Will Sharing The Customers’ Risk Become The New Customer Experience Best Practice?

Marketer’s and CRM consultants have been referring to the “customer experience” for several years now. It’s one of those terms that can mean different things to different people. For some it’s associated with customer interactions that occur through customer service channels. In that venue the customer experience can often be influenced by factors like how fast your service reps respond to customer communications and how successfully they address complaints. Another associated venue is in the area of product returns and exchanges. In recent times the phrase “all sales are final” was thrown out of the conversations spoken at many check-out lanes and replaced with statements like:

“If you’re not delighted with our product bring it back in XX days and we’ll give you your money back.”

Guaranteed satisfaction is a bold way to project faith in the quality of your product, confidence in its ability to delight, and show off your customer service model. It appears the current economic climate has now inspired (or forced?!) some organizations to raise the bar by not just guaranteeing satisfaction – but actually sharing in the customers’ risk. In my post “Is Hyundai the Only Car Company Currently Listening to the Consumer?” I mentioned Hyundai’s new Assurance program. In short, Hyundai Assurance is a vehicle-return program that allows a car buyer to return their purchase if the buyer becomes unemployed. In addition, a recent WSJ article (“Small Firms Resort to Freebies and Special Deals”) pointed out that many small businesses are also resorting to strategies designed to attack consumer’s employment fears head on. One example mentioned was Ficion Audio, a high-end audio store:

“Owner Peter Jiang says he heard consumers mention their fears about the area job market. So in early January, he started a promotion where customers can return their speakers for 90% of the sales price if they lose their jobs within one year. If the job loss is between the one-year and two-year mark, he’ll refund 75% of the price.”

These examples highlight consumer companies both large and small who have taken the time to listen to potential buyers’ most pressing fear and designed programs that specifically address that issue. In the coming months many b-to-b organizations are likely to have the ole “partner” phrase pushed back in their face. It will sound something like this:

“If you really want to keep my business, or to be my partner – and not just a vendor – then you need to share my risk.”

Are you currently prepared to deal with that statement? If so, how thoroughly have you examined your risk as it relates to sharing the risk? Risk is a difficult subject area to examine at best, and will probably make metrics like Customer Satisfaction and the Net Promoter Score look easy. So, if you are currently leading your marketing organization and haven’t developed a close working relationship with your CFO it’s time to start building a bridge.