If You Don't Take Care of Your Customers, Someone Else Will

Recent history has seen the rise of innovation as a key mandate for driving top-line growth in business across multiple sectors. But as organizations have devoted increasing resources and attention to innovation, a critical issue has been ignored in the process. How can you create new value if your company doesn’t have a gut sense for what people outside its walls actually value? Is the challenge facing business today a lack of innovation, or a lack of empathy?

According to the Research Institute of America, up to 90% of dissatisfied customers will not come back or buy again. As part of the session, Jeri Meola will work with the audience to see how empathy can drive change and growth. She dives deep into helping organizations understand their customers–a critical element in decision making, learning, and judgment to support their vision.

About the Presenter

Jeri Meola is a founder and President of SMS Research Advisors. For the past 24 years she has helped educate organizations how to understand and incorporate “Voice of Customer” insights to take care of their customers.

Jeri has expanded the company’s offerings by partnering with market leaders to foster true innovation, bring new ideas to market more successfully, and build loyalty to improve business results. She has had the opportunity to partner as a trusted VOC advisor with visionary business leaders at some of America’s most admired companies, including 3M, Deluxe, Toro, Hearth and Home Technologies and C.H. Robinson. Jeri’s recent awards are the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) with the Lifetime Achievement Award (2009), Red Cross Humanitarian Award (2010) and Finance and Commerce Top Woman in Finance (2011). Jeri is a passionate communicate advocate with current affiliations that include Performance Excellence Network, United Way Women’s Leadership Council, St. David’s Family and Children’s, Sales and Marketing Executives International, Women’s President Organization and the Heart Association Go For Red Women’s Executive Team.