About Winners and Losers

The threat of economic instability and even recession, the likes of which has not been experienced for many years, poses some very serious questions. Do we carry on as before with unchanged business practices? Do we tighten our belts? Do we try to reach out to new markets and customers, recognising that the best form of defence is attack? The reality is that we are likely to do a bit of each, but how do we decide which, when and how?

It is our contention that by embracing customer engagement and adopting the use of digital media as the spine of your customer interactions, no matter what market you are in, you stand a far better chance of not just emerging from a downturn unscathed, but of emerging as a winner.

About the winning authors

Martyn Perks, Business Consultant
Martyn's experience extends from design research, branding, information architecture and user research to usability analysis. He has written for NMA, Blueprint, the Guardian, and Architects Journal on design, technology and innovation.

Richard Sedley, Director, cScape Customer Engagement Unit
Richard launched the Customer Engagement Unit in November 2006 and has built one of the largest groups of specialist consultants available in the UK. His team creates bespoke customer engagement strategies for clients that finely balance business objectives with user needs to maximise their return on investment. Richard is the Chartered Institute of Marketing's course director for social media.

About the CEU

cScape's Customer Engagement Unit is made up of an elite group of specialists who each have core skills in social media, marketing, findability, analytics, virtual worlds and persuasive design. They are entirely focused on delivering improved returns against business objectives and plan, design and deliver compelling, profitable online experiences to clients.

The drawing together of leading experts in 2006 led to the creation of an Annual Online Customer Engagement Survey. This was developed to:

• Gauge awareness of customer engagement.
• Investigate the extent to which organisations prioritise it.
• Look into the barriers and opportunities for creating optimal customer experiences.

In November 2007, whilst contributing to the Second Annual Customer Engagement Report, the team decided to write 'Winners and Losers in a Troubled Economy' in response to widespread concerns about the impact of a slow-down in the economy on customer relationships.