Today, Social media is creating
the entire buzz in the marketing world. Social media marketing evolved with the
evolution of the Web 2.0 interface. Social media has gained itself a
predominant place in people’s lives these days which is evident through the
number of social media users. A study says that if face book was a country, it
would be the third largest with respect to population after China and
India. Many firms are investing in
Social media channels to propagate their brand by creating content and engaging
consumers online. Through this,
marketer’s are trying to pull customers towards them through their face book
pages, YouTube channels and blogs rather than reaching the customers through
the traditional channels. Given the rapid progression of this medium amongst
the customers, companies are looking for hiring individuals who can manage this
new digital medium of communication and CBS has included Social Media Marketing
as a subject in its course curriculum.
Write up by Prof. Sangeetha. S (
Faculty- Marketing varsity – Chennai Business School)
Customer Experience by K. Rajeshwari
"A customer experience is an interaction between an organization and a customer as perceived by a customer. It is a blend of the company's business performance, the senses stimulated and the emotions evoked and intuitively measured against customer expectations across all moments of contact."
As is evident from the above definition, customer experience goes much beyond the rational aspect of a company's output. Emotions play an important part in customer experience but unfortunately most customer experience initiatives are focused on the basics and the rational experience of 4 Ps of marketing; price, place,product, promotion, and fixing what is wrong, etc. In reality, however, over half of Customer Experience is about emotions. Today services as an industry comprises a major portion of our GDP. Hence the key to achieving sustained economic growth is to be able to arrive at systems and measurement mechanisms that provide clarity on customer service aspects. And an important component of this is 'customer experience.
There are many benefits to the company - tangible and intangible that can be accrued through this. On a tangible scale, when addressed effectively, customer experience eases customer base addition, enhances customer loyalty, and improves customer retention. On the intangible front, customer experience enhances company image, spreads positive word of mouth, and increases potential share market value. Apart from these, the other reason why customer experience is important to work on is that the companies have realized that this economic downturn is not a normal, short-lived recession. Normal life will not resume tomorrow. When you don't know what the future holds, the one thing that you have to hold onto is your customer. Thus the need to focus on your customer experience is all the more important. Loyalty begins to take a new meaning in times such as these, where companies realize that the cost of holding on to customers is far less than acquiring new ones. In this scenario, the concept of customer life time value, or CLV, becomes paramount. CLV takes into account the life time revenues from a customer and the costs involved in acquiring that customer, thus representing the net value of holding onto a customer. If this is positive, then that particular customer is worth holding onto. Else, from a financial perspective, it is better to let him go.
Industries that have witnessed a tremendous growth in recent times have had to practice this. For example, if a telecom customer wants to exit, it is important for the company to understand the costs involved in retaining him versus letting him go and then take a right decision. Over a total customer cohort (group), the magnitude of this decision begins to show up. And it impacts the profitability of the organization in significant ways.
However there is an inherent paucity of trained Customer Experience Professionals. As more and more companies focus on the customer experience, the demand for good Customer Experience Professionals will continue to grow. As the subject is comparatively new, there are few people with relevant track record.Companies that want to produce a high-quality customer experience also need to routinely perform a set of sound and standard practices. The measurement of these practices have to be carefully designed such that organizations can put a number to customer experience in a consistent manner across the enterprise and deliver critical action points to employees and to stakeholders. Unless this is done, the uniformity in understanding customer experience will be lost. For example, the customer experience team at technology giant EMC has a sophisticated measurement framework. It first identifies the aspects of the customer experience that drive loyalty, like ease of doing business. It then prioritizes those drivers based on customers satisfaction with each driver and the impact of each driver on the overall experience. That tells EMC which things to fix immediately, which to improve over time, which to maintain at current levels, and which to promote as strengths.
Now or never
In this age where a customer is faced with choices, companies cannot succeed through manufacturing strength, distribution power, or information mastery.What should be important is the thought of becoming irrelevant to your customers, which is what will happen if you don't take action. Despite some of this thinking and practice, one of the reasons customer experience is in danger of dying is because it is not fully understood. A lot needs to be done in this area -by educationalists and management professionals alike.
K. Rajeshwari
Professor and Head of Department-
Marketing and Retail Varsity
Chennai Business School
Studied at IIMA
Worked for 14 years as a Marketing professional in
Unilever, Cavinkare and Nippon Paint
Pursuing Ph.D. at IIT Chennai
Written a book “MY LIFE MY CHOICE”
E-Mail: rajeshwarivictor@gmail.com
