"The Relationship Era" (the latest marketing paradigm you'll eventually hear about,

[Deja Q]

if you don't know it already.)

The Relationship Era:
The Relationship Era is about businesses actively nurturing customer loyalty and perceived satisfaction by carefully managing every interaction with them, for the largest amount of profit.

Colleges teach it. Business practice it. Just keep cognizant of that definition the next time you're in a store or read a commercial.



Of course, when people run out of jobs or money, those using "Relationship Era" tactics will be out of a relationship, folding like a house of cards... or if people see the fraud in something...



http://www.google.com/search?q=relationship+era
(edited: added funky fresh link - feel free to research and make up your own minds. The quiz will be given out on Thursday.)

[annabanana]

1. "perceived satisfaction"

I guess that would be the satisfaction of relentlessly hunting down and capturing a Wheat Thin. Right?

[Berry Cool]

2. What would be so bad about actively nurturing customer loyalty and REAL satisfaction,

as opposed to "perceived" satisfaction?

"Perceived" satisfaction makes it sound like it doesn't really matter whether you truly satisfied the customer, so long as the customer PERCEIVES (or "thinks") he or she is satisfied with you. It suggests that perception is, indeed, reality.

Also, I don't see a problem with "carefully managing each interaction" if that involves giving customers personal attention, caring about them as people and listening to them. I DO have a problem when it's used just as an excuse to collect privacy-invading personal information about customers so as to bombard them with discount coupons for what they buy most, or to try to get them to buy "more" every time they enter a store than they intended buying.

And I don't see a problem with "actively nurturing customer loyalty" except when it comes in the form of hiking your prices up to the rafters and then issuing a "discount" or "savings" card so that the only way the customer can pay the normal prices for your merchandise is to have the card.

[Gman]

3. The problem with this has always been that in customer service departments

there is no perceived loyalty to employees by employers. Therefore, employees really don't care. If employees really don't care, the company is perceived as not caring. And, when it comes down to doing something the customer really needs, if it's outside what the company decides the customer needs, good luck getting it done. Customers realize the "relationship" is one way.

[Berry Cool]

4. Agreed. That is one of the key elements of the problem.

If you want employees who give outstanding service to your customers, you have to cultivate good ones and then treat them like gold. If you do, they will jump through any hoop to please your customers, because they know they will be handsomely rewarded for doing so. They know they won't spend years knocking themselves out and/or being mistreated and humiliated only to receive crappy pay, crappy to no benefits and still be subject to being kicked to the curb anytime you decide you need to cut overhead costs to make the bottom line look better to the stockholders.

That, unfortunately, is how most retail stores treat their employees.

[RagAss]

5. Big Fail if you keep treating employees like shit.

[lunatica]

6. Oh goody! Flowers and a card before getting fucked!

Sure makes the rape a lot easier!

[Nikki Stone1]

8. +1

Perfect!

[ashling]

7. Marketing director walks into a bar and says to the first unattached sexual object he/she sees:

"This is the relationship era, want to perceive some customer satisfaction?"

To which she replies:

"Is that a blackberry in your pocket or _____________."