Adopt a Customer Focus or Pay the Price

Media release

Adopt a Customer Focus or Pay the Price…….

Succeeding in business is not rocket science: focus on the customers and deliver a quality experience that exceeds their expectations. They will respond with repeat business, greater loyalty and powerful recommendations.

We seem to be very good at is talking the talk with our fancy marketing taglines. However, customers have heard it all before, too many unfulfilled promises. Its time to start walking the talk

The simple fact is that businesses that don’t commit to customer relationships do not keep customers. In today’s highly competitive market it’s not about the customer being loyalty to the business it’s the other way around.

Business is not lacking intention or initiative. I have seen many customer related “campaigns and “programs” They run for short periods but are never embraced as a full operational strategy. I see the slogans on memos, computer screens, tee shirts, office walls, lunchroom walls, brochures and advertising, my conclusion is that intentions and initiatives are plenty, but sustainable commitment is rare.

So, the question is –why should it be so difficult to pull off something that is in principle, so simple? Why is it that so many companies fail in what should be their number one task, gaining and retaining customers?

For a customer-focused strategy to be effective you must first gain total commitment, it must be implemented for the long term and must be accompanied by the required changes in leadership style, company culture, systems and people to consistently deliver on the customer’s expectations. The customer is judging you by what you do, not what you say.

Experiences are the sum of all the value provided to customers by the company. Every way that a company touches the customer contributes to the total experience, and hence the total value of the company’s product and services.

If the number one task of any organisation is to attract and retain customers, then the quality of the customer experience delivered to each and every customer is the 21st century strategy to achieve that.
Great experiences will make a major financial impact on both referrals and additional business. Bad experiences will lead to a negative financial impact, both in terms of lost business and damaged reputations.

Failing to understand the emotional aspect of the experience is like failing to understand customers. A purely logical customer will shop for the lowest price every time and will demonstrate very little loyalty. The cost of doing business with these customers will be high, because each time a business will have to acquire them again through expensive incentives.

Business has a choice and that choice has not changed. The choice is this Continue to pay lip service to the importance of your people and customers to the business and suffer the increasing consequences, or Adopt a total customer focused approach to your business based on the quality of the experiences you consistently deliver.

For those businesses that would like to adopt a greater focus on their customer experience as a way of differentiating themselves from competitors Customer Experiences has just launched a unique free customer experience development guide as well as a free 30 minute consultation to ask questions and determine if a business is ready to capitalize on this opportunity. www.customerexperiences.co.nz
Chris Bell will be speaking and co-chairing this years national Customer Experience conference http://www.conferenz.co.nz/conferences/new-zealand-customer-conference

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