2009, Year of the Customer?
Malcolm says
I think that you are right, 2009 will be the year of the customer/client for smart companies. When times get tough consumers and B2B customers think more about what they buy and who they buy it from. Price is always a point but the RET factor is even more important. RET stands for Relationship, Expertise and Trust. If your business does things that negatively impact any of these three aspects less customers will buy from you. Of course the reverse is also true and that’s why the smart companies are implementing often low cost simple things that will improve their RET rating with customers.
The first step down this path is to understand how customers rate you today. I do a lot of RET surveys and almost without exception the company thinks that their customers will rate them higher than they actually do. With this evidence its much easier to decide what actions to take and what things to leave along. Without this evidence Corporations will continue doing what they think is best which is often not what customers want. Have a look at the survey results on www.simpleplans.co.uk/7.HTML which will explain this in more detail.
My prediction is that companies who do see the light and start to better understanding what their customers want at every touch point will be the ones who are successful in 2009/10.