SAS released its annual customer management survey results today. Over 150 senior executives from leading US corporations were polled about their customer experience practices. Results show that especially in these difficult times, having a focus on customer experience management and a strong customer orientation, is key to any company's success.
Highly interesting is that among poled companies who reported high customer-experience maturity, 81% reported outperforming their competition--that's a huge number if you think about it.
Especially in Web 2.0 world, where every good solution seems to be immediately followed by better ones, outperforming through a customer-centric differentiation is a must and should always be on your mind.
The results are now available by viewing an American Marketing Association Video Discussion “Multi-Channel Mayhem: Tapping the Customer Experience for Competitive Advantage”.
Ravit - thanks for this article. This seems to be a common point of discussion with companies that I speak with. Too often especially in the platform development space, companies have a tendency to add "features" to an platform in order to differentiate themselves from their competition instead of an increase in the "service" aspect of the platforms. If companies shift to a mindset of "doing more with less" consumers will continue to utilize the tools and platforms that they are already loyal too, while experiencing a lift in customer satisfaction, which adds to that loyalty, and helps companies stay the course during these tough economies. We saw this during the last tech bust and I am certain we will see that in the coming months.
Appreciate your perspectives. Looking forward to more.
Posted by: Christopher Smith | November 18, 2008 at 08:47 AM
Christopher--thank you for your thoughtful comment. The issue of featuritis has been coming back to the forefront in recent days as companies and VCs are trying to figure out what's in and what's out in this cost-focused economy. This morning at the Dow Jones conference, VCs advised not to focus on feature growth because it is not a viable differentiator. The way I see it, it's a no-margin war. I'm also hearing more and more companies and investors speaking of Customer Experience. Many don't really know what it means (still associating with CEM and metrics) but at least the term is starting to roll better on people's tongues. Companies will only succeed if they focus on building a compelling customer experience. I think we both agree that eyes don't equal customers, and without customers, a (b2c) company will have no business by the end of the year.
Appreciate the conversation!
Posted by: Ravit Lichtenberg | November 19, 2008 at 12:08 AM