Customer perspective during the downturn

The Think Customers 1to1 Blog is carrying a nice post by Brent Leary – So YOU Want to Improve MY Customer Experience?

During the downturn in economy (and always ..but especially so now), all businesses ought to be thinking about what works for their customers. 
  • How have the macroeconomic factors affected our customers business & life?
  • Should we be offering a different value proposition to customers now?
  • What is it that we can do for our customers that no one else will possibly do? 
  • Everyone’s expenditure has come down …so has our customers’. How can we ensure that whatever little they spend is spent on our products / services?
  • Is there a way we can make our customers feel special ..w/o spending too much?
All valid questions even during normal times. But businesses do have extra time now ..so might as well think about customers!

The Ultimate Question – NPS

A few months ago I started off on a NPS adoption journey. All though I have gone through some of the continual negative press on the topic, I have not heard or read anything compelling enough to drag me away from the simplicity & basic idea of NP. 

We have started really small & getting together the mechanism to capture responses to the NPS query. 
Some questions that I am searching answers for are :
  • What does one do with the NPS score?
  • How can NPS help develop & sustain a customer centric culture?
  • What have been the past experiences (anything specific?) of NPS implementations in B2B situations?
  • What have been the main grouses against NPS?
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From the Blogosphere

Today, hundreds of companies around the world have subscribed to the Net Promoter philosophy. But many of them still don’t understand the true meaning of NPS and what Reichheld meant the question to become: an organizational discipline that transforms your business around the customers.
….
Reicheld admitted that companies cannot be driven by scores; it’s what they do with the scores that matter most and getting the people in the organization to treat customers the way they’d want to be treated.
….
Until companies can move beyond getting their organizations to reach high Net Promoter scores, and help their CFOs to understand how to quantify and increase the number of promoters, then they won’t find success with NPS.

Read the complete article at Think Customers: 1to1 Blog. 

Space Elevator!!

A physical elevator from the earth to space! Eliminating the use of rockets!! Journey to space through via an elevator!!!

Picture courtesy http://www.myreviews101.com/

I have to say the idea blew my mind the first time I read about it. And what amazed me even more was the fact that there are people out there who have thought this idea through to great depths (or heights). Many people actually believe we may see this idea fructify within our lifetimes.

Picture courtesy wikimedia.org

A space elevator is a proposed structure designed to transport material from a celestial body‘s surface into space. Many variants have been proposed and all involve traveling along a fixed structure instead of using rocket powered space launch. The concept most often refers to a structure that reaches from the surface of the Earth to geostationary orbit (GSO) and a counter-mass beyond.

Stop waiting for happiness. Happiness is right here, right now.


Stop waiting for happiness. Happiness is right here, right now.

When I became an adult, I couldn’t wait to get a good job. That would surely bring happiness. I couldn’t wait. When I got a good job, I couldn’t wait to get a raise. When I got a raise, I couldn’t wait to get married. When I got married, I couldn’t wait to buy a nicer car. Got the car, then I couldn’t wait to buy a house. When I bought the house, I couldn’t wait to … get out of debt.

I could go on for quite awhile, but you get the point. None of my desires ever produced happiness, because I was stuck in the mindset of wanting more. When I got what I wanted, I wanted something else. My happiness was always on hold, because I was waiting to reach a goal.

— Check out Leo’s complete post at Zen Habits

Stop waiting for happiness. Happiness is right here, right now.

Most of Leo’s posts resonate well with me. And he puts it across quite nicely ..hence the simple link to his post.
This particular one sounds like my perfect personal theme for the year 2009.