Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

During a recent customer event Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff told attendees, "It's time to double down on customers. There has never been a more important time to focus on customer relationships."

Similarly, RightNow Technologies CMO Jason Middlestadt recommends that companies improve all aspects of the customer experience. "Companies looking to weather the down economy should use customer service as a competitive differentiator," he said during a recent conversation with 1to1. "Self-service is one way to invest in existing customers while managing costs. The next step is to index and open corporate knowledge bases to the search engines to help speed up and simplify customers' searches."

Middlestadt also advocates selling and marketing with a service orientation. "You want customers to say thank-you instead of feeling had. This is what companies need to be thinking about today," he said.

Mike Betzer, senior vice president, relationship technology management, for Convergys, is seeing an increasing desire among customer ser vice managers to know and serve customers better. "They're looking to differentiate using service to increase customer loyalty," he said during an interview with 1to1. "And they're desperate to figure out how to improve relationships with customers to know them better."

Betzer suggests empowering customer service representatives with information that will enable them to make better decisions in real time on how to best service each customer. He also advises sharing information across channels to improve the overall customer experience, as well as improving self-service capabilities, both online and in the contact center. "Done right the IVR is highly effective voice self-service," he said.

During Savo's recent customer summit, implementation consultant Carla Lempera summed up executives' recommendations nicely. She said: "Never lose site of customers."