Are you worrying about Economic Crisis? Focus on Customer Experience.

Companies do not want to spend EXTRA during economic downturn. Who cares for customer experience during economic crisis ? General mood is negative, companies are struggling to survive, maintain sales & margins ,  lay off is imminent , big campaigns are put on hold, no new investments. Mood is sombre. 

To change the mood of every stake holders this is the right time to focus on customer experience initiative. When else you would focus on this? 

Good times are booming times , hence no time and need to focus on Customer Experience (CE) initiatives. Sales are anyway growing. Everybody is growing, expanding capacity  & happy. 

This is the time when you not only can retain your existing customers, make them spend same or more, get new customers , get new referrals. Yes in down time people are spending less therefore it is all the more important that you continue have your market share. That will only happen if and only if your enterprise is preferred by customers to deal with. Customers will remember how there were treated in bad times. 

Companies not focusing on CE will lose some so new customers are floating to be captured by better customer experience. Word of Mouth (WOM) & referral business is at all time high in bad times as people want to be doubly sure where they wish to spend.  

Most Important: Remember in down time customers are also in sombre mood.  In this time of crisis when companies focus on emotional customer experience, it will go long long way to win more & more customers in bad times. They will remember you in good times as well. Its a win win proposition. 

Following para from Forrester report will reinforce the need to focus on customer experience initiatives in down time: 

Faced with increasing competition from new entrants, coupled with the 2008 financial crisis that pummeled the shipping industry, Maersk Line was seeing its margins shrink. Firms in the industry were cutting prices to maintain revenues, threatening to erode margins even further. To avoid the “race to the bottom,” Maersk Line’s executive management team determined that customer experience would play an important role in creating customer loyalty and stopping this commoditization. In 2009, the executive team turned to a 17-year veteran at the company, Jesper Engelbrecht Thomsen, the firm’s vice president of customer service, to improve the end-to-end customer experience.

Within 3 years with the organisation level CE initiatives this company registered growth in Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 40%. Therefore irrespective of type of business & business cycle , it pays to focus on CE initiatives. 

Do you want more severe economic downturn to embrace CE initiatives? 

Place for odd man out is empty. Be the one to occupy that. 

We the People & Economic Crisis !!

Read any news paper and you are depressed for the day.  Times of great economic crisis when the country is headed by renowned economist. While we do not doubt his knowledge we sincerely are sure about his inability to deliver. His includes his Government. Be that as it may we have to live in this regime at-least by May 2014.

However points to ponder are politicians have no clue what is the solution to economic crisis. As we choose the candidate to represent us based on his caste, how much immediate gratification is offered to vote & not voting. We do not have a clue who will lead the Govt as selected candidates based on the above criteria will select their leader.  

Therefore expecting these kinds of leaders to solve economic crisis is not only bit too optimistic but foolish. 

I am not writing this to comment on our leaders and voting style. My limited point is they neither understand and nor can do anything. Therefore don't expect.  

Now it is our turn and we can certainly do. Yes we can remain insulated from the crisis and improve the situation by continue to do what economic activities we are doing without worrying about the future. Remember famous quote " You do not have Future, Only Present."

Make some smarter move which you are afraid to do all these years. Take some limited risks. Try new markets and products; try new ways of doing business. You will not get time to do all these experiment in boom time.

Best thing you can do is ignore negative news from entering your psyche & keep doing your bit of work.  This is the only solution. (& don't forget this when vote for the next time. )