Monthly Archives: November 2014

A consultant is a collector of experiences as a consequence of the dynamic and varied client circumstances in which he operates. The different customers he consults, give him a constant flow of add-ons that enrich and perfect each time his services.

Abroad when operating outside his home country, the consultant is again a collector but this time his gathering of new experiences relate to companies that from country to country differ as to how each does things influenced greatly by their country and market environments. From time to time he has the possibility to share knowledge with companies that have already gone to foreign lands and as a result might have acquired a unique mix of home and foreign features.

After such experiences abroad, back home the consultant’s services will not be the same.

Now he has acquired different learnings from the places where he went and offered his services. These new learnings do not stay isolated in the consultant’s head but are mixed uniquely to produce a revised and in many cases superior product.

Now when he consults with his home clients say by way of making a presentation, he will add some new slides that contain his new experience from his foreign customers. The more and the wider he has traveled the better and more colorful his presentation. This he couldn’t have if his operations were solely confined in his home country.

And perhaps even more notable it will be that now he will consider it necessary to change and enrich even those slides he used before for his home clients in order to add to them his foreign experience.

Now he thinks and acts under a transnational perspective. He has now a powerhouse potential.

This [...]

Nobody can argue against the importance of customer service. But what about customer experience? Is it the same or is it different?

Customer service is what we give to customer while customer experience is what the customer receives and shapes his/her perception about us.

Customer service is definite but customer experience relates to perceptions. As such it mingles the present with the past, it is not a once off action of excellence and it is more elusive and more difficult to achieve. We can influence but not control a customer’s experience.

Customer experience is how a customer feels about your company after he/she leaves your premises following a visit to you. Such customer feelings are formed by rational factors as well as impressions that play outside the sphere of rationality. This description however has limitations as in reality customer perceptions about you, are formed in many places and circumstances and are not confined to one place or one case alone.

So a more general description would be, how a customer feels about you and your company without reference to place or time.

This 2nd description comes from the recognition that the customer feelings about you are not only the result of his/her most recent visit but the result of a series of interactions present and past, with your brand including interactions relating to advertisements, news in the press and other media social or otherwise and quite significantly in some cases, rumors.

This definition demonstrates the difficulty. We cannot configure customer experience to win customers by one single act/campaign or by tuning up only our present actions. We have to have a successful past besides our efforts for the present and make sure that our history in congruence tells the same [...]