This whitepaper is the first in a two-part series on customer strategy from Merkle’s Customer Strategy Group. The content of this paper focuses on customer strategy, how we define it, and what we believe needs to be done to develop and implement one effectively.
As customers are influenced by experiences provided by market disruptors and empowered with new technologies, all companies must create and execute a customer strategy to remain relevant. These types of driving forces, among others, make a well developed and implemented customer strategy more important now than ever.
Key Takeaways
- Make faster, better-informed decisions through data, transparency, mobility and social media.
- Data, transparency, mobility, and social media all enable customers to make faster, better-informed, decisions. Thus, customers have been gaining a significant amount of decision-making power due to technology changes and wide and easy availability to information.
- Many industries, are experiencing commoditization and fewer ways to differentiate over the long-term. A well-developed and implemented customer strategy, or differentiation through best-in-class customer interactions, is a compelling, and at times necessary, way to go to market.
- Increased transparency exposed by social media can significantly damage firm credibility, brand equity, and, in some cases, market capitalization.
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