I was recently in a client meeting and was asked the question of where the future of customer experience is going. This was a tough question to answer because where I think CE ‘should’ go, and where it ‘is’ going might be two different things. The reason they may be different is that marketing managers in charge of CE are still focused on managing existing experiences, instead of creating new customer experiences. So, unless consultants and CE thought leaders can convince them otherwise, the future may simply lay in improved customer service.

But, I believe the future of CE should be in experience creation. As an industry, we will continue to manage customer service and existing experiences, but never get them perfect. I expect the law of diminishing returns will eventually set in on managing existing experiences. So, creation of new experiences will be the true CE differentiator of the future. When something positive and unexpected happens to a customer, it creates instant word of mouth value. People talk about new experiences – they rarely talk about expected experiences unless they were bad ones.

The quality of an experience is relative to one’s expectations of an interaction. For example, if I go to a standard travelling 3-ring circus expecting the usual show, but get a Cirque Du Soleil performance, I might be blown away and have an exceptional customer experience. But rather, if I go to a Cirque show and have been to Cirque three times before, the experience is likely to meet my expectations or seems less exceptional than in the previous example. But, why does this matter?

It matters because it is import to decide what your optimal market position is before measuring how you are performing against it. There is no point in mapping and measuring a customer experience if the customer is looking for an experience from our brand that we aren’t trying to deliver. Getting a 3 out of 10 on ‘personal greeting’ isn’t necessarily bad, and might be completely irrelevant, if your goal is to automate your ticketing process and deliver a streamlined and fast (but not personal) service. So, sometimes the first way to improve a customer experience is to define it properly. Only then will measurement be useful.

What does everyone need right now? Other than food, oxygen and shelter, executive after executive is telling me the same thing: SALES! That’s right – while companies are cutting costs and laying people off as fast as possible, we all know that businesses can’t cut costs to zero. Even in a down economy, the answer to fixing a red income statement often lies, at least partially, in the top line. You have to grow or at least maintain sales; you have to get customers to buy your products!

In the B2B space, which I am going to focus on in this post, every sale starts with a solid lead. Whether you manufacture the lead directly through a cold call, or a customer finds you on the web, or a CEO learns about your services from a colleague, all sales start with a lead.

I truly believe every organization should proactively invest in creating more leads. And managers need to think of lead creation as an investment, not an expense. It is time to invest through the downturn to take a leadership position while your competitors are weak. So sure, cuts costs where needed, but don’t cut investments that directly impact sales like lead generation. In fact, I argue you should push harder than ever to generate leads.

The financial crisis continues to accelerate according to my Yahoo! Finance homepage. Every kind of company is failing, or at least feeling the pinch in a big way. And worst of all, the word ‘bailout’ has become the mother of all clichés in the business world. Everyone is asking for a government bailout from GM down to Larry Flynt. But ask not what your Country can do for you, right? So, I have a better idea. Why not ask your customers for a bailout using Obama as a role model?

It has been widely written that Obama has united a nation, and given new hope to all. His customers are the citizens of the United States; his success, I would argue, is strongly based on his ability to deliver an exceptional customer experience. His customers have created an emotional bond with his persona. Other politicians had great ideas, plans and skills, but it was the experience of being part of the Obama revolution that put him over the top. I don’t remember a single word of the first Obama speech I watched, or even recall the topic, but I remember feeling excited. I may have been consuming the product, but I was buying the experience!

I shed a small tear when Nortel went under today, mainly because I am an alumnus of Nortel from the boom days. I still clearly hold a small place in my heart for them.
Why did it happen? Technically, a lack of liquidity to pay a $107M interest payment due on Thursday pushed them over the edge. But, how did it get to this point?

The answer is simple: customer experience. While it would be easy to say scandals, bad accounting, poor products, or lack of leadership (among other things), I think those are copout answers. Nortel has a lot of great employees and a great product portfolio. They make switches, wireless gear and routers that perform just as well as competing products from Cisco or Alcatel. The even make more “green” equipment than their competitors, which is supposed to sell like hotcakes these days. The real problem is that the customer experience for the technical buyer on the client side is lagging.

Is the customer always right? I thought so. I've seen those words written behind retail counters so many times that it has been burned into my brain as fact. Until this weekend that is, when I found out that this is not the case according to Holt’s leading Canadian competition – Harry Rosen. I had two stops to make on Saturday. One at Holt Renfrew and one at Harry Rosen.

Now, to lay the groundwork, we are clearly in a recession. Premium clothing goods are taking a beating just as much as anything else, if not more so. $350 Zegna and Armani shirts are certainly not immune to the downturn. High end clothing stores are like ghost towns in Toronto. I walked into Harry Rosen and found twice as many customer service people as customers. Great I thought – I’ll be well taken care of. Not so.