thomas.wieberneit@aheadcrm.co.nz

A Company like Me

We trust those sources most, who are like us. “A company like me”, as Paul Greenberg dubbed it in an article for destinationCRM, is a vision that depicts a trustworthy, almost human, company; maybe this vision is not an achievable one, but it still is a very good one since easily related to and understood. It clearly shows the path to the ultimate goal of each company: To add value to customers by being trustworthy. Adding value to customers increases their loyalty and having more loyal customers directly translates into an improved bottom line since loyal customers have a higher value than irregular customers. They spend more and more often. Loyal customers furthermore often act as ambassadors for “their” companies and brands thus providing a free-of-charge marketing- and sales force which results in a better top line. As a matter of fact and as stated in several blogs before, people – customers – are more connected than ever. They get information they trust on products and services anytime and anywhere via their personal networks and can easily confirm or prove wrong all information that is pushed out by companies. They achieve this via usage of services like Epinions, Tripadvisor, Facebook, Priceme, and so on. Customers use these sites from their home computers and via their smart phones, so that they even take ad-hoc decisions informed. As a result the push approach does not work anymore. Companies are no more in control of the information that is available about them and their brands. Successful companies embrace this. As an example (and sorry to all the not mentioned ones, …) we...