The Customer Experience Race...

- Why don't more executives prioritize their investment in customer experience?

- Don't they believe it will pay off?

In the coming years, when the market becomes harder and harder to compete, we will see that companies bring great customer experience to the marketplace and are being rewarded, whether by consumers or investors, because higher revenue resulting from better customer retention, a great share of wallet and positive Word of Mouth

- Winners and Losers

Is customer experience the silver bullet that can solve your company's problems and skyrocket your stock price?

The answer is NO. We haven't seen any such bullets. The truth is that, regardless of your customers' experiences, you can still be hit by a large, strategic danger, such as a new market entry or replacement product. This is especially true if the new market entrant or the supplier of the substitute product provides an excellent customer experience.

Here is the flip side, you can't afford to ignore the customer experience while working on other elements of your organization. The latter error, however, poses a much greater danger to most businesses.

It's not that such organizations don't care about their customers; it's just that their grasp of customer experiences is less developed than their understanding of well-established disciplines such as marketing and logistics. Meanwhile, an increasing number of their rivals not only understand the customer experience but are racing to improve it.

CEOs of companies that overlook customer experience are running a losing race because they are unaware of it. They are not dumb—far from it—but they are not aware of their customers' outside perspective, which is vital in today's customer-centric world. That divide between the tuned-in and tuned-out establishes the context for the race, which their competitors are already losing.

Real instances:

• Big Banks Will Lose the Retail Banking Race in Customer Experience

Did you?receive a message constantly informing you that money has been withdrawn from your account?

Did you feel uncomfortable when money was deducted from your account for a service that you assumed by default, such as using?debit card fees or receiving a paper statement?

These new regulations and a poor economy have?cost banks billions of dollars in revenue. The big banks have responded by seeking?new ways to charge their customers, such as charging them for using a debit card, receiving paper statements, visiting a teller, and even closing?accounts. From an outside?perspective, Normally, firms charge for providing services, not for ceasing?services.

According to the Forrester 2012 Customer Experience Index, Bank of America scored extremely poorly. Other financial giants, such as Well Fargo and Citibank, also performed poorly. In contrast, credit unions outperformed all banks except USAA. Banks that continue to operate as they did ten years ago will continue to lose customers because they ignore the customer experience while playing a game of cat and mouse with legislators and customers over additional fees. It's not just the change in the regulatory environment. It is true that word about proposed fees now reaches customers via internet-fueled media in a virtual heartbeat.

1-Who will win if nothing changes?

2-Does big banks stop charging their customers for basic services and products soon?

1-Who will win if nothing changes?

Of course, USAA Bank. Other winners will include many small regional and local banks, as well as online?banks such as?Ally, which offers a?checking account and lists (We do right by our customers) as one of its guiding principles.

2-Does big banks stop charging their customers for basic services and products soon?

Not anytime soon; business as usual has been too profitable for far too long. That is why they will continue following their familiar strategy of increasing profits by extracting more income from each customer, regardless of the negative impact on the customer experience. In reality, banks are looking to charge customers new fees for fundamental services such as checking accounts and products. Meanwhile, big banks should expect waves of higher service costs from queries and complaints when they implement each new round of fees, immediately followed by waves of lost customers.

To Be Continued...

Thank You