National Clothesline

Jay Conrad Levinson, world famous author and marketing guru, said the following, “Marketing is the art of getting people to change their minds — or maintain their mindset if they're inclined to do business with you already.”

Question of the month: It appears the economy might be turning around. What do you suggest I do to get my company ready for this turnaround?

My response: Today the consumer is far more sophisticated than ever before. The young people today have been exposed to computers since childhood so the learning curve does not have to be dealt with. Technology and innovation are ongoing.

Social networking is growing rapidly. My good friend Darcy Moen, the crazy Canuck, is writing a book about the positive and negatives of social networking.

Not everything with social networking is positive. All it takes is one disgruntled customer to post a video on Facebook. The video could knock your company and you might lose business.

That being said, let us look at what you can do to become a high performing business when the economy improves.

Consumer surveys constantly show an increase of consumer expectations regarding the vendors with whom they do business.

Eighty nine percent of one group of consumers stated that their expectations are higher today than they were five years ago. Have you changed anything in your company to meet those higher expectations?

Whatever changes you make to your customer service must be constantly measured, altered, and refined.

Keep in mind every time you improve your customer service there will be another company that will look at what you are doing and up the ante. They might even do a better job than your company by satisfying those high customer service expectations. .

If you fail to meet your customer’s expectations, you will lose those customers.

Consumers today are more willing to vote with their feet than ever before. Globally, 69 percent of one group of consumers switched service providers due to poor customer service. This number is up from 67 percent the previous year and 59 percent the year before.

What does that mean to you when two-thirds of the consumers are lost due to poor customer service?

In this soft economy, customer service finished ahead of price as a reason for switching service providers! I hope that this fact about customers switching stimulates you enough to get your brain and other body parts in motion.

If you want to be a winner, you will embrace differentiated service based on customer value. You must consider giving customers more control to shape their customer service experience. The purpose is to drive outstanding customer satisfaction. Outstanding customer satisfaction will give you greater customer retention.

What do you do to solve the insatiable demands of the consumer when it comes to customer service?

One consideration is giving the customer a menu of service options. This might mean a two-tier pricing system. In this fashion, you provide the customer with the ability to have service options.

Another possibility is to allow the Big Tuna consumers decide who they want to deal with in addition to providing those Big Tunas with a menu of services. Other options might be given to a lower tier customer.

Because customers are demanding better and more satisfying customer service experiences, the stakes keep growing higher. Your customers want you to know what they like. If you do not find out what they want, someone else might make that determination and you will start losing business.

If you find the decision-making process difficult, you might want to read How We Decide by Jonathan Lehrer. Many people find that making changes requires decision-making. The decision-making process can freeze whatever new customer service you are considering.

As long as I am recommending books, take a look at Customer Experience Strategy by Lior Arussy. You can sign up for his newsletter at www.strativity.com.

Customers may be newly empowered but they still want to be delighted. Can you delight your customers?

One of the points the author makes is that the consumer came to you with a problem or problems. The customer expects you to make the problem or problems go away. Your customer wants the satisfaction of knowing the problem or problems will be solved.

Before texting and Twitter, we would pass notes to one another while we sat in our classroom. Arussy points out this kind of change because of the use of the web by consumers. This usage increases communication between consumers.

The key is to think of consumers first. If you do not have a website, you are living in the last century. Empower your customers when they use your website. Give your customers service options.

The other thing you can do is provide communication options for your customers. These might include blogs, forums, Twitter, and Facebook. Think of your website as now being customer-centric.

One way of measuring the success of your website is called “stickiness.” This is an indicator of how long the consumer spends visiting your site. Can your website hold the customer’s attention?

You must make your customer’s website experience interesting and personal. Your customer will not only want to stay on your website, your customer will want to return to it.

In football there is a statistic known as time of possession. “Stickiness” is the time that you possess your customer on your website.

The customer who loves your website actually has an emotional attachment to your company. Customers such as these are willing to pay more for your product.

In addition to the willingness to pay more, this customer will become your best marketer. Word-of-mouth marketing is still outstanding. It is free and you cannot beat free!

To sum up this thought process, customers today want to spend more time on websites that give them emotional interactivity and personal expression. If your website designer can give you that, you will have a wining site.

Now you have two tools to help your company when the economy turns around. The first is creating a unique customer experience in your place of business. This experience might be developed by using the value of the customer.

The second tool is a website that will keep the customer coming back. Think about the banks and their websites. The consumer is using the website to pay bills and transfer funds. The consumer is interacting with the company. Keep your customers coming back to your store and your website. Stay “sticky” and you will ring up sales.