Today's Customer Will Talk About You Brand!

By Author: Yolanda Cardenas
Total Articles: 1
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Today's marketers all want to tell us how to get the consumer's attention. Book after book like Chris Anderson's prolific "Freemium" The Radical Future of Price is being written to help business embrace and leverage the power of the Internet. The connectivity of social media portals is giving the consumer voice like never before, but there is a danger that the consumers will render themselves irrelevant to the end experience. Economics teaches us that the purpose of business is to create a profit. At what point does the consumer's thirst for the best deal supercharged by the ability to access information render the consumer irrelevant?

Our first instinct as consumer-oriented people is to give the customer absolutely everything it takes to create the wow experience, but as we know once we have been wowed that becomes our new level of expectation. So what happens the next time we visit with that organization and receive the same level of service? Generally speaking we are not as impressed (annhh been there done that! Right?") So our bar is raised, and we have to again reach new heights to wow the customer.

Why ...
... do I say "WOW"? Because anything less is expected and will not drive the word of mouth referral? Which as marketers is critical to our strategy.

Here is the problem customers have come to expect the "WOW" factor as a DeFacto part of doing business, Yet they all too often don't realizes the transaction cost involved with getting there. I am old enough to remember when you could go into a department store and get one on one personalized service. Ever go into one now? More often than not, there is one person for multiple departments and not only is that person consulting, they are doing returns, inventory, stocking shelves, and doing price changes. All so the department store can maintain the greatest profitability and still give the customer the competitive pricing they desire.

I applaud Apple on many levels, their product design is amazing, their store designs are open, honest, clean, and convey trust. Better yet they try their hardest to have adequate numbers of salespeople on hand to properly service the consumer. Apple has not set out to be the cheapest and yet iPhones are flying off the shelves at breakneck speeds. Are customers willing to pay for innovative, technology, superior environment, and overall consumer experience? You bet they are! Apple's Dynamic Brand Energy is off the charts. Even during the latest antenna debacle somehow all Jobs needed to do was publicly recognize the issue, and the news stopped covering it almost instantly.

What is the disconnect? The disconnect is when we try to be all things to all consumers. Forgetting the single most important element for success is the free part. The human relationship factor. Yes as a business with competition you must be cognizant of price. Yes you must find tangible ways to create differentiation from your competition, and finally yes you must exceed the consumer's expectations. Even that, however, is often not good enough.
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