Two things have contributed to the shift to a customer economy: the way businesses interact with their customers and the way consumers interact with each other.
Businesses changing how they interact with customers
Companies have been distancing themselves from their customers for some time by removing employees from customer interactions. First they removed the face-to-face interaction by adding contact centers, and then removed human interaction by adding online functionality. This means that early warning system provided by body language is gone, replaced with expensive technology to scan for key words. These technologies often do not cover every interaction or provide the kind of detail that employees need to resolve issues.
Customer Experience Management brings employees back to the interaction by providing the details they need to understand why the customer feels the way they do about their experiences.
Consumers changing how they interact
Customers have always shared stories about their experiences. Until very recently, they only shared those stories with family and friends, because they couldn’t easily access anyone else. Now, one upset customer can post a negative story on an online forum, a blog or video sharing site, where it remains and continues to spread forever.
Manage the Shift
To manage this shift, companies need to recognize that customers’ expectations are set by others’ experiences. If a company wants to change those expectations, traditional advertising and PR won’t work. Instead, the company needs to deliver the experience they promise, know immediately when they have disappointed a customer, and be able to act quickly to neutralize the disappointment.
ResponseTek helps companies manage the shift to the customer economy by transforming the voice of the customer into actionable business intelligence.
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