ResponseTek has been providing customer experience management (CEM) software and solutions since 1999, but managing the customer experience matters more today than ever before.

Check out the following research findings and reports related to managing the customer experience in the 'new' economy:

• Bruce Temkin: Customer Experience Matters
  Eight Steps For CMOs In A Recession
  (2009)
  
  

• Customer Experience in a Down Economy
  (Forrester, 2008)
  
  

• Quality of Customer Service in a Multichannel World
  (Gartner, 2009)
  
  Seven Qualities a VP of Customer Experience Needs to Survive an Economic Downturn
  (Gartner, 2008)
  
  
  

Three factors have led to a massive shift from an information economy to the social, customer-focused economy: changes in how business interacts with consumers, changes in the way consumers interact with each other, and the global economic downturn.

Businesses changing how they interact with customers

Companies have been distancing themselves from their customers for some time, removing employees from customer interactions. Contact centers first removed face-to-face interactions, and then the web removed human interaction altogether.

While expediting transactions and delivery of value to the consumer, these changes have led to a loss of the critical early warning systems that tell us when a customer is unhappy – body language, conversations and true person-to-person negotiation have been replaced with passive technology, which have not typically provided companies the information needed to resolve customer issues.

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 other audiences.

Now, one upset customer can post a negative story on an online forum, a blog or video sharing site, where it becomes public domain, and attracts the attention of others. Companies recognize that customer expectations are now set by the experiences of others.

If a company wants to change their reputation, traditional advertising and PR won’t work. Instead, the company needs to deliver the customer experience they promise, know immediately when they have disappointed a customer, and be able to act quickly to neutralize the disappointment.

The economy is changing

It goes without saying that the economic downturn is having an effect on how companies and consumers are conducting business. Compounding fears of the financial stability of businesses, industries and entire economies is the fact that the change is constant, and the effects of these changes aren’t yet known.

Companies don’t know the full effect of these changes on their businesses, often because they have not established lines of communications with their customers, and lack analytical tools to predict revenue flow or customer retention and growth.

Customers don’t know whether the companies they do business with every day can be trusted with their money, because of the lack of transparency and accessibility that is still maintained by ‘old economy’ businesses.

Manage the Shift with CEM
Customer experience management(CEM) is a strategy that helps companies manage the shift to the new customer economy by connecting companies and their customers, and by transforming the voice of the customer into actionable business intelligence.