How to sustainably grow your business

Organisations have traditionally followed one of three ‘go to market’ strategies to grow their business. Either they would compete on lowest price, product uniqueness, or differentiated service. In today’s global, hyper-competitive economy, the reality is that it’s no longer possible to sustain growth through price or product alone. Alison Higgins-Miller explains why the only viable strategy for sustained business is through ‘winning on service’, achieved by delivering a competitively superior customer experience.

You can call a cat a dog but it still won’t bark. It’s the same for Customer Relationship Management (CRM), you can call it Customer Experience Management, but if the same approaches and processes continue to be used when interacting with customers, then the change is just cosmetic. Discussion about Experience Management seems to be gathering pace, everyone’s nodding in agreement that organisations need to take better care of their customers, listen more, frustrate less; but no one has actually stated what the difference is between CRM and Experience Management, and how the latter is going to transform business.

The global economy means intense price pressure is making it increasingly difficult to compete with a ‘lowest price’ business strategy. Likewise, leading with product uniqueness is costly and difficult to sustain for the long-term. Today, customers have infinitely more choice; you just have to consider how eBay is allowing people all over the globe to set up their own marketplaces to understand that we’re now functioning in a very different economy. The reality is that good products and competitive prices are necessary, but not sufficient. Today’s business imperative is to compete and differentiate by the customer experience they offer.

To succeed, companies must adopt a ‘win on service’ business strategy. By this we mean they recognise the need to provide a superior experience at each customer interaction point, whether it’s during a sales discussion, a targeted and timed marketing campaign, or during a customer service interaction – the focus has to be on providing an enhanced customer experience, otherwise you risk sending your customers to the competition.

Take the Internet Service Provider business in Australia as an example. A Newspoll survey conducted on behalf of RightNow Technologies in June this year found 46 percent of Australians with broadband internet would leave their current internet service provider (ISP) as a result of poor customer service. Indeed, 21 percent have already axed a previous broadband internet provider based on a poor customer service experience.

The survey found poor customer service was a major concern, and behind much customer churn in the industry. Alarmingly, of the respondents that said they would switch ISPs as a result of poor customer service, 31 percent would switch because of poor overall customer service responsiveness, and 15 percent for a poor customer service experience.

In the dog-eat-dog world of business, an idea that is seen as a great way of winning new customers or keeping existing ones is often viewed as a costly ‘nice to have’, and so sidelined in favour of reducing costs. The pressure comes from the quarter-by-quarter focus on keeping shareholders happy. While this short-term focus obscures any longer-term customer satisfaction vision, it does serve to show how the focus on cost reduction has coloured perceptions about investment in customer communication. The commonly-held view is costs increase in ratio with efforts to boost customer experience.

It’s this cost and service dilemma that’s keeping executives awake at night. They are challenged with serving two masters – driving improved customer experiences and reducing cost. Nevertheless, when push comes to shove, nine times out of ten, VPs of customer communications will take cost saving over spending – because that’s what they are measured on. However, there is a breakthrough to this dilemma and it’s based on understanding that knowledge is at the centre of a great customer experience.