How To Improve The Customer Experience & Out-Compete Your Competition
Posted by Melanie Aizer on Wed, Jun 29, 2011 @ 01:37 PM
A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to attend “The Art of Marketing,” Canada's premier marketing & innovation conference.
This seminar for Canada’s marketers is developed to answer the questions currently facing organizations and provides them a clearer understanding of how marketing has changed, what role it now plays in the buying decision, its impact on your business and ultimately how the consumer views, interacts and positions your brand in a crowded marketplace.
The speakers, all visionaries and trailblazers in the field of marketing were outstanding.
The first speaker, Mitch Joel a very successful author and influencer in digital marketing, focused his presentation on how to rethink marketing in a “connected (digital) world,” and how to thrive in a world where anyone can (and is) saying whatever they want about your brands, products and services with the advent of social media.
The second speaker, Bill Taylor addressed key branding strategies for companies with the increase of “hyper-competition” (a word that was used throughout the event). He spoke high-level about how the most successful companies don’t just “out-compete” their rivals; they redefine the terms of competition by embracing unique ideas.
The speaker that resonated most with me with was Avinash Kaushik. Avinash is the Analytics Evangelist for Google, so needless to say “metrics” are his life. Avinash is a brilliant strategist and an expert in understanding how web analytics can be used to truly benefit a company. His presentation focused on the true “guts” of a marketing department ─ its analytics; what most of us marketers tend to focus on with a tunnel vision. In his presentation Avinash was able to convey to the audience a defining message: The metrics themselves aren’t as important as the behaviors (conversions) and social interactions with your audience (customers and potential customers). That is the true “metric” of success.
Each speaker, all conveyed the same message (which was really the theme of the day’s event): “Today’s consumer (whether it be in B2C or B2B) have changed their buying habits and it is the ‘winning organizations’ of the world that are able to listen, interact, adapt and deliver.” These are the companies which we all measure success by.
Companies like Zappos.com, Amazon.com and Nordstrom were referenced as examples in the B2C model as organizations who have built their business on listening to their customers. “Listening - not shouting!”
Engaging, enchanting and conversing with customers and making it easy for clients to buy and/or return products, and their customers getting a “personalized” experience. These attributes were touted as crucial components for successful companies to practice whether in B2C or B2B ─ in an age of 'hyper-competition' and the digital consumer.
Today, consumers can search, research and buy products – all while online with an easy 'one-touch click' of a portable device like a Smartphone or a Tablet. Consumers can review and recommend products, and most importantly evangelize products with their viral messages on social media.
When companies define a solid and clear understanding of the customer’s needs and create products to eliminate or alleviate pain-points for the customer, both the customer and company come out as winners.
Guy Kawasaki, the ex-Apple evangelist, visionary ─ and marketing genius, spoke of an “Enchantment” strategy for successful companies. He referenced the acronym DICEE as his metrics for a company’s success:
D- Deep = Your company’s features and functionality that empower your product.
I- Intelligent = A company’s ability to understand user pain-points and create the tools to solve these pains.
C- Complete= The totality of your offerings. It is your service in addition to your product and the product of your service.
E- Empowering= Create products that make users feel more productive.
E- Elegant= Develop a user interface that is attractive and user-friendly so that people want to use it.
In reflecting back on my experience at the event and what the speakers were trying to convey, I am pleased to say that at Recombo, we do spend a great deal of time engaged with our clients (and potential clients, alike) ─ listening to them, conversing and adapting our technology and the way we do things, in order to meet their unique business needs.
As the marketing manager, I spend a lot of time speaking to our clients for testimonials and case stories, and I am constantly amazed how many clients reference that Recombo was able and willing to produce a customized solution to meet their unique business needs (whatever the requirements may have been).
Our customers have customers. By implementing an automated contract management software system to streamline their business processes, serves to make the buying process easier for the customers ─ of our customers.
I often hear, being able to send & receive digitally signed contracts or any approval-based document within minutes, is the most valuable factor for their business success, regardless of the industry or business process (we broadly the term “contract” as any form of approval between two or more parties that requires formal or informal sign-off).
Many of our customers have begun implementing “customer self-serve” enrollment programs on their websites, by integrating a secure customer portal and a paperless enrollment process.
This website integration, better improves the customer experience by creating a seamless and easy to use enrollment method; allowing customers to serve themselves. This eliminates the tedious and inconvenient paper-based method to enroll in programs.
Improving the customer experience is at the heart of all winning organizations and by utilizing leading-edge technology like contract management software, document management or digital signature technology to improve the user experience for your customers, will gain you a competitive advantage in this world of ‘hyper-competition’ and you will be able to ‘out-compete’ the competition.
We do listen and understand our clients and what they want (and need) and we always stay one step ahead by developing unique product features to better serve our customers (and their customers).
I hope that I have started a valuable conversation for your company.
Here are some examples of what our customers have to say about us
If you would like to read some of our customer case stories, please visit our resource library
