In these times of economic uncertainty no brand can afford anymore to miss or lose a customer.
Rather than building a strategy only on specific beliefs about the future deeply unpredictable, businesses have to deal now with a complex interplay between business forecasts and reality of consumer needs.
What is sure is that key decision makers can no longer formulate a strong differentiate strategy without embracing customer experience; even if they can't always link it directly to the business results.
A recent analysis "The Economic Necessity of Customer Service" run by FORRESTER in January 2009 confirms that good customer experience delivered by 112 firms correlates highly to loyalty- especially when it comes to consumer's plans for making additional purchases.
Of course, in the current climate, it requires a new way of thinking such as considering the crisis not only as a danger and the time for lower costs, but also as a fantastic window for new opportunities to make the difference.
In many concerns, I believe that Internet is the perfect platform in this environment because it's the most targeted medium and it's measurable in its efficiency.
But how to resolve the paradox between business goals and consumer needs?
Rather than stopping the investments, smart marketers will probably use the economic crisis to focus on their brand promise, their core activity and prioritize the services provided to their customers.
In a digital perspective, what should we focus on?
In my opinion, it consists of delivering the best customer experience by upgrading the brand's digital communication in many ways that the site becomes the self-service channel of choice for as many users as possible.
Firstly it's all about content. The brand must provide accurate and relevant information to offer the user the Best Journey through efficient functionalities.
Internet allows to reach these objectives because it begins the conversation and builds the relationship with the customers; Moreover its the best platform to answer to the interrogations, the fears and doubts of the consumers.
So the brand can create a new climate of confidence especially because it has the credibility to provide relevant answers and fill the core needs.
More than that, Internet changes the nature of the business itself and can generate new growth's factors.
When the program "Danone et Vous" is the first nutritional website in France, the brand is not anymore a simple yogurt factory. And when Pampers.com is the first website visited in the USA by the young mothers it shows how impactful the customer experience can be on the business and on the brand perception.
But brand experience is also about sensitivity and desirability...
It's the customer experience that forms the customer's impression of the company's offering and the "Brand footprint" is more than only accurate content...
Pleasure and good feeling are main factors to differentiate the company from its competitors and determines wether the customer will ever come back.
It means great design that affords appropriation, co-creation and engagement of the consumers.
In this context, designers and marketers must work together as the design will influence the strategy on several aspects: credibility of the offer's display, quality of the layout and interactivity to match the end user's needs, efficiency of all the purchasing process.
In conclusion, I really think that the challenge is all about customer experience which impacts every single aspect of the marketing. The recruitment and the loyalty of the consumers are more and more based on the WOM (Word of Mouth) related to the individual experience.
This is especially reinforced with the increasing impact of the social media where the most reliable media are still the friend's blogs, e-mails and IM.
Even in SEO/SEM perspective the battle is not anymore about ranking on the results but even more about relevancy and accuracy.
Several search engine marketers in Europe and Adam Lasnik himself, "the Coogle's Search Evangelist" , believe that customer experience is the most important factor to take in account in a SEO strategy.
It's going to change how your page should look like in the search result and what users will find when they get to your site.
All is about experience for sure.... but what is difficult now is to provide this without forgetting that the best end user's experience is the one which is INVISIBLE...
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