Fast Talk: The State of the Customer Economy

Jeet Singh: Change the nature of your conversation with your customers. Find the biggest pain point, and then go to work to reduce it.

Kathy Biro: Companies get what they measure. And they're either measuring the wrong things or just half of the things that they should be measuring. So here's an old tool that's been talked about for years: the balanced scorecard. You look at efficiency, effectiveness, and customer satisfaction. You draw the link between customer satisfaction and profitability. It's the fastest way to remind companies that they are in business to serve customers.

Paul Cole: Clarity, consensus, and commitment. The first step is to bring people inside the company together around the question, How do we want this company to deal with customers? Create the principles for how you're going to run your business. It sounds simple, but in most companies, it just doesn't happen.

Angel Martinez: I'd say move away from purely transactional thinking. Move from the transactional to the experiential. Emphasize imagery to support your brand, build customer participation into your brand, and make the relationship one that's based on experiences.

George F. Colony: I'm going to be really tactical, because I think that we're about to see a consumer recession emerge to join the technology recession. So first, I'd say that if you have 50 e-business initiatives queued up, and if your customers are not in the 7% club -- that is, they're not in the 7% of North Americans who want to do everything online -- then simply don't act on those initiatives. Second, if your customers are young online consumers, you have to brand them now. Then you have to continue forward. And third, remember that the recession will end. We hope that it will happen soon, but we know that it will end eventually. With that in mind, you have to undertake several e-business initiatives now. That will help you five or six quarters from now. Take a few risks. Continue onward, even though budgets are very tight.

Steve Elterich: Make the customer experience effortless and fun. When it comes to the Web, make it fast and easy to use, with the kinds of services that customers expect to have on the site. And delight them with innovation. Provide them with new capabilities that they didn't even expect, that they didn't even know were possible.

Patricia Seybold: Focus on your key customer segments by role. Use a tool called "Customer Scenario Mapping," where you actually pick three to six scenarios for each segment in which customers are having problems doing business with you and then map out how customers would rather do things. That process tells you what matters most to people and where you should put your metrics. It's very simple, it's very tactical, and you can start doing it on Monday.

Kelly Mahoney: Let your customers shop the way that they want to shop. Whether it's going into a retail store, buying from a kiosk in a store, using a catalog, or visiting a Web site, look at how your customers want to interact with you, and then create a customer-service model that gives them the right tools and the right enabling technologies to deliver on the promise. Learn to communicate with your customers, and market to them based on their preferences.