the deadly attacks, even as Republicans and Democrats remain divided over how best to address threats. The percentage of those rating terrorism or the Islamic State as top concerns has nearly doubled since the poll last was taken in September. At the same time, those who think the U.S. is on the right track fell to 23 percent, the lowest rating in more than three years. Obama’s disapproval rating rose to 51 percent, up 4 percentage points since September.
These trends may offer momentum to the Republican leaders of Congress as they begin hearings and consider threatening a government shutdown over Obama’s Syria policies, even as 64 percent of Americans say Islam is an inherently peaceful religion.
Terror in general, and specifically ISIS, the group that claimed responsibility for last week’s attacks, are cited by a combined 35 percent of Americans as the top issue in the survey conducted Nov. 15-17. That’s about the same as concerns about jobs, immigration, health care and the federal deficit combined. ISIS alone is the top issue for 21 percent of Americans, up from 11 percent in September. Terrorism is the top issue for 14 percent, up from 7 percent two months ago.
Despite ongoing tensions between the U.S. and Russia, 53 percent of Americans favor a U.S.-Russia military coalition to fight Islamic terrorism.
That finding is a reflection of the “any-friend-in-a-storm” psychology, said J. Ann Selzer, who conducted the poll. “Vladmir Putin is not a popular personality in this country,” she said of the Russian leader. “However, we're facing a common threat. Here's an opportunity to align. both Republicans and Democrats seem to say, 'Let's go.'”
There is no consensus about whether to send U.S. troops to Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS, with 44 percent for the idea and 45 percent against it, or whether the U.S. has done enough to protect the homeland from a Paris-style attack.
Differences break sharply along partisan lines; 64 percent of Republicans support sending U.S. troops, and 59 percent of Democrats oppose the idea, while Democrats are nearly twice as confident as Republicans that the U.S. is doing enough to protect Americans at home. On the refugee question, only 12 percent of Republicans want to keep the current program compared with 46 percent of Democrats.
While majorities in both parties agree that Islam is inherently a peaceful religion, evangelicals are split, with 46 saying Islam is inherently violent. On the other side, 45 percent of evangelicals call Islam an inherently peaceful religion with some adherents who twist its teachings to justify violence.
The national poll of 1,002 adults was conducted Nov. 15-17 for Bloomberg Politics by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa. It includes a smaller sample of 628 adults who were asked questions about the Paris attacks on Nov. 16 and 17. The overall sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The smaller sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
The most successful weapon to fight customer attrition is creating a personalized customer experience that is unique to your business and the individual customer. According to Accenture, the “Switching Economy” is up 29 percent since 2010 as companies struggle to keep up with the non-stop customer. Does the loyal customer still exist? The answer is yes. Companies with a customer centric culture coupled with a customer experience strategy can create loyalty. Loyalty in turn advances a higher percentage of repeat customers.
The Customer Experience trends for 2016 are:
1 – Self-Serve Help Will Be The First Choice
Consumers choose to find answers to their questions using an assortment of self-serve options. For 2016, companies should ensure their FAQ’s are completely up-to-date, featured prominently on their website and listed as a menu option on the IVR. Customer service associates are primarily answering questions based on data provided in a company reference guide; sharing the same information with consumers will help them find answers faster.
2 – Reliance on Community Forums
Companies and consumers are relying on community forums to find fixes. Super users frequently have more experience and insight than agents on the nuances of specific products and services. Companies have come to embrace third party experts as an expansion of their service offerings and in 2016 customers will rely on community forums more than ever. These forums will help support the trend towards self-serve.
3 – Consumers Find Social Media Posts Get Speedy Responses
Consumers have learned their issues are resolved almost instantaneously when they post complaints on social media. Why should consumers take the time to send an email voicing their frustrations when a response may take a week to receive? The good news for the consumer; they have the company’s attention. The bad news is the world now has a record of a quality defect or poor service delivery.
4 – Multi-Channel Servicing Will Continue To Increase
The 80’s were a simpler time with two primary channels of communication: face-to-face and phone. Now, companies must respond to and keep track of email, chat, text, apps, etc. Consumers are not only using multi-channels to communicate, they are vaulting from one to the other making it difficult, almost impossible, to monitor and serve consumers. It’s an especially laborious when company budgets remain tight and the cost for technology increases exponentially. However, technology now exists to get a snapshot of a customer’s channel history and companies must invest in order to avoid customer frustration. Customers do not like to repeatedly explain their issue and recount a chain of events.
5 – Predictive and Personalized Technology Is Required For A Good Customer Experience
Technology to enhance the customer experience is not sufficient unless it is predictive and personalized. Consumers are pleased when they call a company for an order status and the company’s systems recognize who is calling and can anticipate their inquiry. However, erase the mindset that using technology to force self-serve is a positive outcome. Employing technology to make the customer experience easier and faster will become the new norm. Smart technology saves time and enhances the journey.
7- Wearable Technology is Not Just Costume Jewelry
Wearable technology will allow retailers to provide a level of service specific to individual consumers. While there are tremendous privacy concerns, consumers will eventually regard this technology as must have and not an invasion. Wearables will also allow a company to recognize loyal customers and reward them with incentives based on their buying preferences, gender or age. Emotions can be detected through bio chemical feedback. How a company responds using the data will determine if there is a positive impact on the relationship between the customer and the brand.
8- Video Chat For Pre-Sales Support Will Increase
While the use of chat was one of the major trends for 2015, video chat, especially for pre-sales support, will increase. A picture is worth a 1000 words. When video was first developed, its primary purpose was to help create a more personalized experience. Now, videos of common fixes or cool features will not only provide a better customer experience but increase sales by higher close ratios.
9 – Apps for All
More companies will invest in customized apps for their business. The app will make it easier to track consumer purchases and channel activity. The app will also be used to promote new product offerings or incentives to loyal consumers. As reported by Brett Relander in his Marketing Trends for 2016, he highlights Krispy Kreme and their Red Light App notifying customers where hot donuts right out of the oven are located. Companies will have to keep the information up to date and fresh, incorporating innovative and engaging features to keep savvy customers interested.
10- Even Faster is the Latest Innovation in Customer Response
Now Walmart is experimenting with drones. What would Sam Walton think? We live in the age of the instant economy where speed is a differentiator. However, consumers will no longer just rate the company based on product delivery turnaround time but want to do business with companies who also have speedy turnaround time to resolve issues and answer questions. Answering emails 24 hours later is literally yesterday’s news.
11 – Incorporating Social Responsibility is Part of the New Norm Business Model
Millennials lead the generation pack with their desire to buy from companies who are socially responsible. TOMS sells shoes and their mission is “One for one, a belief that getting and giving can be one.” They walk the talk by donating one shoe for every shoe that’s purchased. They call their loyal customers fans and encourage them to incorporate TOMS into their worlds. The business model core is giving. They don’t have their corporate philanthropy in the back office. It’s front and center.
12 – Protecting Customer Information is Paramount
Consumers expect their data to be secure. Companies who fail to protect consumer data have lost significant revenue in the short term and loyalty long term. It’s not only frightening for consumer information to be comprised, it’s a hassle to obtain replacement cards and change automatic recurring charges. Some large U.S. retailers are stepping up efforts to use personal identification numbers or PINS and new credit cards are embedded with computer chips to reduce counterfeit card fraud. But the banks are resisting change and don’t want to invest in the new technology. More than 80 countries around the world use chip technology but the U.S is lagging behind. Less than one percent of credit cards issued in the U.S. have chips.
13- The Entire Household Is Included In The Customer Service Family
Verizon Wireless, Amazon Prime and Netflix understand the value of marketing to the entire household and are building data based on the individual members of their Family Plans. The model provides seamless service for everyone involved and makes it easy to hand the baton from one generation to the next. Marketing to households is now; extending customer service to family members based on their unique preferences will be the norm.
14 – Customers Demand an Authentic Response
Companies have finally learned that social media is just another channel of consumer communication. When social media gained its foothold, companies were in semi-panic mode and hired experts to monitor and respond to posts. Fast forward, companies are taking back responsibility to respond to their consumers and employing their own agents. Consumers are not looking for “corporate speak” but friendly and personal dialogs. Representatives are being encouraged to evaluate the characteristics of posts and respond in the same tone and messaging.
15 – The Leveraging of Human Emotions
There are new technologies emerging everyday. But keep in mind that customers are people first and customers second. Perhaps now more than ever, it is vital to listen to a customer and understand his or her underlying emotion, being tuned in not only to words but what is behind them. No one walks into a store, clicks on a site or calls a contact center unless they are “hoping” for something. Yes, everyone wants a pilot to be experienced and technically competent to fly the plane but when he or she welcomes passengers, assures that the flight will be smooth and on time, the stage is set for a good experience. People feel comfortable, relaxed and hopeful for a good flight. Extend that analogy to the marketplace. Technology will always be in flux, but emotions remain a constant. Those companies that can incorporate the human component into their service design will be more successful.
16 – The New Era of The Endangered Customer
The second decade of the 21st century is witnessing a convergence of forces moving customer loyalty to the edge of extinction. There has never been more competition. Customers are empowered by increasing control over the retail process, as the digital, global marketplace delivers ever greater choice and saves them time, money, and hassle. Consumers are enticed by third-party resellers like Amazon and Google. Start-ups such as Uber did not exist before 2009 and the company is now worth over $50 billion. The smart phone provides our communication and entertainment and is the vehicle for competitive marketers to reach out and touch your customers anytime, anyplace. The challenge for companies and brands across all service categories and channels today, from ecommerce, contact centers and brick-and-mortar, is to engender loyalty – but the loyal customer is an endangered species.
It’s almost Turkey time, the Christmas season, and beginning of a new year. Have your teams huddle around the white boards and brainstorm about how prepared they are for the latest trends. Creating the quintessential customer experience is the differentiator between your company and your competitor. Remember that understanding how the customer feels is just as important as what they are saying.
The anti-bullying emojis, which were developed in collaboration with anti-bullying ambassador Monica Lewinsky, will appear on Snapchat as geofilter photo overlays.
The Vodafone Foundation, meanwhile, has also pledged to donate £1 per retweet or like of the #BeStrong emojis hashtag on Twitter and Facebook.
Vodafone’s head of consumer policy Lisa Felton told Marketing Week: “Around 84% of our UK instant messaging traffic comes from Snapchat – that’s more than WhatsApp and iMessage combined – so we this as a real opportunity to spread a positive social message to teenagers.”
She says “it is only a matter of time” until Vodafone rolls out unique emojis onto Twitter and Facebook as well.
Having a strong social message
Over recent years, Vodafone UK has aimed to spread awareness of the dangers around teenagers having access to smartphones.
It distributes 3.5 million copies of its Digital Parenting magazine to schools and government bodies while its parent guardian app, which gives parents the ability to protect children from adult content on their mobile phones, has been download 800,00 times and is available in 23 markets.
Felton believes that more social media brands must take responsibility and be held accountable if online bullying is to end.
“To a certain extent we have less ability to help out as we’re not providing the social media platforms and they have their own reporting mechanisms,” she adds. “But both mature and younger social media companies need to take responsibility more seriously.
She believes brands can use a platform such as Snapchat for more than just advertising. “Snapchat is the most popular platform among teens in the UK so there is a great opportunity for brands to spread positive messages.”
