Harry Klein's blog

In our "Marketing, Sales, and Operations vs. Experience" survey we asked "if you could change just ONE thing about how your company manages customer experience, what would it be?"

Responses reflected four major experience management gaps:

1. The need to listen to customers more and/or more effectively
2. The need for a specific strategy and specific tactics for managing customer relationships
3. The need to empower front line employees to best engage customers at the point of contact
4. The need to tie experience metrics to senior management compensation

Here's the first of a series of postings on the preliminary results from the Marketing, Sales and Operations vs Customer Experience survey we launched on March 4, 2010. The survey was designed as preliminary research that would generate additional questions for incorporation into a more in-depth research project.

The first two questions asked which organization within your company is MOST responsible for defining the customer experience strategy and which one is MOST responsible for delivering on that strategy.

We've posted a four question survey designed to gather some quick insight into customer experience strategy and responsibility within organizations.

A recent Tweet from ohh_la_la pointed me to a September 2009 study of the financial impact of poor customer service when shopping online either from a computer or mobile device.

Several years ago Toyota decided on a strategy to overtake General Motors as the #1 seller of automobiles in the world.

Toyota has long been a great example of how to drive a keen focus on quality up and down an organization. They set the global standard for automobile manufacturing. As a result, they developed a highly satisfied and loyal customer base which drove them to #2 in automobile sales. And two years ago their strategy paid off as Toyota surpassed GM.

Today Toyota is an example to companies everywhere to be careful what you ask for.