notes and views on crm, social media, and the human side of information technology

Customer Experiences: the old/new differentiator

FOLLOWING UP on my yesterday’s post, what level of customer service is optimal given the business model a company employs?

McDonald’s is abount a unified experience and a guaranteed sameness. Which is why they won’t greet me by name even if I put a goddamn name sticker on my shirt.

Upscale hotels are about personalized, luxurious experience. They’ll make sure you feel like their most valued customer all the time.

The common wisdom was, the more money you have, the more personalized a service you’re able to require.

But does that still ring true?

The internet has spoiled us: every website we bother registering with greets us, goes out of its way to serve just what we enjoy most, and - mostly - for free (you just have to suffer the adverts). And we spend a lot of time online, don’t we. So it’s only natural that we transfer our expectations, so richly fulfilled online, to the real world.

And what happens is, the real world is lacking that agility, that eagerness to please, that the online businesses strive for.

It will always be about the money (to satisfy the obvious objection) but just as we are now able to enjoy the style and personalization once reserved for the super-rich (as illustrated in The Substance of Style), we’re expecting to be treated as The Most Valued Customer, all the time. And who among you really cares about what figure dropped out of that Excel sheet that the marketing “gurus” employed by your bank, telco, supermarket got as your “Customer ROI”? Not me, definitely!

We are creatures driven by experiences, and - happily - the super-competitive markets are enabling us to demand them. So whatever your business model, I say providing a personalized and human customer experience is your Job #1 for days to come.

(inspired by The Most Important Rule by Seth Godin)

April 6, 2007 | Filed Under CRM 

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