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Predicting/Preparing for Economic Transitions 37

tough times. It is widely accepted that the customer experi-
ence is a significant driver for customer satisfaction and
competitive differentiation. It is one of the key factors in
attracting new customers, keeping existing customers, and
developing cross-sell initiatives. Despite this, customer ex-
perience/satisfaction programs come under significant scru-
tiny when budgets are curtailed because of contracting
economies. Businesses whose customer experience/satisfac-
tion programs are the most vulnerable in contracted econo-
mies are those who have customer experience/satisfaction
initiatives but not the deep and pervasive customer experi-
ence culture. One of the key reasons is that it is not an easy
task to directly link customer experience/satisfaction metrics
with short-term revenue generation and cost reduction initia-
tives. For the businesses that have an existing deep and
pervasive customer experience culture, those initiatives con-
tinue to be funded as a priority even when economies con-
tract. One large financial institution that had three major
customer satisfaction/experience groups during a healthy
economy ended up eliminating two of the three groups as
a cost-cutting measure when the economy contracted. While
this cost-cutting measure was successful at reducing costs,
it did negatively affect customer satisfaction.

For most retail banking there are two key components.

1. Do it right
2. Do it quick.

In tough economic times, it is best to focus on the absolute
most important customer satisfaction determinants and make
sure that the cost-cutting initiatives do not impact these
dimensions.

When the economy contracted for a major airline, their
group in charge of advancing the customer experience trans-
formed their efforts from promoting the customer experience