Robert Howard

In today's fast-paced business environment, businesses need a performance framework that can grow over time, be benchmarked against the competition, and stretch the imagination of employees and stakeholders. Capabilities and maturity models can better position your business for future competition and unforeseen threats and opportunities.

The rapid rise to the top echelons of strategic priority has brought an unfortunate side affect; numerous customer experience management myths have begun to form due to a flood of conflicting definitions, perspectives and over-hyped promises. For any company seeking to establish or improve its customer experience management capabilities, it's important to dispel these myths once and for all.

Losing site of the big picture can happen to even the best of businesses. When short-term business challenges inevitably arise, decisions can be made in haste to address them. Without a master plan, those seemingly innocent decisions can begin to create a burden for the company in the long run. Most importantly, they can ultimately cripple the customer experience.

So, you think that e-Business died in the dot-com bubble of the 1990's? Think again; businesses can no longer ignore three trends that are reshaping how consumers research and buy products.

As an American consumer, chances are that you have been offended in some way by a company this year. It hasn't always been that way. Before the current era of mass-everything, there was a real connection between proprietor and customer: a connection that continues to be the envy of most businesses today.