The last few years have brought disruption after disruption to bear on the ways companies and customers interact. Arguably, the company-to-customer connection has been more disrupted than supply chains or operations, and more affected by disruptors like Covid and technology than any other key relationship. Think of the rise of e-commerce — which hockey-sticked during the pandemic; or the sudden (or seemingly sudden) ubiquitousness of self-checkout kiosks at grocery stores and pharmacies; or the ever-greater prevalence of voice response systems, to which you must listen closely because the “menu options have changed.” Or, recall the Covid-19 shutdowns and subsequent bounce-back, which altered everything from how diners eat to how sales reps call on B2B customers.
How Midsize Companies Can Repair Damaged Customer Relationships
Addressing the tension between cost efficiency and customer intimacy is important for companies of any size, but it’s especially important for midsized companies, particularly those upper-middle-market companies with ambitions to rise to the top of their industry. In many cases, they built their brand, and their differentiation from the big guys, on the idea of personalization — of being closer to their customers than their multinational rivals can be — while also offering more sophistication, a broader offering, and more underlying service capability than small businesses can. Herein lies the core challenge: to grow, they need to build customer capabilities that are scalable, but if they do that at the expense of proactive connection with customers, they will lose their identity and a big piece of their competitive edge.
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