Just before we talk ourselves into a recession. Thought the following might be interesting. It’s taken from Ken Blanchard’s Thought Leadership Research.

Top organisational challenges; competitive pressure, economic challenges, growth and expansion

Top management challenges; creating an engaging workforce, managing change, developing potential leaders

Top employee development challenges; performance management, manager/supervisor skills, interpersonal communication skills

Top HR and training challenges; connecting training to business results, sustaining training with follow up and reinforcement, strategic alignment of training goals and business initiatives

For the full research go to www.kenblanchard.com/thoughtleadership/research_findings/2008_corporate_issues

Been doing some digging! Well some research really on what the people in customer service think will be the future challenges small businesses will have to face. It’s been interesting asking around and reading the enormous amount of information out there. I’ve summarised the most popular thoughts:

1. The IT savvy generation will choose technology over direct communications to contact companies they want to buy from.

2. Future buying behaviour will be heavily influenced by social networks. Customers will ignore advertising (they already are)and use these sites to make buying decisions.

3. To be competitive in the future, we will need to eliminate queuing on the phone, in the shop and on the internet.

4. Some customers are more important than others. Knowing who they are is half the battle.

5. Manage the ‘white space’ the bit when you are not contacting or communicating with customers. For example when you have booked a restaurant for two weeks time and there is no contact in between! What can you do to keep customers informed.

6. Customers will expect to communicate with people who know about the product/service and empowered to make decisions - implications for recruitment, skill development and salaries!

7. Going that extra mile when the customer thinks they are already satisfied (I’ve blogged about this before)

In a world of sameness, we all better get thinking about how to make the most of customer experience, true customer experience…..

Whilst the traditional differentiators such as price, products, quality and delivery are on their way out and becoming increasingly unsustainable. It’s recognised right across all sectors that the main differential advantage is now in customer experience. The research speaks for itself. Get moving on providing great customer experience not just good enough customer service. It’s interesting to note that when business was questioned recently about employee development only 10% of businesses identified customer experience as their top management challenge for 2008. (Ken Blanchard Companies www.kenblanchard.com)

Imagine that. Only 10%. Customer experience is pretty much your only way of providing that all important competitive edge today, yet, most businesses are doing nothing about it in terms of developing staff to deliver that all important experience. Your products are the same, your quality is the same, even delivery pretty much the same. The only thing you have left is the experience you are giving your customers, how you make them feel and spotting opportunities to differentiate yourself with them.

What are you doing?