Customer Experience Management

Some of the most memorable quotes on Customers are:

"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages" - Henry Ford
“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else"- Sam Walton


In a recent HBR article ("Let Emerging Market Customers Be Your Teachers", HBR, December 2010), the authors gave out an interesting insight quoting McKinsey studies. "In developing economies, the retail aisle is where the marketing action is - it's where the customers make purchasing decisions. McKinsey studies show that in China, for example, as many as 45% of customers make those decisions inside stores, compared with 24% in the United States."

Although their study did not include India (the authors conducted a study in 2009 in China, Poland, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa and Peru), I am sure the results would apply equally well to Indian retail landscape as well.

How to engage the customers at the store level? What kind of experience should stores offer to the customers that would increase their customer life time value? How to improve the customer experience at the store level?

To answer these questions, I have developed a model titled - 7 As Approach to Customer Experience Management at Store Level - that would help retailers orchestrate a better and delightful customer experience management at the store level. Remember however: It is only when all these 7As are used simultaneously that the stores can expect better delivered customer experience and not in isolation.