Recession-Proofing
"Now more than ever" is often one of those empty-headed phrases that companies use to engender interest and/or excitement about themselves. It always gets me to wondering just how useful a given product or service actually was in the past, and just why it's so much more relevant "now." (It also unfailingly reminds me of the 1992 movie The Player, whose studio loudly boasted "Movies: Now More Than Ever," with no one ever considering what that actually means.)
But lately I've come to see that the phrase can actually have some value, as in: Now more than ever, you need to engage your customers.
Whether or not the economy is in a recession has been debated since last spring, and while politicians may be loath to use the "R" word -- especially when they're trying to get elected -- there's an ever-growing number of former employees in the financial, publishing, and automaking sectors, among many others, who wouldn't argue the point.
Spending money to create better one-to-one relationships with customers may seem counter-intuitive to some, but smart marketers know that now's the time (more than ever, you could say) to reinforce those relationships to weather the storm, as we've written before. Recession-proofing can be a little like weather-proofing -- time-consuming, not all that glamorous, and at times seemingly of questionable value -- but it is possible. Knee-jerk reactions to an economic downturn like raising prices to squeeze every last possible cent from customers may help in the short-term, but will cost you customers in the long run.
Well, unless you're the risible Metropolitan Transportation Authority serving the New York metro area, long the AIG of public transportation services when it comes to financial management. Since people arguably need to get to work (unless there's no work for them to get to, ho ho), mass transportation seems to be recession-proof.
Which got me to wondering just what industries are recession-proof. I consulted Career Hub, which -- sure enough -- listed transportation as one, along with utilities, healthcare, and dozens of others.
Wikipedia's list of recession-proof industries was shorter but more eye-opening; alongside the likes of debt collection and heating/air conditioning are "weapons" and "funeral homes," where customers are of course dying to get in. (Thanks to the late Arnold Rosensweig for that one.) But even those areas need to maintain strong customer relationships, and one hopes they're already thinking about, if not actually implementing, one-to-one strategies to help them beat their competitors during this maybe-recession.
Customer service is, after all, oftentimes the great differentiator. And that's true now more than ever.
Related Entries
- Guest Blogger Joseph Jaffe: It's Better to Be S.A.F.E. Than Sorry
- Hoffman's Hot Seat: The Chief Customer Officer: Building a Customer Strategy
- Guest Blogger Ralph Heath: What Has Happened to Customer Service in America?
I don't know if you have checked that Wikipedia article recently, but it is quite a mess! I suggest strongly that articles there that are full of "Citation needed" tags are generally an essay and by no means encyclopaedic. That article is likely to be deleted soon as "Original Research", something a blogger may do but a wikipedia editor may not.