“No matter how much money you spend on advertising, you can’t convince customers that you provide better experiences than you do.”

“Managing Customer Experience is not about ‘selling things;’ it’s about helping customers buy.”

Customers come in all sizes in a global marketplace, from a limited number of large Manufacturers, Wholesalers, Distributors … to multiplied prospects among Buyers and Sellers for Chain Stores, Discount Retailers, Auction Sellers … to unlimited potential customers at the retailing end of the merchandise chain.

Of course, advertising costs total up very differently to acquire, convert and retain a manufacturer or wholesale-sized customer, versus attracting and keeping a retail consumer-sized customer. According to wholesale industry trackers, marketing costs to acquire a single new merchandise wholesaler is estimated to run 15-to-25 times the cost of gaining a new retail customer, whose purchase revenues are smaller but who come from a bigger pool of customers.

But all of that overlooks the true cost of marketing: Whether your customers are large or small, it always costs more to find and convert a new customer than to retain existing customers. Retaining customers goes straight to the heart of the quotes, above.

Both are from Customer Experience Matters blogger Bruce Temkin, who is a principal analyst with Forrester Research.

Temkin’s manifesto is: Great Customer Experience Is Free. On the flip side, ignoring customer experience is very costly, especially to your marketing budget. (No matter how much money you spend on advertising, you can’t convince customers that you provide better experiences than you do.)

Here are highline summaries of Temkin’s “Six Laws of Customer Experience” to increase Customer Retention Rates, improve Lifetime Customer Value numbers, and get better ROI on your ad spend.

From the link below, you can download the entire white paper from Customer Relationship Management newsletter and RightNow Technologies.

1. Every Interaction Creates a Personal Reaction

Customer interactions designed for everyone satisfy no one.

This demands that a Buyer or Seller has a clear profile of its most important (and least important) customers. Every customer contact point is individualized and focused on the profile. Some online marketers call this profiling selling to segmented Persona, which are narrowly defined identities of the needs, commercial personalities, demands and preferences of the company’s Most Important customers.

A key driver behind individualized customer interactions is customer feedback – unfiltered, unvarnished, un-spinned feedback on what does and does not work in company products, staff, operations, advertised promises, expectations, etc.

2. Don’t Sell Things; Help Customers Buy Them

Don’t let your company’s organization drive customer experiences. Paraphrased, this law is about always selling from a customer’s point-of-view. Take it for granted that your customers have zero interest in how your company is organized … that the shopping cart function on your web site is actually managed by a third-party vendor. Nor have they memorized your product names, your acronyms and abbreviations, or any of your business processes, challenges and headaches. Customers are only interested in getting their own needs met.

Your company operates from a customer POV if — before a new product launch or advertising campaign — someone says: “Will our target customer get this at a glance? Knowing nothing about our company or product lines? While being distracted by three other people or deadlines or email alerts.”

This is also why Temkin advises NOT letting the company’s POV drive customer interactions – managers and employees know too much about your company and its products to see things from a customer vantage point.

3. Don’t Wait for the Company to Align Itself; Share Customer Input

Your Buyer/Seller enterprise may never build the cross-function channels, policies and systems that informs everyone about what each customer likes and dislikes, or which kind of communication each customer prefers (phone call, email, online instant support, tweet, mobile alert … don’t assume one communications channel fits all).

But even if your company’s structure has not yet caught up, everyone can still share their knowledge and customer contact feedback. As Temkin puts it: Customer Familiarity Breeds Alignment. So, just do it (share customer feedback) and the company will catch up.

4. Improve Customer Experience By Engaging Employees

This one may sound counter-intuitive, spending resources and training time on company employees rather than directly on Customer Services. However: “If employees have low morale, then getting them to ‘wow’ customers will be nearly impossible.”

Temkin cited this in one-two-three style from The Service-Profit Chain, Harvard Business Review:

Profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is largely influence by the value of services provided to customers. Value is created by satisfied, loyal and productive employees.

5. Employees Do What You Measure, Celebrate, Provide Incentives For Them To Do

Don’t simply expect people to “do the right thing” for customer experience … even if they want to provide good customer interactions. If your company bases salary, merit bonuses, recognition, incentives, department lunches or any other perks only for other important company goals – such as short-term profit margins or sales targets – then those are the only goals that get met.

In other words: If improved customer experience is not measured by specific behaviors and actions, and if it’s not put in the top 3 priorities of the company by top management, then no amount of speeches and pep talks will do it. Employees do work to real goals set by the top of the company … no matter what senior managers claim is very important, too, as an afterthought.

Temkin’s Bottom Line: Don’t Blame Employees. Fix the Environment.

6. You Can’t Fake It

Evidence of “Faking It” was cited above:

· Employees sense if customer experience is not really a priority with the executive team.

· Customers: No matter how much money you spend on advertising, you can’t convince customers that your company provides better experience than you actually do.

Implications of Not Faking It include:

· Don’t Hide Behind 4th Priorities — Company priorities below 3rd rank get no attention. If you want Customer Service to be a priority, it has to list in the top 3.

· Advertise How You Actually Interact With Customers, Not To Falsely Position How You Want to Interact with Customers — Customers know how your company treats them, so the best objective for your marketing is to reinforce the truth.

Or, to change your customers’ perceptions, you have to first change your company’s customer interactions, and, second, change your advertising message to reflect the change.