My Customer: It's that time of the year again - budget time. Companies are working on next year's budgets, a challenging endeavor given the uncertainty and negative sentiment surrounding the economy. Individuals in charge of budgets have been found making perilous cuts to the customer experience budget, in the name of reducing costs and staying "lean and mean."
Senior executives and individuals from operations and finance who advocate customer experience budget cuts or the redistribution of increasingly limited funds, do so because they fail to appreciate the value and benefit of delighting customers. Despite all their proclamations about the necessity of delighting customers, and putting customers before all else - here, during budget time is where these executives put the money where their mouths are. Clearly, it is not with the customer experience.
