Marketing

Marketers not turning customer pain into competitive gain

28.01.2009
Despite widespread agreement amongst marketers about the importance of customer experience and word-of-mouth, nearly two-thirds of companies do not have a formal voice of customer programme in place, according to a new study by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council.

Of 480 senior marketers surveyed for the ‘Giving Customer Voice More Volume’ report, 38pc said they have no programmes in place to track or propagate positive word of mouth among customers, while only 29pc said their companies rate highly in being able to handle and resolve customer problems or complaints. And 58pc said their companies do not compensate employees or executives based on customer loyalty, satisfaction, improvements or analytics.

The survey found that most companies treat customer interactions around service incidents as a problem rather than an opportunity, with just 38pc of companies gathering customer insight from such situations, just 32pc looking for ways to turn problems into new sales opportunities, and only 15pc introducing new products or services to further monetise the relationship.

"Customer experience is one of the most critical determinants of brand strength and business growth. Yet, most organisations and senior marketers suffer from major blind spots and gaps in the way they interact, handle and respond to customer issues or problems," said CMO Council executive director Donovan Neale-May (pictured). "CMOs must assume ownership for the customer experience and establish enterprise-wide measures and disciplines to ensure continuous improvement. We are missing a major opportunity to turn customer pain into competitive gain at every touch point through better use of web and contact centre technologies and processes."