Managing the Customer Experience - American Marketing Association

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Managing the Customer Experience


	By Interbrand
	Interbrand was established in 1974 and is now the world's leading brand consultancy with 25 offices worldwide. Our Its disciplines include strategic consultancy, brand valuation, corporate and brand identity and market research.

	1. Introduction

When the Internet gold rush fever begins to slow down, one characteristic will make some firms stand out from the competition.

It won't be the buzz and hype that drive so many decisions now, or the crack squads of technophiles, the fists full of design awards, or the strategists with uncanny insight. Great strategic capabilities, design and technology will merely be the ante required to play the game.

The firms that will pull ahead of the rest will be those who never lose sight of the end user.

Professor Mohan Sawhney, eCommerce Chair at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Business, put it differently at a recent presentation to a group of Internet entrepreneurs: "You are not operating Websites, you are developing customer experiences." He went on to explain that the online sector is not about technology, but about "changing the way business is done through the transformation of people."

Companies hope to create a change in their audiences. They want their audiences to know more, have a different attitude, and be motivated to buy a product or service, or be more productive.

If the intended audience isn't changed in some way by its interaction with a company, if the audience's hearts and minds haven't been more closely aligned with that firm's interests, then the company has failed to take advantage of that interaction.

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2001 MarketingPower.com Inc. Contents used by permission of the author.

Table of Contents

1.	Introduction
2.	Customer Experiences
3.	Customer Attributes
4.	The Action Plan