The Role of Customer Experience in a Down Market

Have we come to the realization that the US economy is at best rocky and possibly on a tough sled downward?

The storm is over our heads, the stock market is falling fast, the government is trying to bail us out (by sort of giving us our money back) so we will spend our way out of a recession. They are doing the things they can do to stem the tide. But we cannot wait for them to bail us from the storm.

When the enconomy goes down, most companies cut back on marketing, reduce staff and sit on their money to ride out the storm. In the last downturn, this strategy of "wait it out" left a lot of companies swept away in the storm ditch.

Losing Customers Now is a Bad Strategy

Accenture reported last month that globally, 53 percent of consumers have bailed on a brand due to a negative customer experience. This blog has a lot of these kinds of stories.

In a bad economy, the worst thing we can do is sit out the storm. We should have learned from 2002 that the companies that do best are the ones with a strategy to compete more aggressively.

Whatever you do, do not go into hibernation. You might end up in the ditches like a lot of companies did in the last economic downturn. Get on the Internet and read up on the stories that were published in the last economic trough and absorb the good lessons and the bad lessons. Watch which companies weathered the storm and came out stronger and which went into the storm ditch.

So what should we do now?

4 Ways to Compete for customers!

If 53 percent of customers are leaving us when we need them most, then it is reeeaaaaaally time to look at our customer experience strategies. Let's do innovative things that will re-position us as delivering the best, most perfect customer experience we can possibly deliver.

1. We all know by now that employees are the pathway to that customer experience. So this customer experience strategy must be carried out by the people now on your team. Reinforce your strategy, train the team, get everyone facing in the same direction -- on the customer experience.
2. Sharpen ... really sharpen your marketing, sales and customer service actions. This is not the time to spend extravagently (most of us are not like the government and cannot give our money back to customers). Nor should we have to. Instead, innovate a highly valued and differentiated experience (read my previous posting on the Domino's Big Fantastic Deal). And deliver that experience with consumate consistency.
3. Focus first on your current customers. Show these customers how you can make them more successful -- even if you don't sell them anything new. Turn them into advocates so they tell their friends and colleagues about you.
4. Then extend out into the marketplace and promote your unique, innovative, helpful, valued, consistently delivered customer experience.

Source – Dale Wolf, Cincom Systems