Customer Experience 2.0 – A core value, THE competitive edge.

Customer experience is a sum total of the products, people, and processes they come in contact with when they create a relationship with you and your company. We are faced with a fresh new year, a new president, and a new (and challenging) economy. How will that impact customer experience? Here are 4 Great Customer Experience Insights for 2009.

Insight #1: Without Customers We Don’t Have A Business. We Have A Hobby (Peppers and Rogers, Return on Customer). Customers are more and more adept at differentiating value and price, service and delivery, and other decision points to align with partners like you. More products are becoming commodities, customers are bombarded with marketing messages, and information is just a few keystrokes and web pages away. Everyone has to strive for the best customer experience regardless of the economic times. We all impact the experiences of all our customers.

Insight #2: The Main Thing Is To Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing. The Chinese term wei gee portrays the dual nature of a crisis; Danger being one element and Opportunity the other. Customers are being challenged right now, they’re cutting back, and you can either prepare for danger and ride it out or advance and seize the opportunities as they present themselves. Our collective Customer Experience will present more opportunities to delight our customers in these times. Front line sales people, customer service professionals, implementation teams, service repair technicians, accounting collections and payables, and all levels of management can choose to create great Customer Experience touch points…daily. The upside is adding customer and keeping the ones we have. The downside of not providing great Customer Experiences is the loss of customer trust, and eventually the loss of customers (see point #1)

Insight #3: The Time To Get Creative Is Now. As budgets shrink and purchasing departments take more control of the price/value proposition, you have to get creative in how you position your company in the minds and purchase requisitions of customers. By creative I mean nimble. Can we present an alternative solution to meet the customer’s needs? Can we listen more and talk less? Can we practice an increased degree of empathy in all of our customer’s departments? They are under pressure to perform and therefore, so are we. The more we can strengthen our value proposition, the greater chance we will get to solve our customer’s challenge.

Insight #4: The Way To Our Customer’s Heart Is Through Our Employees. When our employees are not engaged in the customer experience, our customers know; yes they are that smart. “While you can make some customers happy through brute force, you can not sustain great customer experience unless your employees are brought-in to what you’re doing and are aligned with the effort. If employees have low morale, then getting them to “wow” customers will be nearly impossible”. (CxP Law #4 – 6 Laws of Customer Experience). It is everyone’s responsibly and mission to help each other get grounded in why we are here, how we can create awesome customer experience, and then do it again and again. Walt Disney said “You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.”

People are getting more impatient. Google.com drives the demand for “I want it now.” An article mentioned a Gen-Y teenager who said the problem with Mc Donald’s is it’s just too slow. We are faced with both employees and customers who expect and often demand a great Customer Experience. Let’s give it to them; today, tomorrow, and everyday after that.