As the business community struggles with an economic downturn, companies have two choices. They can either manage through it by making cuts or lead their way out of it by focusing on their keys to success: customers.
 
Customer loyalty remains one of the holy grails of business. It leads to lower customer acquisition costs and improved customer retention. It drives increased profitability as loyal customers increase their spending. And, according to a recent Forrester report, 42 percent of the respondents who said that the economy was changing their firm's outlook felt that customer experience would become even more important.
 
Relationships built on trust breed success in the marketplace—and anything less than good customer service hurts business, regardless of the economic landscape. Trust emerges when companies understand the benefit of meeting the needs of both the customer and the company. However, today's CRM systems are missing the "relationship" element, focusing instead on the exchange of data, not interactions with customers. Companies need to empower customers in new ways and push both parties to a more rewarding level of engagement. Emphasizing the relationship aspect of CRM requires commitment from organizations to become more open and transparent to their customers. It means giving customers an independent voice in the relationship and the ability to access accurate and useful information. It requires adopting new technologies to enable a richer interaction.
 
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