The Chameleon - Adaptive Marketing Ideas For Your Business

I share my home with two cats. They neither run the show nor are they wallflowers, so I think "share" is a fair assessment of our living arrangement. I wouldn’t consider myself a crazy cat lady and until recently, we shared the space with 100 pounds of Rhodesian Ridgeback, who ironically enough also provided his own view into the world of client experience. While not completely a cat lady, I am in tune with their reactions to, and their interactions with, the space around them. Recently, while perusing the collection of cat pictures rivaled in number only by that of my lovely goddaughter, I saw a pattern emerging. This interesting pattern led to a very simple guide to client experience and while different than the perspective provided above by the late, Great Santini, it is nonetheless important to keep in mind when looking at your own client experience.

Millions of Americans plan to tune in to tonight’s Democratic debate.  If this is your 1^st, 2^nd or even 10^th debate viewing experience, you have certain expectations.  You expect multiple candidates to show up and bring their best game faces to win your vote.  You expect a moderator, probably one from a local or national news syndicate, to ask questions of each candidate.  Finally, you expect a crowd—fellow citizens who’ve come out to cheer on their respected candidates, not to mention the possibility of shaking hands with the Democratic party’s representative for President next year.

As I am sure you’ve noticed from our posts, Pat and I are rather active, and glean a lot of our material from our adventures in sport or training for various events and this post is no different.

As school started back today here in Charlotte and I’m sure in many other cities across the country, I was struck with an overwhelming since of “where did the time go?”.  We spend so much of our time planning; planning our days, our weeks, our vacations months from now, but do we spend the same amount of time relishing in the moments?  After a large event ends, many feel a sense of loss because they are no longer sure what to do with their days, but did they spend any time looking at photos or writing down memories from that day? Too often the answer is “no, I just don’t have the time”.

A few weeks back, my furry companion, Santini (pictured here in his favorite Halloween costume) lost the battle to the ever-present demons of old age.  As I went home to an empty house, started returning my home to a new sans-110 pounds of dog normal, and let's be honest, trying to keep my broken-hearted emotions in check, my mind wandered.  You may know by now my mind wanders to blog topics during the most inopportune, or at least inappropriate times (Catholic contradictions, anyone?).  This time was a little bit of the same and here’s where I landed: we learn SO much about client experience (CX) from man, or woman’s, best friend. 

“Caddy held me and I could hear us all, and the darkness, and something I could smell. And then I could see the windows, where the trees were buzzing. Then the dark began to go in smooth, bright shapes, like it always does, even when Caddy says that I have been asleep.”

As I sat on the edge of my seat last night, with the 20 million or so other Americans watching our U.S. Women’s Soccer Team win the World Cup for the 1^st time in 16 years, I was struck with just how similar the attack and strategy employed by the victorious Americans was to successful inbound marketing.

As you may sense from my recent postings, like “3 Tips to Winning at Client Experience” or “The Crumbling Golden Rule”, I am rather intrigued by the client experience, why it’s so important in today’s culture, and the steps to take to achieve a positive experience or quickly rectify a poor one.  What I have not talked about, yet, is the formation of client experience and it’s direct relation to corporate brand.

A few months back I wrote about the perceived generation gap and inbound marketing, and how companies can bridge that gap through embracing social media marketing.  Recently, I’ve either heard or stumbled across a few things causing me to revisit this topic, but from a slightly different perspective...actually engaging in online conversations.

This past week I had the great fortune of attending multiple webinars offered by Qualtrics in celebration of CX Week. For those of you unaware of the abbreviation, CX is quite simply Client Experience.  Spending a week dedicated to this burgeoning hot topic I felt compelled to compile the following tips.  As we were reminded many times throughout the sessions, client experience applies to B2C and B2B companies alike; so these 3 tips work not only for client interaction, but for customer experience as well.