Cogitations

“The greatest discoveries have come from people who have looked at a standard situation and seen it differently.” Ira Erwin

2012-03-02T00:16:00.000-08:00

I am frequently asked by clients to help them find ways they can improve and increase their relationships with their existing customers. After all, in these frugal times we cannot necessarily expect much in the way of organic business growth - we need to look much more carefully at what we already have.

Those clients with whom we have built trust, loyalty and respect are where we should be focusing a lot more of our time and effort. After all, they have already shown their interest and need for our products/services.

One way to increase the provision of expertise and support to our customers is to look at other businesses who offer compatible or complimentary products/services to our own.

For example, I recently met a company who offer a telephone survey service for their clients. This is a great way to collect useful management information from both existing customers and other audiences (lost customers, new enquirers etc). If my clients do not have the kind of information they need to help them identify new ways to encourage business then perhaps this service can help them.

Armed with relevant data, I am then able to provide my services in helping them to define a CRM strategy which will improve their customer service. Not only have I helped my client to resolve a problem, but on a commercial level I have also enabled them to make use of, and benefit from, my own offering. So everyone wins!

Yesterday I was at a talk given by a telecoms solutions provider. The focus of the presentations were around telephone call recording. For some businesses this is a regulatory requirement - although I learned that actually this is a very small part of the market.

Call recording could positively impact customer service on many levels. The obvious benefit is proof of service agreement, and complaint resolution (from the customer’s perspective). Calls can be saved as WAV files and simply emailed to customers to confirm conversations that have been had, or to resolve disputes on what was agreed.

In addition, however, the ‘call may be recorded for training purposes’. We have all heard this statement at the beginning of a call before. The ability to identify problem call handlers is actually a very small part of this process, because in fact the power lies in identifying your best call handlers (be that in sales, customer service, handling complaints etc) and using call recordings to pass on best practise throughout your team.

Instructing employees on how you want them to behave on the phone is never going to be as easy for them to grasp as giving them actual examples of some great calls.

So from my own perspective, these companies provide services which can enhance the power of my own proposition.

Have a think about how that could work for your own business, you may be surprised at where some potential allegiances are possible.

The customer is always right (or are they?)

2012-02-03T07:26:00.000-08:00

My job is to help clients to deliver the best possible customer service they can, through effective communications, efficient business processes and careful data management. But is there a point when the customer can be wrong? Is customer satisfaction the holy grail no matter the cost? In my opinion there comes a point when winning the loyalty of a particular customer may actually be detrimental to that organisation...

It is a very fine line we walk between delivering excellent customer service which differentiates us from competitors, and actually feeling brow beaten by a client into doing more, charging less or whatever they might demand, all in the name of the relationship.

Client acquisition is an expensive and lengthy process in many cases, and the benefits of retaining existing customers are well documented, yet I am regularly surprised at how much effort is putting into winning new business, whilst relatively little care is given to maximising customer satisfaction post-sale.

Customer service is not the role of one dedicated person in your organisation but should be viewed as a culture and an absolute priority for all staff, and all business processes.

Most managers/business owners are familiar with the concept of customer lifecycle value, but in actual fact the cost of losing a customer is more than this.

Consider the pre-sales process that was applied to winning this customer. Time and effort come at a price. Emails and calls and meetings are not ‘free’ to the business, though never calculated as a cost. If you can put a value to this pre-sales process, then you can double it, because when you lose a customer (x1 of the cost) you also have to replace that customer (another x1 of that cost).

More and more of my business comes to me through referrals, and these are often clients I have worked with who have recommended me to a peer or colleague. Lose customer #1 and the referral to customer #2 and #3 also gets wiped off. And the referrals that they may have made to their own peers and colleagues, potentially #4 and #5.

Your lost customer may also feel actively negative towards your business/brand, if they feel they had a bad experience rather than just leaving you for a competitor they preferred. This negative perception could also cost you customers - what do you call the opposite of a referral?!

All in all it is very expensive to lose a customer.

Having said all that, the flip side is that occasionally (and hopefully very infrequently) you will find a situation where you may actually consider ending a customer relationship. A bad customer is one that erodes your profit, creates a negative morale, even verbally abuses. They have unreasonable demands and expect special consideration yet their expectation far exceeds that which is reasonable. A bad customer can negatively impact your brand or even cost you employees. These customers are not right. And they possibly need to go!

One exercise to help you identify if any of your clients are detrimental to your business is to measure them against the criteria of your ‘ideal client’. Consider all the angles of behaviour, working practices, reliability, attitude, value and longevity. You could even produce a ‘checklist’ and score your customers accordingly.

But my feeling is that you know in your gut if you have one of these customers. There is a whole separate discussion to have on how you go about getting rid of them!

Delivering excellent customer service - how much does it cost your business?

2012-01-24T11:13:00.000-08:00

Last Autumn the Institute of Customer Service did some research into the numbers of people working in customer service, and their salaries.

The size of the ‘customer service’ workforce in the UK has reached some amazing figures: from 98,000 in 2002 to 328,000 in 2011 - 1.5% of all employed adults now hold a role in this area. In a way, say the ICS, this is unsurprising since 77% of the country’s GDP is service related.

What is rather scary, however, is how much these people are earning to be the public face of our businesses! Average earnings in the sector are just £14,868 per annum. This figure is 34% below the UK average earnings of £22,568.

I often explain to clients how much value they must attach to their employees, as these are the folks who illustrate in practical terms the value that the business attaches to their customers. Sadly it seems a small percentage of national industry are currently taking this to heart.

Call centre recruitment is big business and where you see ads stating ‘immediate start’ and paying the national minimum wage it reinforces the impression that such roles are casual and even temporary. Nothing says ‘professional’ and ‘valued’ which is how these customer-facing representatives should be viewed.

It’s like abandoning the signage on your shop front and just putting up an old bit of cardboard with your brand name painted on it in left over emulsion! Is that a great first impression? Would you rush in that shop with a handful of tenners to spend?

Have employee incentives, training, qualifications and inclusion in the development of the business and empower them with the techniques and tools to do their job (serving your customers) to the best of their ability and with enthusiasm and positivity.

I guarantee you will improve your customers loyalty, satisfaction and value.

Lame Customer Service Excuses

2012-01-16T09:28:00.000-08:00

We have all experienced this: ‘I’m sorry, the computer won’t allow me to do that’ or ‘I can’t see that from this computer’ or ‘I don’t have any way to see that information’. Isn’t it just the most frustrating thing?

It is important to note that behind every such phrase is a set of business processes and dataflows that have been created, developed and endorsed by human beings - not computers! The computer is simply following the instructions it has been given. Somebody somewhere decided what those decisions should be.

I saw this happen on holiday, when my sister and brother-in-law had car trouble resulting in a hire car being provided to bring the family and all their luggage home, whilst the car followed on later after repair. The (international) hire car firm was unable to process the booking with a collection point in southern France, and a delivery point in the UK or even the ferry terminal at Calais, despite being the main hire car provider to the leading international breakdown recovery firm my sister had bought a travel policy from.

There was a difficult conversation to be had in the office of the hire car firm who, whilst they agreed that this would be the most sensible way to proceed, could not process such a booking ‘on the system’. My sister was advised to (lie) ‘agree’ to return the car to that office, and simply leave it at the ferry port office instead.

The family then had to cross the channel as foot passengers (no mean feat with three kids and all the luggage they had packed into their estate on the way out!), pick up another car at Dover, which they had to pay for themselves and then try to reclaim against the policy, and then finally get home.

Whilst I am quite sure it was a much more complex data flow and business process to have a pool of cars able to cross the channel to aid customers, it seemed that in the name of speed and efficiency, this had been overlooked as a viable solution to a frequently occurring customer service issue.

Whilst equipping the employees with a centralised technology system which would have been implemented to empower the workers to improve their customers’ experience and manage the business at the same time, this poorly conceived configuration actually took the decisions away from the front line staff and ensured the customer will never return!

Just wanted to illustrate this simple lesson in how important the analysis of business processes and data flows are when implementing CRM strategies and applications. Use of case-based intelligent reasoning helps to anticipate customer (and front line staff) needs.

Reviewing the business case from the perspective of the customer (walking in the customer’s shoes) is a great way to ‘see’ what is required. There are services available to help us analyse our customer service - look at Shopper Anonymous for a brilliant example of this. Armed with this knowledge we can go a long way towards differentiating ourselves by keeping the technology in its place, as a supporting tool and not the key decision maker!

If you invite conversation, you must talk back!

2011-11-03T14:39:00.000-07:00

The whole point of a CRM (customer relationship management) strategy is to improve the relationship between your organisation and its audiences, whether they are prospects, customers or other influencers.

Having a strategy which invites comment and feedback from all those people is just part of the process. The really important bit is putting processes in place which allow you to respond...and that means responding to the bad stuff as well as the good.

Social media is becoming a vital part of any communications plan but the impact of ignoring what is being said is far worse than not getting stuck into social media at all!

If you set up a Facebook profile or page, at the very minimum you need to monitor the wall to see what people are saying and respond. But you can also get so much more proactive: make special offers, inform of new products, even ask questions, run surveys, have competitions.

If you have a Twitter profile you should make sure that you check for both direct messages to you, but also anywhere that your products, your Twitter name - and even your industry sector - are mentioned.

You can use LinkedIn to keep abreast of where your contacts are working, who they know, which groups they are members of and more. Start your own group to encourage dialogue and feedback, for current products and even to road test new ideas.

Collect the all profiles of your contacts and before you’re due to speak to them, you can spend 2 minutes checking out what they have been up to. This is proven to massively enhance the quality of your subsequent conversation, providing natural start points and genuine conversation - if your CRM application stores all this information, you can do this really quickly and easily.

Check out these metrics from a recent study by evolve24:

I was horrified to read that 71% of those surveyed said they didn’t get a response to their complaint on Twitter. For those companies it was a dangerous mistake...

You can download the full executive summary HERE

If you think you need help with social media strategy, then I can highly recommend you talk to experts to set you on the right track. You simply cannot afford to get it wrong... Have a look at Zoodikers for details of training courses, free downloadable tips and lots of advice...

The value of a sales process

2011-10-04T13:26:00.001-07:00

I recently attended a seminar organised by Ladies@11 where one of the speakers was Dylis Guyan, an inspiring and hugely successful sales trainer/consultant who works with some serious bluechips such as Barclays Bank, Barclaycard, Norwich Union, Allied Dunbar, Thorntons and National Grid.

Her philosophy is very simple,"If you want excellent results, then you must show what excellence looks like".

When she ran regional sales teams for the financial services arm of Barclays Bank, she continuously communicated, presented, trained and coached her teams to produce phenomenal results. She produced a myriad of sales tools to find ways to:-

Attract more high quality customers
Increase conversion rates from appointment to sale
Increase average sale values
Increase the life time value of customers through implementing outstanding after sales strategies
Increase the number of referrals

All of these areas rely on the accurate collection and mining of data and the best way to do this is using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) application. These software programmes are constructed to store data very specifically for your company, enabling users to easily find and add information, and subsequently report on that information to help you see trends and patterns in customer behaviour and many other areas.

One of the specific areas where CRM can really make a measurable difference, however, is in the new business / sales process. There are some scary statistics about how prospects are nurtured into customers:

48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect

25% of sales people never make a second contact

12% of sales people only make a maximum of 3 contacts and then stop

10% of business make more than 3 contacts

In this digital age where social media enables us all to chat freely to those we know and those we don’t, about products we like and service we hate it is actually quite easy to increase the number of contacts your business has with prospects. You can reach them in so many ways, and those ways don’t need to be expensive, they don’t need to be time consuming and they can be massively effective.

Just to really hammer it home:

2% of sales are made on the first contact

3% of sales are made on the second contact

5% of sales are made on the third contact

10% of sales are made on the fourth contact

80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact

So if you are in the majority of businesses, making the switch to an organised campaign of regular contact to your prospects can have a huge positive effect on your conversion rate, which in turn has a direct - and very measurable - effect on your bottom line.

If you implement a simple CRM strategy to do nothing more than manage the workflow of your new business, you can expect results soon. Something as simple as following up a mailing with a telephone call can improve results by 50 - 1000% according to Dylis. And she knows from experience!

Find out more about Dylis Guyan here

CRM: because Customers Really Matter

The Magic Circle of Social Media, CRM and Sales

2011-09-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

At a recent 4N networking meeting, e-vu shared a platform with Katie King from PR consultancy Zoodikers to shed some light on the magic circle of Social Media, CRM and sales. Here’s an extract of that presentation.

Aligning social media with business goals

The start point for any marketing campaign has to be an examination of your overall business strategy; without this, it is futile. This process involves the identification of your key target audiences and the ways in which they are likely to be influenced, for example via a LinkedIn Group, direct or at a networking event.

Once this has been established, your social media activity can be used to create noise in the platforms that have the greatest exposure to these target audiences. At the same time, this can be used to drive traffic to ‘the hub’; typically your company website or blog.

According to a recent presentation published by E-Consultancy, those companies which have been most successful in their use of social media are those who have approached it in three phases:

Firstly, using the channel as a listening platform to understand the conversations that are taking place between your prospects, clients, partners and other influencers.
Secondly, as a place to encourage interactions with both current and potential clients around activities /subjects that are of interest to them.
Finally (and rather inevitably), the platform should also be used as a sales channel in order to enable and accelerate purchase.

A process to drive leads via social media

It is the question of how this data and insight is used to generate sales after interactions have taken place over social media that can often leave businesses mystified. The answer is Social CRM; following up on these interactions via e-shots and other means of communication, and recording this activity.

As the following chart from E-Consultancy shows, social media is not typically integrated well with CRM.

Creating a two-way communications strategy

CRM has always been a strategy used typically by ‘customer facing’ departments such as marketing, sales and designated customer service. Creating a joined up data platform so that the customer experience is seamless and painless has increased. A CRM application now can be expected to provide critical tools to enable smooth internal communications, staff empowerment and motivation, post sales service above customer expectation and management information which really delivers the facts and figures needed for future planning.

Your social media strategy is part of the overall CRM mix. It is commonly acknowledged now that organisations cannot simply ‘choose’ to get involved in social media. Rather that they will be left behind if they don’t embrace it. And that is not simply because competitors are embracing it so we feel we must, but much more importantly that our customers are expecting it from us.

Using data that you have already collected on your existing prospects, customers and other audiences can help to shape your social media strategy. If you were to profile your top 20 (or 50, or 1000) customers, what would that profile look like? Simple demographics can point you in the direction of the channel(s) that will ‘speak’ to a wider audience of a similar profile, effectively targeting your communications.

Using contacts that you already have such as customers, and reaching out through them (retweets, facebook comments, linkedin contacts) engages a whole new audience who respect your customer and their opinions. Getting testimonials out there is a great step, but engaging in a ‘conversation’ which others can be part of and contribute too is even more powerful.

Using your CRM application to capture the details of this new audience and engaging with them as soon as possible after they have communicated with your organisation via social media, enables a new level of communication to be established, where your more traditional methods of marketing and PR can become the next steps in your sales process.

Measure the results by tracking success of leads and sales in your CRM application is really bringing the whole process full circle. You then have results which can directly impact your strategic planning, and you’ll be in no doubt about the direct and indirect effect of a social media campaign on your bottom line.

Re-focusing for the autumn term

2011-09-06T23:49:00.000-07:00

So here we are at the beginning of the autumn term. Even though I left school over 20 years ago (ouch!) I still get that feeling of a fresh new focus after the summer. Everyone is back in the office and motivated to make things happen.

At the moment I am doing a lot of work with clients focused around how they can improve their customer/client relationships, often in purely practical terms. By this, I mean that the organisation’s internal systems and processes are all part of delivering customer experience, even if not directly customer facing.

Checks and measures are a really good way to ensure consistency, and often your team will have some excellent ideas about how things could be improved; but do you have a channel for them to communicate those ideas?

Next week I am working with a new client who recognised their need for a CRM strategy some time ago. They bought a leading application at that time to help them deliver it but feel that they may have rather lost their way in terms of both daily activities and the application itself driving towards their strategic objectives.

We’ll be running a workshop to help them re-visit their original strategy, update it and amend it to suit the current business needs. With this new definition it will be a much easier job to push the application into shape and to re-train (if required) those individuals whose roles require the use of the application, so that they not only understand what they must do but more importantly, why they are doing it.

Getting the team motivated to achieve the same set of goals is critical in the success of any CRM implementation - and getting them to help define the path to success ensures their buy-in. It is a powerful force when a business pushes 100% in the same direction!

An example of how CRM really makes a difference

2011-08-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

This week, I am providing a case study which is not from one of my own clients, but illustrates so well how CRM can help drive a business forwards. Whilst it is a large business, the principles of what they have achieved can completely translate to smaller businesses. It perfectly describes the link between application and strategy, and shows how one supports the other...

Quoted from CRM magazine August 2011 issue, and part of the CRM Elite awards for 2011, the case study features Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden

The Challenge

The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden last year hosted 1.3 million visitors. The 137-year-old, 71-acre park has a $26 million annual operating budget, but only about a quarter of the funding comes from government sources.

"Because we rely less on the government and more on our own to generate funds, we operate more as a for-profit organisation. We’re driven to innovate because we have to," says John Lucas, the park’s director of operations.

So it comes as no surprise that about two years ago, the park took a serious look at how its current systems were inhibiting revenue growth and customer service. It found a jumbled mess of multiple point-of-sales systems—one for ticketing, one for retail sales, and one for food and beverage sales—and a lack of insight into who came to the park, what they did while there, and where they spent their money.

"We knew we were doing a little more than $4 million in food sales, but it could take a week or two to run a sales report because the staff had to sift through register tapes", Lucas explains.

The Solution

In July, the Cincinnati Zoo decided to replace the siloed systems with one integrated solution. All 54 POS terminals in the park were linked and all revenue—every dollar spent by every guest—enters a central repository that can generate real-time reports. The system lets park management see real-time sales data to ensure inventory and staffing meet the demand.

Since installing the system, sales at the park’s 16 food and beverage concessions have increased by 25%, and retail sales have risen by 20%. Managers can also forecast precisely how much inventory to buy ahead of time; in the past, they guessed. "We are able to make much smarter buying decisions," Lucas says.

Another benefit of the system has been improved marketing. For example, the zoo can track the ZIP codes of every visitor and better direct its marketing and promotions message to areas where it will get the most for its dollars. Using the customer location data, the zoo was able to cut about $90,000 in discounts on park memberships and admissions that weren’t providing a high enough return. In addition, $40,000 was cut from the marketing budget. And, as a result of better marketing, the zoo expects to increase the number of visits by 50,000 during 2011.

Another cost-saver for the zoo comes from better allocating staff to the areas of the park drawing the most attention, and doing so in real time. That kind of labour optimisation is important because the zoo spends about $1 million a year on part-time labour.

Beyond the sheer financial impact, though, the park has been able to improve the service it provides to guests before, during, and after visits. The system enables two key groups to be targeted for special promotions: season pass holders and non–pass holders. Promotions can be tailored to guests’ spending and marketing efforts readjusted along the way.

If, for example, a member shows an interest in wine tastings, movies, or special exhibits that the zoo offers, management can tailor his membership package with discounts and exclusives to premiere shows, exhibits, and other events. Or, if a customer always buys lunch at the zoo but never buys anything in the gift shop, the zoo can stock his membership with food and drink discounts.

"Before, everyone got the same membership package. Now, we’re marketing to customers in ways we know they’ll be most interested in," Lucas says. "Now we can get a total picture of our members’ behaviour at the zoo and break them into segments so…we can tailor the member benefits for each person."

"I’m blown away by our ability to get at the information that we never knew was available or that we knew was available but didn’t know how to get," Lucas adds.

For Lucas, the difference between now and prior to the implementation is huge. The system "changed our business in almost every way," he says. "We could not have been any more archaic three years ago. We were light years behind where we are now."

Based on the results the Cincinnati Zoo has seen with their CRM strategy and application, this year the park will integrate its payroll and labour scheduling into the system. The zoo also hopes to initiate a loyalty program. "We see this growing. Every time we look for one opportunity, we find two more," Lucas says.

Thoughts on customer service strategies in tough times.

2011-08-05T02:44:00.000-07:00

At the moment we are all feeling the pinch. Life costs more, profits are down, sales are harder to achieve. In my world the constant question is ‘how can I keep my customers?’.

Now, more than ever before, customer service is critical to maintaining the success of any business. Employee loyalty and engagement is next on the list.

I recently read a comment about an employee asked to take a 30% pay cut who bitterly commented that they would be delivering 30% less effort. That business cannot afford a 30% decrease in customer service. It made me think about ‘fear based’ strategies for keeping customers loyal, avoiding price drops (which further impact profit) and managing employee morale during pay freezes, reduced hours or worse, job losses.

A few observations from client experience that might help are:

1. Treat your employees the same as you want them to treat your customers

Manage expectations and make sure that information given is clear, and most importantly honest. If you can engage your employees in the success of the business, they will want to ride the hard times to be part of the good times. I seem to mention this a lot in my ramblings, but all the strategy in the world is useless unless it is actually implemented.

2. Understand that a satisfied customer is good, but a loyal customer is better

Satisfaction is the aim, but this is really just delivering to expectation. It is average and the bare minimum. Aim to be better than satisfactory, aim to deliver excellent customer service, this way you create loyalty from consistently positive experiences and confidence in your business. This applies to both customers and employees.

3. Be aware that all the marketing and PR messages in the world cannot make employees deliver to the promised standards

Employee morale is more important and harder to manage in tough times. Your marketing and communication strategies should extend to your internal audience. When employees deliver on your promises and create excellent customer service, customer confidence goes up, loyalty is created, and employees see a positive business environment.

These seem like simple ideas, but will be vital in helping to maintain and even increase your customer base.

Understanding how CRM fits into the mix

2011-07-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

The biggest question around CRM is "do I need it?". I explain CRM to my audience as “a strategy for managing interactions with customers, prospects and other audiences". So anybody communicating needs to think about it. A CRM application is the technology to organise those interactions in order to help a business to deliver excellent customer service.

The second biggest question is how it works alongside other key business specialists with which a small business may wish to work. Here is a quick run down of how that works:

Marketing

Your marketing professional (or consultancy) will be working with you to develop clear messages which will help your business in one or more areas: attracting new clients, launching new products or clarifying your business proposition. But how do you deliver that practically? CRM is the tool that enables you to deliver those communications, measure the success of your campaigns, and deliver a quality service to those customers you win as a result of your marketing campaign.

PR

When you undertake PR activity, you are creating a platform of communication which builds a rapport with your audience, they could be employees, prospects, customers, or investors. But once again you need to manage those communications, and be able to report back on the success of them. If you increase awareness of your brand through press coverage, social media etc then you’ll be attracting new relationships - manage those relationships and build on them via your CRM application.

Business Coach

This is an interesting one. You (or they) may see this as a cross over, but I firmly believe there is a place for both: if your BC wants information on your current customers, profiles, sales targets vs reality, staff activity, complaints procedures or financial information, then your CRM application can help to provide all that information without you (or one of your team) bashing away at an Excel spreadsheet for days.

Virtual Assistants / Telemarketing

If you have 3rd parties communicating on your behalf, you can provide near seamless integration with your in house team by making use of the cloud. Working with a cloud-based CRM application provides access to key (but only relevant) data for your outsourced specialists, and security ensures they can only see and edit the required data. Teach them to create meetings, schedule activities and they can contribute to the business as though they were sat in the office with you.

Regulatory requirements

If you are measured and audited by a trade body or other regulatory association, then adapt your CRM application to provide the workflows that ensure you meet the requirements, and create reports to provide the correct management information when you are audited. Spot checks are no longer something to dread, as you can make certain information/processes mandatory to ensure that you are not bending the rules, these days ignorance is no defence!

Staff performance

When you expand and take on employees, you need to know that they have the right information and tools to be able to do their job to the best of their ability. You also need to know that they are doing it in the way you wish. Use your CRM application not only to provide the corporate ‘style’ of communications, but also to enable you to oversee activity without constantly questioning or requiring endless verbal or written reports. Real time data ensures you know exactly where the business and each employee is at.

In summary, CRM strategy fits around all the other key business areas as much or as little as it is required...

Small businesses are more successful when they adopt a CRM strategy

2011-07-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

Using our CRM application to review trends and patterns, we are able to see some fascinating evidence that adoption of a CRM strategy with a supporting application helps businesses to be successful.

Reviewing the data of a number of clients who have adopted a cloud-based CRM application, we can see that a number have increased their user numbers quite significantly in a 12 month period.

Almost without exception, those businesses have all been heavy adopters of the activity management functionality in their CRM application.

This means that users are logging in very regularly (usually daily) and can easily record and view who talked to whom about what and when to follow up.

Activities are tasks a user performs when communicating with customers, for example, sending emails, attending appointments or making telephone calls. Users can create activities for themselves to do, can assign them to someone else to complete, or can share them with others.

Activities can be scheduled, in progress, completed, or cancelled. Activities involve one or more participants. For a meeting activity, the participants are those contacts and/or users attending the meeting. For a phone call or webinar activity, the parties are the caller and person who is called, and/or other contacts who dial in.

Part of managing activities is the ability to schedule in advance (negating the need for users to write lists, stick up post-it notes or remember) in combination with reminders.

In addition applications can be configured to do some of this work automatically, for example ‘schedule x activity for x user after x days’ or ‘if field A is updated to 123, schedule x activity for user B in 1 day’.

The data shows us that, for example, a 5-user system one year ago is a 20-user system now. The users are scheduling and completing regular activities against (sales) opportunities and the log in records show that most users are logging in daily.

Conversely, where a system is being accessed minimally, and users are uploading as little data as they can get away with, and retrospectively, growth is slower and user numbers barely change.

The reasons why a CRM application might have low user adoption are predictable:

there is no clear strategy to define the objectives and goals of the system
processes have not been clearly mapped out
users have not been successfully trained

These are the reasons why purchasing software is not ‘doing CRM’. In fact the first two items in the list above can be carried out before an application purchasing decision is made. Businesses who try to cut corners by ignoring the first two items will not succeed in the third.

And if a business has already got an application and user adoption is low, it is not too late.

Defining the strategy and processes that are required going forwards will shape the requirements of the application. They may be different from the original configuration and require some redevelopment, however in practice this is still more cost efficient and less disruptive than the temptation to ‘scrap it and start again’.

With ‘top down’ management enthusiasm and drive, a dusty and unloved CRM application can be reborn into an effective and essential business tool which enables the business to deliver an exceptional (and consistent) customer experience.

How the experience of our customers affects our relationships with them

2011-07-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

This week I want to look at the evolution of ‘customer experience’ and how that will affect the ways we work to build longlasting and fruitful relationships with our customers.

The way that social media has burst into our business lives as a platform for our customers to publicly love or hate us is indicative of changes in our relationships with those customers.

So what are the new trends that we need to be aware of?

Customer insight and action

We have long talked about the need to ‘know your customer’ but in practical terms this doesn’t mean just running a satisfaction survey every now and again, and ticking the box. It means asking structured and relevant questions to gain information on what our audience likes/dislikes, wants/doesn’t want, and most importantly acting on it. Using PR - particularly via social media channels - enables us to quickly and cost effectively prove we are responding to market needs.

Organising unstructured data

Customers have been asked to feedback since the dawn of CRM time. But they usually have to distill their rich thoughts down to a 5 point scale, so that all the usefulness of the response is missing! Now we can provide customers with so many ways to feed back: open comments in surveys, call centre verbatims, social media discussions etc. Did you know that there are now applications which can analyse this unstructured data and discern what is making them happy and unhappy?

Customer service rejuvenation

As companies have become more focused on customer service over the years, they have put customer service in a box labeled ‘cost centre’. As a result, the focus on customer service has been around cost-reduction and streamlining operations to become more ‘efficient’. This created a dramatic shift in customer contact to outsourcing to lower cost regions of the world (the dreaded call centre). Ironically this has created enough poor experiences for customers to actually change the perception of call centres (once branded efficient, speedy, cost effective) to a massively negative commodity, to the point where many companies now promote a benefit of using them is that they don’t have call centres The speed/cost of ‘average handling time’ per customer will cease to be a measure of success and quality measures from feedback will instead gauge satisfaction.

Interactions with Consumers

The next generation of customer interactions are digitally based: think smart phones, tablets and touch screen TVs. Customers can now touch, drag, shake, pinch and tap to get the information they need. Voice interactions with digital media will increase. It is all so much more immediate and business propositions must be clear and concise to match.

Social media assimilation

Social media is still new and different and many business owners and managers have yet to buy in to this communications channel. But it won’t go away and companies have to incorporate social media into the core activities of their communications strategy. There will be new ways to blend self-service applications, personal interactions and customer-to-customer communications and this must all be monitored and managed as part of the core customer service strategy.

Digital/physical interactions

Online is no longer a separate and distinct communications channel (ie ‘get a website’). With mobile phones become the most important digital device with a massive take up amongst our audiences, online experiences are no longer tied to the home or office. Consumers can go online and receive/send communications whilst in the shopping centre or restaurant, and can demonstrate their pleasure (or displeasure) even whilst they are still engaged in the experience. Marketing to the ‘right now’ shopper will be a major avenue for increasing customer loyalty.

Cultural renovation

Business owner/managers are really starting to understand that unengaged employees do not create engaged customers. The culture of positive customer experience must come from within the business and align all the employees with the vision and mission of the company. Employees who take pride and responsibility for delivering customer excellence instantly transmit a clear perception of value and care. Managing by numbers will no longer hit the mark, instead HR experts will be increasingly required to lead strategic culture initiatives to engage employees.

There is a great quote I found from Bruce Temkin (the co-founder and Chair of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, a non-profit organisation dedicated to helping customer experience professionals learn, grow, and succeed) in response to the question “what is customer experience management?” which he defines as “the discipline of increasing loyalty by consistently exceeding customers’ needs and expectations”. And that’s it in a nutshell!

(Data) mining for gold: where to start digging

2011-06-29T07:55:00.000-07:00

Any CRM application allows users to store appropriate information about customers, prospects and other audiences, to help them build relationships. Business owners and managers know why they should record this data, and why they should be building relationships, and they know why customer service improves bottom line, but do they know how to achieve it?

Here are some practical tips on the sort of data that you might consider collecting and more importantly, how you might use that to help you in your business planning.

Basic demographic data could include:

contact information
complete address
geography
DOB (for consumers)
no. employees

Purchasing data should include:

how often they buy
when they buy (seasonal/time of day/event driven)
where they buy (online/shop front/telephone)
when they last bought
how they pay

Marketing data could include:

subscription to marketing info/newsletters
where they heard about you
who referred them to you
industry sector or area of interest

This information should be collected over time, as part of the relationship building. Don’t make the mistake of trying to collect all the data at the beginning of the relationship.

Spend the time learning about your customers through various contact points: friendly follow-up phone calls, surveys, one-on-one discussions and even competitions or other offers. Be non-intrusive and remember the whole point of collecting this information is to better understand your customers and provide more complete solutions.

There is only reward in collecting this data if you can then sort and analyse it. Use data to help you spot trends, patterns and opportunities. Here are some ideas about how you can mine your data for gold:

Identify your top 20% of customers (if you cannot identify them at this time, that should be the first goal for your CRM!) and cross reference with demographic and other data:

Look for things they have in common: is it geography? industry sector? business size? gender or lifestyle?
Look at their purchasing patterns: who is buying the most? perhaps a certain market sector is spending more than another? what is your best selling product or service? which product/service naturally promotes additional sales?
Measure sales activity: where are your leads coming from? which ones convert to sales the quickest/easiest? which customers buy again? how often do they buy? what is the value of an average customer to you and how much does each sale ‘cost’ you to win?
Identify successful communication channels: do your best leads come from the networking groups you attend? from your advertising? social media campaigns? did the trade show you attended pay for itself in new business?

It is really important that you are aware and compliant with privacy laws and data protection. There is a huge difference between the abusers of data, who simply blast ‘noise’ at anybody they can (think spam) and carefully targeted and relevant marketing information aimed at a specific audience who have opted to receive such matter.

The beauty of being a small business is that when it comes to agility, you are way ahead of bigger, more staid competitors. If you see a new pattern emerging you can adjust your goals and objectives (overnight if necessary) to take advantage of it quickly. Staying light on your feet as an organisation reaps rewards.

Five tips for improving your Customer Service

2011-06-22T01:28:00.000-07:00

I wanted to give some practical tips on customer service this week. We all know we need to provide great service, but in practical terms, as a small business owner, what can we do to make sure it is actually happening?

Traditional customer service always centred around happy engaging staff helping customers to spend their money! But these days so much of our relationship with our customers is remote, and it is not just the ‘shop floor’ staff that affect customer relationships. Everyone in your business has an impact, direct or indirect.

With the ability to name and shame those companies who we do not feel gave good service, our complainants can reach our entire market easily. We must deliver excellence to stay in the game.

But what is customer service? More and more it is not about value for money because our customers expect that already. It is to do with the level of satisfaction in our sales process and the attitude of the business and its people in dealing with the customer. Equally, the post sales experience is critical: getting the right advice, tips, technical support and follow on service can make or break the deal - even if the customer has already parted with their money and likes the actual product/service they initially received.

Given the growing demand for pre and post sales service and the increasing reach of consumer satisfaction (or otherwise) here are five steps to help your small business deliver excellent customer service:

1. Hire Positive People

If you are hiring, consider the applicant’s disposition as much as their qualifications. After all, skills can be learnt but attitude is much more difficult to change! People who are open, friendly, approachable and generally motivated are more likely to respond positively to customers. You need staff that can take a personal interest in not only getting the job done, but in making sure that the customer feels appreciated and looked after in the process.

2. Train them

When you have built a team of employees who will become the ‘face’ of your business to its external audiences, you need to ensure that they not only understand the products and services you offer, but also the aspirations and goals of the business as a whole. If staff understand why they are required to do certain tasks or aim for certain objectives, they are far more likely to buy into the whole idea than if they are simply told to do them. Don’t see training as something for new hires to be carried out by long term employees. Whilst this plays a valuable part, ongoing involvement in the business trends, directions, objectives and changes will ensure your staff remain engaged and committed as they feel responsible for the success of the business as a whole.

3. Treat them well

Do you treat your staff with the same regard as you would want them to treat your customers? Think about that. You expect your team to ooze friendly and efficient customer service, yet you may not provide an environment which encourages such behaviour. People unhappy in their role are very unlikely to display a positive and helpful attitude to customers. They will most likely copy the behaviour and outlook they receive from managers. Organisations who adopt a proper review procedure for staff and keep them engaged and motivated will naturally provide a positive atmosphere for customers and other external audiences to benefit from.

4. Ask customers for feedback and act on it

You may think you are delivering excellent customer service, but the only true way to find out is to ask those who are on the receiving end. Don’t be tempted to ask only those you know are satisfied. Equally, don’t ask very basic feedback that elicits superficial responses. Show that you want honest feedback that you can act on, by asking proper questions which illicit thoughtful and valuable answers. Carefully construct open questions (that cannot be answered by yes/no) so that you can get true insight into the perception of your company and its service.

5. Lead by example

As the business owner or manager responsible for your company’s success, you need to listen to your front line staff to gain a clear understanding of true customer satisfaction levels. Information that moves up the organisation chart tends to become filtered and you may not be getting the true picture. If you want to know what is happening in your business, you need to talk to your employees and your customers. Establish clear channels for communication from everybody in and around your business. The more accurate information you can glean, the better picture you’ll have of what needs to change. You need to set the example of approachability and positivity throughout your organisation.

If you can instill a genuine desire to deliver excellent customer service in your entire workforce, you will positively impact your bottom line.

Can you over-communicate?!

2011-06-15T23:03:00.000-07:00

I spend many happy hours helping clients to plan their strategy for talking to customers and other significant audiences, and to implement that strategy, often with technology as a tool to help them.

In a meeting today I was illustrating the kind of targeted offerings that a business can make to its customers if it knows enough about them. And that led me to think about how that can go wrong.

It is a well documented fact that by learning about our customers we can react more personally to them, and provide information, services and products which are relevant to them. But sometimes a business can get it wrong, and the phrase that springs to mind (borrowed from my 13yo step-daughter!) is ‘over-share’.

A business can literally talk too much! Some examples:

I had tyres fitted by a leading high street fitter about two years ago who then kept hassling me to quote for my insurance. When I finally gave in they were more pricey than my own insurer but they still wouldn’t let it lie!
I requested a brochure for some conservatory blinds which were far too expensive for my needs, and yet despite me telling them I wouldn’t be buying from them, they called and called but wouldn’t leave a message. The phone literally rang 10 times a day over a week
I subscribe to a magazine and yet the website (where I am registered as a current subscriber) constantly sends me emails offering me incentives to subscribe

In light of these ‘getting it wrong’ experiences, here is some simple guidance on how to get it right:

1. Invite customers to join the party

Make it really easy for people to sign up for your information, or ask their permission to send them relevant communications. Manage mailing lists in accordance with the data protection laws. Consider separate ‘marketing’ and ‘info’ lists so that you can communicate clearly with a customer regarding a specific service or product they have bought, even if they do not want to receive your sales and marketing pitches.

2. Don’t waffle on

These days we are all too busy – fact. If you send a survey, make it multiple choice and keep it to 10 questions or less. If you’re sending a newsletter, keep it short and sweet so it can be read in three or four minutes MAXIMUM and make sure it contains entertaining and useful information, not just fluff. If you are marketing a product or service, stick to the main benefits and be brief – use headlines. Consider engaging a copy writer if your messages are not getting through.

3. Offer incentives

If you want the customer to feed back to you on service or complete a survey, for example, then give them a reward. It doesn’t have to be costly to you – I have seen lottery tickets used! You can make it worth their while in publicity, or product, or discount. Remember how much they can tell you which helps you to improve your business – and put a cost to it.

4. Get real

I’m sorry to get specific but please, no matter how cost effective you think it might be, don’t use automated call services to contact your audience. Ever. By all means outsource the calling if you cannot manage it in house, but choose a human service that learns about your business and can talk knowledgeably on your behalf. I really don’t buy into the ‘any publicity is good publicity’ philosophy when it comes to cold calls!

5. Let them go

However much you want to talk to your audience, if they don’t want to listen you have to respect that. Provide a simple unsubscribe option and make sure it actually does unsubscribe them. There is nothing more irritating than continuing to receive stuff from people you have taken the time to ask not to send it. There are also legal implications. You should also be concerned about the Telephone, Mail and Fax Preference Services which exist to provide consumers with a blanket opt out.

Engaging customers is no longer just the job of Marketing...

2011-06-07T03:14:00.000-07:00

Traditionally it has always been a remit of the sales and marketing department to create new relationships (find new customers) and develop longlasting relationships (sell more to existing customers).

But it is now recognised that every role in the organisation - either directly or indirectly - affects the customer experience, where loyalty and satisfaction are born. It is now the job of every person working in and on a business to focus on customer service, even if they are not directly responsible for communicating with customers.

We are all aware of the sales and marketing team’s contact with the outside world as they create, develop and maintain the perception of the company to its external audiences. We know about the telesales team, customer support representatives and even the website.

But think beyond these business areas, perhaps to finance? How about those making/packing products to be sent to customer? Engineers responsible for servicing/repairs to existing customer products? What about the delivery team? Human resources (potential employees are your future customer service team)? In particular, don’t forget about the administrators, reception staff and even switchboard operators…

When you consider all the touchpoints (the point of contact when products or services come into contact with a customer) in your business, you may be surprised at just how many there are.

Part of your communication strategy should be to consider how your customers feel about their interactions at all those touchpoints so that you can determine exactly what should happen and thereby ensure that it is a consistent experience for every customer. This way you leave nothing to chance, and customers are reassured that they receive the same excellent level service every time they interact with your business. This process can help to define employee roles and responsibilities so that staff are clear not only about what they must achieve, but why (more on staff engagement another time).

There are a number of stages to becoming Customer-Centric (don’t you love all these phrases!) and these begin with simply being reactive to customer requests/comments/feedback, to tentative forays into structured customer feedback, data collection and analysis, through to formal Business Intelligence reporting on critical business processes.

The fully customer-centric organisation does all of this to some degree or another. Management and staff are incentivised on loyalty and relationship building. The business is actively tracking satisfaction and loyalty, and understanding the customer lifecycle and value – and most importantly is prepared to take action when any of these measurements goes awry.

The most important part of your CRM strategy is not the ways in which you will inform your customers and other audiences about what you do well but rather, what you will do when things are not 100% perfect.

From the smallest business upwards, the ability to flex and evolve our business objectives and goals in order to keep delivering excellence in customer service is what will enable us to achieve just that.

You sometimes don't know what you don't know...

2011-06-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

When I meet with a new client, they usually have ideas about what they want from a CRM system, and how they will communicate with their key audiences. They want to talk to me about finding the ideal application to help them implement their CRM strategy.

But what they don’t always know, is how else they can exploit a CRM system to benefit other critical areas of the business, which in turn helps to ensure a better customer experience.

Clients who already have a CRM strategy can also benefit from discussion around other tasks which could be improved, streamlined or replaced by functionality in their CRM application. Asking the question 'how could we achieve X...?' can be enlightening.

CRM was traditionally a sales and marketing tool, developed to enable sales teams to market more effectively and to close sales more often. These days, however, it reaches well beyond those areas.

A recent white paper called ‘What can CRM bring to your business?’ (click here to see the paper) produced by the digital publisher Computing, polled senior decision makers in UK businesses of all sizes, and states:

"Customer retention is boosted, interdepartmental communication is improved, data and work duplication is reduced and workflows are made more visible to all. Information is centralised, leading to easier and more accurate decision making."

Some small businesses still shy away from a CRM strategy and application believing them to be ‘large business’ tools, but evidence suggests that in fact it can have a greater positive impact on smaller businesses who are able to take bigger leaps forward.

You cannot increase the numbers of customers through the door if your internal systems are already struggling to deliver.

Repetition of activity, laborious and time consuming paperwork, dubious message taking, disjointed record keeping, de-motivated staff can all have a direct impact on customer service, and with the expansion of social media and networking, just a few negative comments can really damage your reputation.

Many businesses will dip a toe into the muddied water of CRM in the belief that it is a software application to be bought and installed, at which point they can cross CRM off the to do list. No wonder CRM historically had such a bad reputation!

The most important part of CRM is the strategy – defining the objectives and goals help to shape the strategy, which in turn provides a specification of what the application might need to be able to do. But equally, the illustration of what else is possible with a CRM application, to a business owner, can help them to develop the strategy.

The main benefit of a CRM strategy and implementation for over half of the respondents in the survey I mentioned earlier was “increased availability of information leading to improved customer service and retention”. Sales and marketing benefits came lower in the list…

How do you rate the customer experience that your company currently delivers?

2011-05-25T00:39:00.000-07:00

How do you rate the customer experience that your company currently delivers?

We can all cite examples of hideous customer service where a company wouldn’t speak to us, or didn’t call us back, perhaps they didn’t deliver what they said they would or we felt they ripped us off. Consumers are now able to vocalise these issues to a wide audience thanks to social media and this should be enough to compel us all to consider how we can improve our customer service.

When e-vu helps a client to devise their strategy for communicating with clients, prospects and other audiences, a key part of that strategy must include handling negative feedback: if you give your customers a platform to tell you what they think then you have to be able to take it! Most importantly you need to make sure that you don’t ignore it – you may be able to claw back that customer’s loyalty by handling their complaint with care and attention.

On the flip side, consumers will also mention excellent customer service if they feel they were treated above and beyond expectation and this should drive the provision of a platform to do so – we all know about the power of referral. However, it is no longer enough to deliver what you said you would, at a fair price. Customers expect value beyond ‘average’, and going the extra mile is now the expected distance.

A survey carried out by the Temkin Group has revealed some interesting facts:

Companies have significant customer experience ambitions. Only 11% of firms think they are customer experience leaders today, but 65% want to be leaders within three years.

Participants were asked to "rate the overall customer experience that your business currently delivers":

· Better than any other business: 3%

· The best in our industry: 8%

· Above average in our industry: 53%

· Average: 26%

· Just below average: 10%

· The worst in our industry: 0%

There’s very little customer delight. Across different interaction types and different channels, very few respondents think they regularly delight customers. The results are most problematic for online interactions; only 16% of respondents regularly delight customers using online customer service.

Profitability trumps employees. Improving profitability is a very important goal for 95% of respondents, but only 43% of firms feel that way about improving the work environment for employees.

But the most interesting part of the results for me was the response to the question “what are the significant obstacles to customer experience efforts?”

No.1 reason given was “Other competing priorities”

Straight in at no.2 was “Lack of a clear customer experience strategy”

What shocks me is that these are well established firms that have annual revenues of $500 million or more. What could be a higher priority than ensuring your customers are happy?!

No matter how simple it might be, I truly believe that EVERY business should have a strategy for delivering excellent customer service. It isn't hugely time consuming, or costly to do. And as importantly as having a strategy, they should actually implement it through every key process of their business.

How can this not be at the top of everyone’s to do list? Without customers, we have no business…

Download a copy of the full report here

Customer Service - the Water Babies way...

2011-05-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

Listening to the radio on the way back from a client meeting today, I was interested to hear Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, talking about the business and how its success had peaked and dipped over the years. He said that when they hit hard times and profits began to slide, it was because “success had become a strategy and not an outcome” and it struck me that this was quite probably the case with many businesses, large and small.

The example he gave was that they started serving toasted sandwiches to complement their coffees. One day when he walked into one of his stores he was hit by the smell of burned cheese rather than the aroma of quality coffee, and he immediately pulled all the sandwiches from all the stores. He said that the ability to make an additional few dollars per sandwich had clouded their original mission to become “the premier purveyor of the finest coffees in the world”. Sandwiches only returned to stores once they had been re-designed and could be served without the burning of cheese!

This is a great example of how focus must remain on customer service in order to grow a business. All the best strategy and money making ideas can only benefit a business long term if excellent service makes them palatable and welcomed by the customer.

Howard has recently published another book about life with Starbucks called ‘Onward’ – the website says that the book title refers to a process and not a destination. Howard had actually stepped away from the business as CEO when it was flying high but then felt he had to take up the reins again when it started to struggle.

Most of us are not running international super-brands like Starbucks, but the lessons learned apply just as much to our small businesses. Customer service should remain at the core of all business objectives and goals – without customers we have no business!

I often work with businesses who are right at the start of planning their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) strategies, and have found that the most powerful way to identify the areas of communication for focus, is to have my client view their business through the customer’s eyes. A business process which seems logical to the manager may not give the best experience to the customer. Implementing a CRM strategy can encourage employees to deliver customer service in the way they would like to receive it (remember Mrs Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By?!).