Author: David Baker

The Ann Arbor area residential real estate market is on the rise . . . mostly. Many of the key metrics show a positive change. The Ann Arbor Area Board of REALTORS® provides a monthly report on key residential real estate listings and sales. According to the June report, the number of 2013 YTD listings was up 22% year-over- year for the same period, jumping from 684 listings in June ’12 to 835 in June ’13.

A common mistake among novice chess players is to bring out the queen early in the game. But this often leads to a loss. In our client work, we often see a similar phenomenon in competitive strategy. Executives get lured into bringing out their queen without developing all of their pieces.

There is no shortage of customer experience metrics today: digital data feeds, customer profile data, cross-channel performance, operational data, etc. The trick seems to be in fully understanding and focusing in on the key sets of metrics that really matter to build and sustain customer lifetime value across all channels.

Customer service representatives have a tough job. They must represent the face of the company to customers while being internally monitored and measured via a myriad of metrics: first call resolution, call length, and percent of transfers, to name a few. Fortunately, when done well, upselling customers and ensuring customer satisfaction go hand in hand.

Every company now has mechanisms for capturing customer feedback. As the discipline of customer connectedness matures, the real challenge lies in orchestrating these feedback mechanisms across the customer touchpoints and throughout the organization.