Get it Right or Pay the Price…

Marketing unattainable brand promises to try and entice customers in the door is not only a total waste of resources.-it can cause more long term damage via negative customer word of mouth than most businesses realise.

As customers we have been let down, disappointed, frustrated and annoyed too many times to put up with marketing that is not backed up and aligned with the customer experience according to marketing and customer experience expert Chris Bell, Managing Director of Customer Experiences www.customerexperiences.co.nz an organisation that specialises in brand and customer experience alignment.

It is clear that organisations are not coordinating these two important aspects of any business partly due to the lack of a strategic approach to customer experience development.

Bell estimates that less than five percent of New Zealand businesses have a clearly defined customer experience and even less have the expertise to develop a long-term customer experience strategy.

The result is money wasted on expensive marketing that is producing fewer results. Bell suggests that businesses take the time to define what it is they will deliver to customers by way of an experience and then align that action with their marketing strategy for maximum results.

Research has clearly shown that Customer recommendation is today’s most powerful form of advertising with 85 percent of New Zealanders acting on a recommendation from someone they know and trust.

Customers are unlikely to recommend a business that has, through unrealistic marketing, raised customer expectations so high that they have no possibility of ever meeting those expectations.

Bell has one piece of advice for organisations that are clearly out of alignment in these two areas - clearly define the experience that will deliver maximum value to customers and be absolutely sure the experience can be consistently delivered.

Chris Bell is the Managing Director of Customer Experiences a business committed to building successful businesses through the development of high quality customer experiences.

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