Forget purchasing power, colossal adverting budgets, opening hours and premises size, small companies are set to face their biggest challenge to-date from large organisations. Small businesses can offer just one positive differentiator over large, a truly unique and personal service…and big business is now all set to directly challenge them on this.

Unknown to the proprietors of most SMEs, the hot topic for the executives in the boardrooms of many large corporations has been the upgrading of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software to CXM (Customer Experience Management) systems. This new breed of software which has been developed by the giants of business systems such as Oracle and IBM is designed to handle big data, giving companies unique insights into each and every customer.

So how far off is this new threat to small businesses? Well if you are serving a B2C marketplace, perhaps in retail for example, you may have already begun to come up against the new systems being used by the supermarket giants or the likes of amazon, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

So why is CXM such a threat? Well the new software is developed to listen to customers at all touchpoints including social media, allowing companies to tailor customer experience to individuals with the ultimate goal of “wowing” them with service and a tailored offering. It also performs customer rescues when analysis shows the potential to churn, making winning customers from big business so very much harder.

What does this mean for the small business? Well if own or run an SME and you don’t already, you must embrace the same principles as CXM systems. In short, nurture every customer relationship, really get to know what each of your customers likes and as importantly dislikes. Move budgets from marketing for new business, to using it to really impressing your existing customers, then you can build new business from the extra word of mouth generated. Finally employ a feedback scheme so you can get a real handle on what your customers are thinking, as many won’t tell you voluntarily, you’ll just not see them again one day.

In the new era of social media and review sites, customers have power like never before to damage a business and its reputation. Find a fly in your soup at a local restaurant, and a quick witty post about it on TripAdvisor or on Facebook and you’ll soon have the world believing the establishment boasts more insect life than the jungles of Panama.

A question though perhaps we might ask ourselves is, should we in the first instance be posting views on social media or review sites after we leave a premises, potentially inflicting real damage to the business concerned? Alternatively, should we not recognise it’s very difficult to get everything right, especially for every single customer, and so instead feedback to the management quietly, giving them the at least a chance to improve their business and perhaps even make it up to us personally.

Certainly if the business concerned were run by a friend or member of our own family, we wouldn’t dream of publishing negative feedback online as we’d recognise the hard work they put into building the business, and that it would cause them damage. So why do we so readily seek to take this action rather than feedback as we would do if we knew the owner? The English don’t like to make complaints, we prefer to have something to moan about later, but when this negative comment finds its way onto social media and review sites this is no longer harmless chat, it’s broadcasting, and could indeed be seen as malicious since it potentially causes such great harm.

Business owners also need to play a significant part in changing the feedback culture too; management should consider putting in place a feedback scheme / voice of the customer facility. Once received, it is vital any feedback is acted upon quickly, demonstrating to the customer their feedback will result in a positive change and that the business sincerely cares that they are unhappy with their experience. If a customer rescue is achieved and the situation rectified, research shows that these customers will be more loyal than before, and indeed be bigger advocates for the business.

Over the last ten years the internet has changed the way most of us do business or indeed are a customer, and we are still very much at an early stage in the evolution of what we currently term the web. It may seem hard to imagine but the next decade will see even greater change, but this time driven as customer service catches up to technology with the advent of Customer Experience Management (CXM) replacing or laying on top of existing CRM systems.

CXM will aid large corporations achieve a high level of customer care that many of which have previously been unknown for, almost anticipating a customer’s needs and listening to their feedback when they have issues by way of VoC, feedback schemes and other contact at customer touchpoints. This is in stark contrast to the first decade of the mass adoption of the internet, when many businesses sought to almost hide behind their websites when customers wanted to make contact. As customers chased purchased products or were seeking to make a complaint, they trawled around websites in vain looking for a telephone number or even just an email address to make a follow-up enquiry. A ridiculous practice when we look back now, akin to a bricks and mortar shopkeeper jumping behind the counter of his store and turning off the lights if he believed a customer might be on their way back to return goods.

If you are running a business in the approaching new age of customer care then the message is simple, now the world has gone online and you no longer see your customers, you better start listening to them. If you don’t listen to your customers your competitors surely will, and would be more than happy to fulfil their needs. For small businesses not able to employ such complex CXM technology they will have to become a beacon of personal service, getting to know their customers like a local shopkeeper might have done fifty years ago. For the customer this is all good news, and marks a welcome shift away from the frustration of dealing with companies that sometimes didn’t even previously pay lip service to customer care.

Human nature dictates that we trust and value a friendship more once it’s been tested, and the same is true for customer loyalty after an issue arises and the business proves it truly cares. Having had a problem corrected many studies have shown customers become more loyal than they were previous to the issue, indeed oftentimes they then become the biggest advocates for the business.

Most companies today still see contacts made for customer service reasons as a drain on resources only. If we consider the Call Handling Time key performance indicator used in most contact centres, that statistic really equates to how quickly each Customer Service Advisor can end each call rather then ensure each caller is completely happy, let alone go on to use the opportunity for developing the relationship with the customer.

In an overloaded social media world, having a direct conversation or dialog at length with any customer and building a direct relationship has become far more difficult, especially for larger organisations or companies that primarily do business online. So, now in contrast to most, some forward thinking organisations are embracing this type of customer service contact as a chance to develop a deeper relationship, and differentiating themselves from their competitors by showing a high level of care and value toward the customer.

In time with the advent of Customer Experience Management (CXM), each and every contact either via a feedback scheme, Voice of the Customer channel or direct to a contact centre call will be viewed as critical to every business. Until such a time there remains a huge advantage for the early pioneers into CXM, and those organisations seeing the opportunity in feedback and complaints to really set themselves apart from their competitors, by using this customer initiated contact to actually build stronger relationships.

We all love to get feedback when it’s positive, without exception this is true, and conversely the opposite is so for negative feedback which tends to make us instinctively defensive.

It’s not surprising this is the case, if we put in vast amounts of time, effort and perhaps money into building a product or business that we ourselves believe in, then quite naturally it causes in us the emotions of anger and perhaps even pain when someone is critical of it, or the opposite is true if the feedback is positive as it makes us feel a sense of recognition for our labour.

With all feedback it’s important to remember that in most cases the person giving it sees nothing of your effort, nor are they aware of the time you’ve invested, or indeed even understand your intentions or objectives in trying to create something great, they merely see the results of your work and their feedback is simply their experience of these at a single given time.

Since one of your primary aims in business is to make as many customers as happy as possible as much of the time as possible, it makes feedback and each and every customers perspective important. On an individual level it gives you the opportunity to change a person’s negative opinion, and when taken collectively with other customer feedback it can stop you investing your most important commodity which is your time, into things in which your customers may perceive have far less value than you do yourself. Feedback can be a real guide in directing your efforts within your business.

A rather simplistic but useful example of this for illustrative purposes might be in a restaurant perhaps, in which a conscientious chef may love his own grandmother’s particular family recipe for a pie. He may spend extra time preparing this particular dish since it’s a speciality of his and indeed his wife’s favourite too, but if more often than not customers feel it contains too much pepper then the chef would be wise to listen to this feedback, and hold back on what is a minor ingredient rather than seasoning to his own taste. The chef may not prefer the pie himself, but the customers will be happier, the restaurant will sell more pie which is the ultimate objective, and the chef can always be more liberal with the pepper when he next makes the pie at home for his family.

The point being listening to feedback allows you to give the customer what they want, not just what you think they want. Feedback creates an opportunity to save your time and your money, especially negative feedback whenever you can obtain it so it should be welcomed and indeed highly valued. By listening to negative feedback you can achieve greater success, as by adapting your business to accommodate the wishes of your customers you will achieve more repeat business. Positive feedback can also prove useful, giving confirmation of when you are getting things right. A word of caution though in that all feedback is merely a snapshot, and continuously seeking more feedback is essential to maintain standards and to ensure any example of positive feedback isn’t a minority held view, or simply proof that you got things right on one day out of seven.