The piece describes how the life insurance industry is close to victory in its effort to lobby against key elements of the Obama administration’s financial regulatory reform proposal.

At issue is the administration’s recommendation that all financial advisors who offer investment-oriented products be held to a “fiduciary standard.”  This means they always need to act in the best interest of their client (as opposed to the advisor’s best interest, or that of the firm they represent).

In some business circles, getting people to believe in a return on customer experience investments is a lot like getting them to acknowledge the existence of Santa Claus.

Admittedly, it can be difficult to quantify a specific profit or revenue impact from some types of experience enhancers—more robust "voice of the customer" programs, more polished customer statements, better trained front-line personnel, streamlined customer touchpoints, a more user-friendly website, etc. The financials surrounding such initiatives are much less precise than those of hard-dollar initiatives, like the renegotiation of real estate leases or the consolidation of corporate functions.

Of course, that doesn't mean customer experience investments have any less of a compelling return than these other endeavors. It just takes a little more work to quantify it. And, frankly, in some cases, it requires a leap of faith.

Leap of Faith?

I know what you're thinking. Most Chief Financial Officers won't look kindly on a business case grounded in a leap of faith.

Within the span of a single week last month, Google provided two memorable lessons to the business world about what it takes to build a great brand experience.  Unfortunately for the company, while both lessons were memorable, they weren’t both positive.

Nexus One Buyers Get Disconnected

With much fanfare, Google rolled out its Nexus One smartphone on January 5th, promising to shake up the cell phone industry with a device sold directly to consumers, exclusively over the web.

While the firm packed its new handset with all kinds of cool functionality, bells and whistles, they forgot one important feature – service.  Nexus One owners had no 800-line to call with their questions or problems.  Rather, they had to post their inquiry on an online Google support forum, where the company promised to respond within 48 hours.

Google was overwhelmed with service inquiries and word-of-mouth quickly spread about the unconscionable absence of support.  Imagine if you had just purchased a new smartphone (after disconnecting your old one), had a problem getting it to work, but were forced to wait two days for assistance.  It would make for a very memorable, albeit very negative, customer experience.

Exercise more, eat healthier and…  deliver extraordinary service?

It’s that time of year when many of us resolve to do something differently, something better.  Is it possible for businesses to just “resolve” their way to delivering better customer experiences?  You might be surprised at the answer.

It might sound naïve, but when businesses – or, more precisely, the individuals working within them – make a conscious choice to impress their customers, remarkable things can happen.  Yes, business process impediments and technology obstacles might still remain, but when front-line personnel make a personal commitment to exceed customer expectations, it can yield better customer outcomes even while those other organizational limitations persist.

Like any New Year’s resolution, to first make this commitment and then stick to it requires intrinsic motivation.  Here are some examples of how organizational leaders can plant the seeds that will help employees make this conscious choice.

Give them a sense of purpose.

Ever worked in a place where organizational priorities changed as often as the weather?  Welcome to the world of Organizational A.D.D., where businesses are unable to stay focused on what’s important and find themselves meandering from buzzword to buzzword. 

It’s a dynamic that can be tremendously jarring for employees, quickly disengaging them from their work and your company’s mission.  And once employees start mocking your initiatives du jour, there’s no doubt that cynicism will seep into their interactions with your customers.

Read Jon Picoult’s latest article in LOMA Resource magazine, “The Perils of Organizational A.D.D.,” to learn more about this common workplace pitfall and how to guard against it.

General Motors Chairman Edward Whitacre recently instructed his staff to call the roughly 200 customers who returned their cars under a 60-day money-back guarantee offer that GM introduced in September.  Mr. Whitacre issued the directive as part of his effort to sharpen GM’s focus on vehicle quality and customer satisfaction.

GM has made plenty of missteps in recent years and they’ve got quite a hole to dig out from.  But this latest edict from Mr. Whitacre represents a refreshing dose of common sense that many organizations could learn a lot from.

It sounds so simple – contacting customers who have recently defected or returned your merchandise in an effort to understand why you’ve lost them.  Yet it’s an approach that many companies overlook, choosing instead to solicit feedback from current customers or to not solicit any feedback at all.

As regular readers of my blog posts and articles know, I often hold health insurance Explanation of Benefits (EOBs) up as a prime example of customer communications gone wrong.

Consumers get these written statements from their health insurance companies after going to the doctor or getting medical tests.  EOBs are supposed to outline what medical services you received as well as how much of the provider’s fee your insurance company is paying and why.  Since you’re ultimately responsible for the portion of the bill not paid by the insurance company, the EOB and its explanations are pretty important.

Problem is, most people need an explanation for their Explanation of Benefits.  Many EOBs deserve a place in the pantheon of the most unintelligible customer communications.  In a 2009 study, consumers surveyed by branding firm Siegel + Gale said healthcare EOBs were one of the most difficult documents to understand, second only to mortgage applications.  (Yes – even tax forms fared better.)

To call EOBs “Explanations of Benefits” is an insult to explanations everywhere.  “Engima of Benefits” seems more fitting.

For the past two years, the food and beverage industry has been developing a new package labeling program, dubbed “Smart Choices,” to help consumers identify good nutritional choices.  This summer, the labels started appearing on food packaging – prominently displayed on healthy foods like…  sugary cereal and fat-saturated mayonnaise.

Ah, yet another example of business purporting to act in consumers’ best interests, but in reality, doing nothing of the sort.  The Smart Choices labeling program was about as far away as you can get from honest, authentic customer communication.  Is it any wonder that consumers rarely trust big business?

As reported in a recent New York Times article, the food industry has wisely backed away from the Smart Choices labeling program.  But I like to think that the damage has already been done, and that this misstep will serve as a wake-up call to the value of authentic branding and communication (and the risks of doing anything otherwise).

The stock of Starbucks Coffee, long revered as a prime example of a consumer-focused, experience-oriented business, was down over 50 percent in 2008 (underperforming the S&P 500 Index during the same period). With one of the poster children for the "Experience Economy" performing so poorly during the current recession, some CEOs may be questioning the value of experience-oriented business investments, if not revisiting the entire concept of an experience-oriented business strategy.

What's a CEO to do during a time like this, with the Experience Economy apparently showing that it is not impervious to recessionary environments?

Are Experiences Relevant in a Recession?

For those not familiar with the term "Experience Economy," it is a concept described in the 1999 book of the same name by B. Joseph Pine II and James Gilmore. The authors proposed that experience-oriented businesses—those that focus on choreographing memorable events and interactions for consumers—represented the next stage in economic evolution, following earlier periods of agrarian, industrial and service oriented economies.