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The Customer Experience is King
Richard Hendee
Silver Fox Advisor
February 2025
Recently I saw a business marketing article with the title – “The Customer Experience is King”. Having a background and experience in finance I have heard and even said “Cash is King”, which when you are having a conversation about finances “Cash is King”. But the more I thought about “The Customer Experience is King”, I can see how the two phrases tie together. Let me explain.
If a business does not have any competition, then a customer’s experience isn’t really important; however, most businesses have competitors, and if a customer has a bad or not-so-good experience, for whatever reason, with a business, then the customer likely will stop using that business and go across the street where a similar business provides a satisfactory or great experience, even if it costs more to do so! Thus, “The Customer Experience is King”. This leads to my assertion: If the business doesn’t have customers buying its product or services, then it doesn’t have any sales, so it doesn’t have any cash!!
You may be saying to yourself, I don’t have that problem, all my customers love us, what we sell, and how we deliver our product(s) and service(s) to them, but do they? Your customers’ experience with your business is only as good as your employees who deliver it. How do you check your customers’ experience with your business?
Here are a few suggestions:
- Hire a mystery shopper or two and have them actually walk into your business to buy something.
- Send out a customer survey and solicit feedback on your customer’s experience with your business.
- Ask some of your customers directly how their experience was the last time they visited your business.
- Check the ratings that your business receives on social media.
- Assess traffic count in your business year over year.
- Sit in your car outside in the parking lot during a few peak business hours and observe the expressions of the customers as they leave your business.
- If your business has an online service, have a friend or relative buy something using the online process and have them provide you feedback.
- Check out the number of returns or refunds that are being processed vs that same time frame in similar periods.
I am sure you can even think of some additional ways to verify that your customers are receiving the customer experience that you expect.
If you need assistance in reviewing and identifying some customer experience factors that you can build on, I recommend you seek a business advisor, consultant or mentor: Contact a Silver Fox Advisor. Remember, having experience on your side always helps. We encourage you to visit our Website at www.silverfox.org to select a Silver Fox Advisor and also to learn more about the Silver Fox Advisors, as well as our great programs and community outreach endeavors.
Job Losses in the U.S. due to AI
Antonio Szabo
Silver Fox Advisor
February 2025
We are living in a world very much focused on AI. As we all know there are many reasons for this. This paper is focused on the potential impact of AI on labor markets.
Most people believe that AI is a threat in addition to being a revolutionary technological achievement. Let’s examine some facts and educated projections on the potential impact of AI on the US labor markets.
A good starting point is, which type of jobs are more vulnerable to AI.
Obviously, the category of jobs that are more vulnerable to AI are routine and repetitive jobs. AI will significantly impact routine and repetitive jobs by automating tasks that require minimal creativity or critical thinking. Roles such as data entry clerks, telemarketers, and assembly line workers are particularly vulnerable, as AI systems can efficiently handle these tasks, reducing the demand for human labor in these areas. For example, financial services and customer support are seeing automation in activities like fraud detection, basic inquiries, and report generation. Also, some white-collar jobs will not be immune. Thus, the jobs of accountants, administrative and legal assistants, will be disrupted. Ironically, basic programming roles will also be affected.
Some jobs are actually complemented by AI.
The jobs less likely to be affected by AI are the ones that have content that requires emotions.
Doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists rely on emotion and Emotional Intelligence (EI), therefore are less likely to be impacted in a major way. It is worth noting, that in the Healthcare Sector jobs such as Pathologists and Radiologists may see reduced demand for their services since AI enhances diagnostics.
The work of Emergency Responders (Paramedics, Firefighters, and Police Officers) requires both quick judgment and empathy negating the AI threat.
Having a great affinity for music (particularly classical music), I pondered about the potential impact of AI on music. Conductors, soloists, and musicians in general are safe. So, they are where AI could have an impact in composition. The composition of classical music is a very complex mixture of knowledge about music history, harmony, and emotional depth. While efforts with AI in music are ongoing and have been at least for a couple of years any success stories are in popular music. The experiments devoted to Symphonies and Concertos have produced results that could be characterized as amateurish. One hesitates to call it infantile mainly because it is Mozart.
According to recent projections by researchers Forrester, within the next one to three years, AI could potentially lead to the loss of around 2.4 million jobs in the US.
