Jerry Sparger asked:


Some companies can’t seem to get out of their own way. Declaring themselves customer-centric, they turn right around and design business processes along departmental boundaries, creating stovepipe operations that frustrate customers. Upon review, management discovers the company is accomplishing its internally generated goals. Yet the customers aren’t happy. People are “doing things right,” but they aren’t doing the right things to create outstanding customer experiences.

 

Why? Because too many companies fail to obtain meaningful customer input before designing business processes. They fail to understand which behaviors their customers value and which behaviors create frustration in the customer experience. Ultimately, senior managers must ask themselves a single question before including any given activity in their business processes: “What is the value of this activity to my customer?”

 

I recently asked the president of a midsize subsidiary of a large, highly visible company, what his sales agents would say prevented them from selling more. He laughed and replied, “They would say ‘us.’” When I asked what he meant, he gave me several examples; this one is very typical.

 

This company sells a complex technical solution, tailored to client needs. Sales and pre-sales consulting teams spend months collaborating with the customer to define a very specific, customized solution. The sales team then prices the solution and presents the “final” proposal to the customer for approval. So far, so good.

 

At no point in the long, complex collaboration among sales, pre-sales consulting and customer is either party’s legal team involved. The legal teams of both companies are blindsided by complex solutions that sales and the customer consider “a done deal.”

 

The customer’s legal department often finds real problems in the solution definition that must be corrected before approval. The vendor’s legal department, not fully understanding its role in the sales process, often adds unreasonable legalese that sometimes protects the vendor right out of relationships with customers. Failing to involve legal early in the sales process creates unnecessary turmoil for the vendor and, more importantly, the customer. This vendor is quickly earning a reputation for being difficult to work with.

 

Inclusion

Here’s how you fix that. You include both legal teams early in the sales process, at key steps in the process. Allowing legal to act as advisors to the sales team and customer earlier in the process helps avoid contract difficulties and keeps expectations clear. Lawyers aren’t put in a position to have to delay contract signing, and the proposed solution is more accurate. To make such an approach truly effective, senior management must ensure this change is mandated through procedures that define responsibilities, triggers of engagement and information flows for sales and legal. By including legal early in the process, you ensure that members of your legal team understand the role they play in creating an outstanding buying experience for the customer. And you help them create better contracts that protect you and establish a good relationship with your client.

 

This is but one simple example; every interaction with a customer has the potential to either be problematic or to delight the customer. Take the time to examine how each department—legal, sales, technical, customer service, delivery, shipping and transportation and finance and accounting—interacts with your customers.

 

To deliver an outstanding customer experience, ask your customers what they value the most, then design your business operations in response. Focus on doing those things well that the customer values most, and stop wasting their time and your money!

 

Develop your information flows, business processes and activities with customer interaction in mind and tear down departmental boundaries, improving your value to your customers, while reducing wasted activities.

 

The best way to discover which activities provide value to your customers is to create a detailed questionnaire for senior account managers and executives to use to start meaningful conversations with customers. This approach, rather than statistical surveys, will provide you with actionable insight into your customers’ needs. Look at each activity from the customer’s point of view. What works well? What does not? Why? Select customers of the greatest importance to you and that fit your profile of a good customer.

 

Armed with these two views of customer interaction, you can align your customer-impacting activities with your customers’ ideal of how they want to work with you.

 

Senior managers can examine how their strategic goals and objectives fit with what they have learned from their customers. This might yield some strategic changes, such as new objectives or metrics, targeted at improving customer value.

 

Key frontline managers and staff should work as a single team, regardless of departmental boundaries, to determine if activities are adding value; considering information flows, users, owners and timing.

 

Finally, any changes in strategic objectives or metrics—and any changes to process and activities—should be implemented with a communications plan. This ensures everyone understands management’s intentions and support—and that all your people understand their individual role.

 

Carolyn Craven asked:


According to a well documented study, sixty-eight percent of customers who leave your company for one of your competitors do so because they believe you are indifferent to their needs and opinions.

 

It is a common organizational pitfall to become complacent about customers’ needs and wants, especially during positive economic times. Although you may be familiar with the statistic that attracting a new customer costs five to six times as much as retaining an existing one, it’s easy to make the mistake of letting customer feedback fall to the wayside when you have two or three new customers lined up for every one that you lose.

 

But what happens when that reserve of new customers suddenly dries up? Although there were some classic warning signs, many businesses were caught off-guard by the present economic recession. Businesses across all industries are being adversely affected by a shrinking GDP (which decreased at an annual rate of 6.3% in Q4 2008) and rising unemployment (which increased to 8.5% in March 2009). Americans are tightening their spending belts and businesses are clamoring for fewer customers who all have fewer dollars to spend.

 

With demand for both consumer and B2B goods and services slipping, it is more important than ever to satisfy and retain the customers you do have. While attracting new customers will always remain a goal to strive for, few companies have the luxury in these difficult economic times to spend many of their diminishing marketing dollars on that objective. It is much more efficient to concentrate on retaining, up-selling, and driving repeat business from current customers.

 

According to a recent survey from Accenture (2008 Customer Satisfaction Survey), “how well companies understood and met the distinct preferences and expectations of the customers they serve” was the number one reason that customers stayed with their current product or service provider rather than seeking a competitive alternative. It may surprise you, given the current economic climate, but customer experience ranked even higher than price when determining when and if to leave a provider.

 

Given that a positive customer experience with your products, services, and customer service employees is essential to retaining customers and therefore vital to the health and longevity of your business, right now is one of the most critical times in our economic history to listen and respond to feedback from your customers.

 

Gathering customer feedback must not be viewed as a dispensable expenditure, even in the face of sharp budget cuts. According to a recent report by the Aberdeen Group, 55% of companies surveyed have made zero budgetary cuts in the area of customer feedback initiatives, and 19% have actually increased spending in this area. Informed business leaders realize that an investment in customer feedback and retention is an investment in the long term survival and growth of their companies.

 

Online customer surveys have evolved as one of the most cost-effective, efficient, and accurate means of gathering customer feedback data. Online surveys allow marketing professionals to measure satisfaction levels from a large number of customers at once, without the incremental time and cost of using paper or telephone surveys. Products like Checkbox Survey are managed from a standard web browser, can be implemented relatively quickly without costly IT services, and can be deployed on a large or small scale depending on a company’s needs. By utilizing online surveys, organizations can easily tap into existing customer email databases and incorporate customer surveys into their current customer email campaigns.

 

Because online surveys from vendors like Checkbox can be designed and deployed quickly and updated at any time by multiple users (within set permissions), companies are able to easily adjust their survey initiatives to react to shifting market and economic conditions. Survey results and reports are available in real time, allowing for opportune responses and reactions.

 

Customer retention rates won’t soar overnight, but small incremental changes that are implemented thoughtfully can have a significant impact in your customers’ perception of how you value them and their business. Start by surveying your customers today to create a baseline of your current customer satisfaction levels. Then, consider integrating feedback surveys into your everyday business process. This not only softens the resource requirements of collecting feedback, but also allows your business to check its customer satisfaction pulse at any point in time. Common customer satisfaction surveys include evaluations that are emailed automatically following a purchase transaction or customer service experience.

 

However your business chooses to monitor and respond to customer feedback, it is most critical that customer satisfaction remains a top priority. The economic tide will turn again, but the businesses that will survive and thrive for years to come are the ones that continue to value the opinions and needs of their current customers, regardless of how many new customers may be lined up to take their place.

 

For more information about customer satisfaction and survey software options, visit Checkbox Survey Solutions at http://www.checkbox.com or contact a Checkbox Product Expert at 1-866-430-8274 (Int’l +1-617-715-9605).