Customers are changing their behaviour dramatically. If you fully understand where the moments of truth lie in your customers' lifecycles, and if you can act on what your customers are willing to tell you, you are definitely on the right track. If not, keep on reading...
The Experience Economy
I think the world of business is changing in the sense that people are placing more and more emphasis on their experience as a customer or consumer. Not so strange perhaps, as products and services seem to grow increasingly alike (just think of consumer banking, insurance, or telecom providers). When I attended Gartner's CRM Summit in London in March, the message I got there was clear: We are in an experience economy.
Listen!
The impact on business is significant: According to Gartner, your customers expect more, and they will switch more, and tell more, if they have a negative experience with your company. They won't necessarily tell you, though. They'll tell others via various social media - which can be veritable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a disgruntled customer (as numerous examples have shown us). Preventing bad customer experiences from happening is of course ideal, but quite unrealistic. What you need to do is to listen. Listen to the voice of your customers by asking for their feedback. If you time it well and keep it short and relevant, your customers will give you what you need.
Moments of truth
The key to making it relevant to your customer is to link the feedback to their interactions with your company. Find the moments of truth in your customer's lifecycle. The moments where "the rubber meets the road" and the customer's experience is created. The moments when listening will really make a difference for your company's success.
Act!
I call feedback gathered in these moments of truth "event-driven feedback," and with event-driven feedback, you need to act fast. An ability to manage the flow of data and empowering the right individuals (or systems) within your organisation to act is crucial and very powerful. If done properly, the effect can be staggering. A customer, who has a bad experience with a company and gives her feedback on the experience, will be more satisfied if the company is able to respond properly to that feedback, than she would have been if the bad experience hadn't happened at all.
Binary outcome
This paradox illustrates why so many companies are implementing feedback management systems in their CRM strategies and processes: In the experience economy, annoyed customers will walk away, but can become ambassadors if your company has the capability to listen and act.