Customer Experience Management - Hedging against the Uncertain Future

Posted on | February 18, 2008 |

by Rick Graves

When budgets are tight, your customer rules more than ever… Whether this customer is internal to your organization, a B2B supplier, or a B2C end-user of your product or service, each dollar spent will be scrutinized and balanced more than ever, and how you handle these relationships becomes crucial to your success as a marketer.

In a tough economy Customer Experience Management and Design is your key to success. When using CEM design and training, here are a few essentials:

1. Today’s environment dictates working across silos to achieve the maximum customer impact and business efficiencies. Sales, Marketing, R&D, Logistics, Support, and Partners typically work independently. Just as important, they’re measured that way. Your customers can see this disconnect, so working together to design and deliver an integrated experience with “one voice” to the customer is crucial.

2. Customers increasingly view everything as a commodity. More and more of their purchase decisions and loyalty are driven by competitive differences. What makes an offering unique in a competitive environment is a decisive factor. These experiences should be identified and designed with this goal in mind, and delivered throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

3. Build a system that insures that a customer-centric view is embedded in your culture and is repeatable. Just as Quality disciplines are a natural thought process, how to Sell, Market, Design, and Support with the customer in mind is critical. This benefits the customer, and just as important, yields remarkable business efficiencies.

4. Make sure customer loyalty and key business metrics are aligned and correlate. Increasing customer loyalty will drive market share and revenue growth. Linking customer experience solutions to your business processes will provide focus, key resource commitment, and accelerated delivery.

5. When it comes to customer experience, don’t try to “boil the ocean.” Choose the experiences that are most important to your customers, and deliver them in an exceptional manner. This may require alignment at the highest levels, but will set the tone for execution and meeting customer commitments throughout the organization.

Rick Graves is Director of the Consumer Experience Management Practice at Corebrand - an independent, 25 year-old global brand strategy and integrated communications firm specializing in helping companies measure, understand, craft and express their corporate brands.

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