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With a downward spiraling economy and customer expectations shifting, companies must respect, value and listen to their customers like never before. Many companies are realizing that being able to execute a consistent high-quality customer experience has become more of a necessity because people on a whole are being much more discretionary with their spending.

Marketing and economic data supports this theory. According to Carlson Marketing, in a good economy U.S. companies lose 50% of their customers every five years. Yet just a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by nearly 100%. With that it is not hard to imagine that in today's economy customer loss can sound the death knell of a once profitable business.

Listening to your customers is not a new or complicated business idea. However, with the advent of the internet the ways in which a company can effectively and efficiently listen and respond to their customers has both changed and increased dramatically over the years.

Nowadays building a successful customer driven marketing plan requires a balance of technologies and strategies that are coordinated, insightful and responsive. Creating such a plan requires that you first look at the degree to which your current business strategy creates tangible value for your customers. And secondly that you use what you learn from your customers to guide your company's decision making.

It is imperative to remember that today's definition of customer driven marketing requires more than the use of technology. It requires a seamless integration of that technology along with a variety of other marketing, sales and customer service tactics. Furthermore, it requires that the customers always remain at the center of your thinking and that you communicate that through all of your company's activities.

There are both tried and true as well as new and exciting ways to listen to and engage your customers such as surveys, social networking, and live chat. There are also countless ways to analyze and measure the data received while actively listening to ones customers. That customer data, if used properly, can make the difference between a successful company and an unsuccessful one. This article will attempt to touch briefly on a few of these techniques.

First and foremost, to truly have a fresh and accurate perspective on it's customers attitudes, a company should conduct monthly or quarterly surveys of a random sample of customers. The

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