By Ken Redekop, director, customer experience management solutions, Telus

With the holidays around the corner, many are looking forward to spreading holiday cheer with families and friends. But, the period leading up to the holidays often brings less than good tidings when a flood of stressed-out shoppers start making their holiday purchases en masse. The crowds. The lines. The staff shortages. All of these experiences prove frustrating to customers and can even impact a company’s bottom line.

As the busy holiday season draws near, companies would be wise to take stock of their customer experience programs. This involves listening to customers in a multifaceted way, including in-person, online, and over the phone, to provide personalized service and educated answers.

[Editor's note: Check out the December issue of CRM magazine for more on the customer experience.]

[Suggestions after the jump...]

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So here’s a new feature: We’re going to start aggregating each month’s posts, for easier reference.

We’ll start this off with a few groupings from the month of October — which, if you’ll permit a moment of horn-blowing, I have to say I’m really proud of. We covered a lot of ground in the month, literally and figuratively, with staffers filing on-the-scene dispatches from nearly a dozen events at various locations nationwide, and guest-blogposts from not only our regular contributors but several newcomers as well.

October also marks the introduction of these monthly archives (which, one hopes, will appear sooner after the end of each month), and compendiums of coverage from all the big events (which, one hopes, will appear sooner after the end of each event). In the Comments below, I hope you’ll let us know if we’re giving you the kind of material you want.

For starters, here’s a blog-only exclusive, one I hope you’ve been watching all along:

Eric Barkin’s “Eric Across America” series of blogposts, a firsthand look at JetBlue’s “All-You-Can-Jet” promotion from the perspective of a participant:

• Eric Across America, Part I: The Story of One Man’s Journey into the Heart of JetBlue and JetBlue’s Entry into the Heart of That Man http://sn.im/dcrmblog100909b
• Eric Across America, Part II: Buying the JetBlue Pass http://sn.im/dcrmblog101209b
• Twitter Drove JetBlue Promotion — Eric Across America, Part II(b) http://sn.im/dcrmblog101309c
• Eric Across America, Part III: Booking Flights http://sn.im/dcrmblog101509a
• Eric Across America, Part IV: Trouble in the Contact Center http://sn.im/dcrmblog102009b
• Eric Across America, Part V: JetBlue Levies a Penalty? http://sn.im/dcrmblog102609b

And our posts from this year’s Oracle OpenWorld #oow09:

• Hello From OpenWorld ’09 http://sn.im/dcrmblog101209a
• GUEST-BLOG: The Perplexities (and Fun) of Oracle OpenWorld, by Beagle Research Group’s Denis Pombriant http://sn.im/dcrmblog101309b
• A Keynote That Will Pump (Clap) You Up http://sn.im/dcrmblog101409b
• GUEST-BLOG: Overloading on Oracle, Both Good and Bad http://sn.im/dcrmblog101409c, by Third Idea Consulting’s Marshall Lager
• GUEST-BLOG: Cloudy Computing at Oracle OpenWorld http://sn.im/dcrmblog101409d, by Third Idea Consulting’s Marshall Lager
• Also keep an eye out for our compendium post of #OOW09 coverage from across the Web.

The rest of the month’s posts — including coverage from The Conference Board’s Social Media Summit, the DMA 2009 show, eMetrics ‘09, the RightNow Summit ‘09, and Forrester Research’s Forrester Consumer Forum — are after the jump.

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It’s been just more than one year since we kicked off our blog in conjunction with last year’s conference, destinationCRM 2008. One of my first posts had to do with a keynote address at that time which talked about CRM and customer experience management (CEM). Namely, whether or not the CEM acronym would take over, as the customer experience was — and still is — becoming an essential goal for companies.

As I stated a year ago, and will again, we have no intentions of changing the name of our magazine anytime soon. But, in today’s keynote address here at CRM Evolution 2009 by Jeffrey Rayport, founder of Marketspace, LLC, he concluded by saying he felt in a couple of years we could expect to be talking about CMR — customer managed relationships — moreso than CRM.

“In a couple of years, it will not CRM Evolution, but CMR Evolution,” Rayport said. “Not customer relationship management alone, but how to put the tools and friendly interfaces — speech, voice, natural language — in the world where brands must play a new game. I’ll argue that’s CMR, for customer managed relationships, as [consumers] are at the center of everything we do.”

Are we just getting caught up in the details? Is it that important to coin another acronym to recognize that the customer is in fact crucial and essential to the business landscape today? I’m curious to know what those attending the conference, as well as our faithful readers back at home, think about this topic.

In the ramp up for Bozeman, Mont.-based on-demand customer experience management provider RightNow Technologies’ Summit 2008 here in Colorado Springs, you can expect many of the attendees to yearn for — and ask about — ways to continue to improve their companies’ customer experiences amidst an economy that has taken the country for a roller-coaster ride in the past several weeks.

Expect some more “on-the-scene” blog posts after some conversations with key executives and customers as the summit officially kicks off in a couple of hours with a keynote speech from RightNow Chief Executive Officer Greg Gianforte.

Nevertheless, there was a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive (and in the pursuit of transparency, sponsored by RightNow) on the impact of customer experience. In its third year, the study finds that the experience is becoming more important as consumers continue to demand the service bar to be raised.

Here are some highlights drawn from the poll of 2,112 United States consumers (age 18 and older):

• 87 percent will discontinue business with a company after a negative customer experience, an increase of 7 percentage points from 2007;
• 58 percent will “always or often” pay more for a better experience during a down economy;
• 84 percent of those polled will tell others about a bad customer experience, up 10 percentage points since last year; and
• 51 percent of consumers want the option of a live Web chat session.

What was particularly interesting was the way in which consumers react to poor service. According to the study:

• 26 percent have sworn;
• 17 percent have shouted;
• 9 percent have felt sick;
• 5 percent of males say they hit or break something; and
• 9 percent of females cry.

With customer service hubs becoming the first interaction touchpoint for many consumers, the study finds it is imperative for companies to ensure they are doling out the goods for both instant and future business success. Fifty-eight percent of respondents are “at least somewhat likely” to make a purchase during a service engagement. Additionally, outstanding service is the top reason respondents would recommend a company to someone else–coming in at 58 percent. Low prices and product/service quality came in second and third, respectively.

Now for the call to action. For the companies out there waging the war of customer service every single day, are these stats surprising to you? CRM magazine and other media publications have been writing about the customer experience for some time now, but is it really hitting home or is it just another nice-to-have for you at this time?

I recently — OK, just yesterday — moved to a new place in Jersey City, N.J., which significantly decreases the commute I previously made.

In the midst of making many changes with addresses, phone numbers, finances, and the like, moving to New Jersey now meant I had to change my mode of transportation from Metro-North Railroad to The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, commonly referred to as the PATH.

Since getting the 30-day unlimited pass would work best for both my sanity and wallet, I had to get the SmartLink card. In all actuality, it’s a very cool idea. You just tap the card — which looks and feels like a credit card — at the turnstile to gain entrance. You tap it again at vending machines when you want to refill your card.

While it seems very easy to refill and take the PATH using this card, it is not as easy to get a card for the first time. You can either register for one online, or buy the card itself with a trip package at certain PATH stop locations after which you can then refill the card with an unlimited monthly pass.

It’s nice I know this now, but not so much this morning when I was going to different machines at the 33rd Street stop in Manhattan, trying to figure out a way to purchase a 30-day unlimited SmartLink pass outright. In my haste, I called the 1-800 number for PATH customer service only to find the office was not open yet. The automated response also told me I could leave a message.

Mind you, I’m extremely skeptical for leaving a message in a general answering machine that I’m sure is clogged with thousands of messages. I’ve talked to many people who have also found leaving a message for a general customer service time to be a tremendous waste. Nonetheless I gave it a shot, describing my issue (one of knowledge) and left my cell number so I could be reached.

Much to my surprise, I actually did get a call back from a PATH representative. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take the call because I was in a meeting. To my further astonishment, a message was left and marked urgent. I just listened to it, and it described exactly what I needed to do along with the specific locations I could actually purchase a SmartLink card. The woman also left me a direct number — not the 1-800 one — to call just in case I needed more assistance.

The direction she left me was perfect, and I really don’t need to call back. I might, though, just to thank her. Now my memory attached to the PATH — so far — is a great one. In my experience monitoring tip lines and listening to myriad messages, I never expected to get a call back a couple of hours after I called.

The “customer experience” is something I — as well as many of my fellow CRMers — have been writing about for quite some time. Now the latest research from Aberdeen Group finding that 60 percent of respondents have a customer experience management (CEM) program in place, and the remaining 40 percent plan on incorporating a CEM initiative in the next 30 months.

Being that this is a seemingly growing trend among organizations, I want to turn this over now to you, the reader. Have you been getting a better experience when you’ve had to interact with the customer service arm of organizations? Do you feel in your own interactions that we are heading down the path — slight pun intended — of a renewed emphasis on customer service? I’d love to hear your story.

Lior Arussy, president of Strativity Group, a customer experience consulting firm, just completed his keynote speech on preparing for the new customer, enhancing the customer experience in order to stay competitive in a shifting marketplace to kickoff the first day of destinationCRM 2008. Located at the New York Marriott Marquis a stone’s throw away from the heart of Times Square, and across the street from the New York outlet of the Church of Scientology. No Tom Cruise sightings … yet.

I won’t speak too much on Arussy’s speech here, because my colleague Lauren McKay will provide full coverage of his takeaways on CRM magazine’s Web site.

However, the whole question of customer experience, or even customer experience management (CEM) has been cropping up quite a bit lately. I spoke with an analyst a couple of months ago who wanted my take on whether or not customer relationship management, CRM, would soon shift into CEM. The term “customer experience” itself can be found in virtually any piece of marketing or press material that finds its way into my inbox.

While we don’t have any plans to change the name of our magazine, it is an interesting question to raise. Is this an entirely new paradigm shift, or just an evolution of CRM as we know it? Is this what CRM is supposed to be all about anyway? It is one thing to service our customer, but another to exceed expectations and go above-and-beyond the call of duty.

I have my own opinion in the CEM v. CRM question, but I want to hold off a bit. Judging by the tracks in the customer service session in the next two days, customer experience will be talked about at great length–five of the seven sessions have the term “Customer Experience” right in the title.

I hope to gain a bit more clarity on where the customer experience really stands by the end of the conference on Wednesday, and share those insights with you here — and hopefully get a sneak peek at Tom Cruise in the process.