As the economy continues to remain in tough shape, companies have held to the mantra that “cash is king.” This is certainly true as companies use cash reserves to maintain operations, while revenues falter. However, there is a second “king” that is emerging in importance as well. That is the customer.

During the booming economy, many companies were able to take consumer demand for granted at a macro level. The more products offered, the more stores opened, the greater the revenues. It was simple. This translated into less attention to truly delivering great customer experiences in terms of meeting true needs or offering excellent customer service. There is a building awareness of the need to re-focus companies from solely driving on internal operations efficiencies and financial structures and into delivering great customer experiences.

Some companies, such as Apple and Southwest Airlines were already focused on customer experience well before the economic meltdown and are faring the downturn much better.

Although I don’t write about our own business often on this blog, there is news to share on that front. We have entered into an agreement with Bedrock Branding to merge our firms to offer solutions to develop and deliver extraordinary customer experiences with a matching external brand promise. There is a sense of integrity and value when a company’s brand promise is backed up by real-world customer experiences that at least meet, if not exceed, expectations.

There is a building emphasis around customer experience that will build further through 2009 and beyond. Consumers will be willing to spend on compelling offers and experiences, not just on thoughtless purchases. This is a long-cycle trend that is reversing. The successful companies of the future will survive the downturn based on making the customer “king” and will be the only ones to break free of the rapid commoditization that will continue to challenge profit margins with the growing global economy.

Michael Kanazawa is Chief Executive of Bedrock Dissero and co-author of Big Ideas to Big Results.

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