Many thanks to everyone who participated in our panel discussion yesterday morning on the changing nature of the customer relationship.  We had a great session, and the panelist really provided some tremendous content.  It was so interesting to hear about the commitments to things like ‘picking up the metaphorical phone’, and having some form of personal contact across channels. Sometimes the expression is true – the more things change, the more they stay the same.

But there are some very real differences in how we market and serve customers in a hyper-connected economy. The speed and accuracy with which customers know and understand our products, our costs, and our competition is higher than ever. Differentiating on experience, and making it something customers will choose and choose to pay for is critical when many products and services are quickly commoditized.