Author and Forbes contributor Stan Phelps recently partnered with Voiance to host The Blue Goldfish webinar. This is the first post in a two part series discussing lessons from that webinar.

Mercedes-Benz USA President and CEO Steve Cannon says it most simply, “Customer experience is the new marketing.” As competition and buyer empowerment compounds, customer experience proves to be the only durable competitive advantage. A recent Gartner survey on the role of marketing in customer experience found that 89 percent of companies expect to compete mostly on the basis of customer experience. That number has increased 53 percent in the last five years.

Customer experience has become the new battleground for competitive advantage. How do you stand out with every wise company focusing on it?

Standing Out in a Sea of Sameness

Former GE CEO Jack Welch perhaps said it best: “There are only two sources of competitive advantage: the ability to learn more about our customers faster than the competition and the ability to turn that learning into action faster than the competition.”

Competitive advantage comes from either knowledge or agility. How much do you know about your customers or how quickly you can take action on that knowledge?

Imagine what would happen if your competitive advantage came from both knowledge and agility. Now technology, data, and analytics come into play.

Understanding Info-sense

Info-sense is “the ability to utilize data to understand customers as people and personalize their service.” Coined by TrendWatching.com, this sixth-sense capability enables companies to gain more insight about customers’ individual needs and act on that insight in real time.

Companies who embrace info-sense can provide customers with the service they need at the moment they need it.

To learn more about using technology and analytics to improve your customer experience, watch The Blue Goldfish webinar hosted by Voiance. In it, Stan makes the business case for leveraging analytics to make your customer experience a competitive differentiator.

Stan Phelps is an Experience Architect at 9 INCH. He writes about the heart of customer experience and employee engagement. He is the author of four books about customer experience and employee engagement called Purple Goldfish, Green Goldfish, Golden Goldfish and Blue Goldfish. They all focus on the little ways to drive differentiation, increase loyalty and promote positive word of mouth.