Customer Experience - what lies ahead?

In his article The Future of CE: Post Purchase Experience Creation, Mark Binns brings out an important point -
The future of CE should be in experience creation. As an industry, we will continue to manage customer service and existing experiences, but never get them perfect. I expect the law of diminishing returns will eventually set in on managing existing experiences. So, creation of new experiences will be the true CE differentiator of the future. When something positive and unexpected happens to a customer, it creates instant word of mouth value. People talk about new experiences – they rarely talk about expected experiences unless they were bad ones.
He also goes on explain his theory on opportunities for experience management & creation through the life cycle of the customer interaction. 

On similar lines is this posting by Eric Fraterman. 
True loyalty happens when there is an emotional engagement with the organization or product. This engagement comes from experiencing the brand or organization in a unique way that creates true value for the customer.
How does this apply to an IT product company (esp an enterprise applications vendor) & its customer life cycle?


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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!