If You're Asking Customers How You Can Help, It's Too Late
Artificial intelligence can help your company give people what they need (before they know they want it).
6 Critical Questions to Help Businesses Cut Through the AI Hype
Image credit: Westend61 | Getty Images
When political commentator Amanda Carpenter got stuck in an Amtrak elevator, she tweeted an SOS. Amtrak tweeted back -- seven months later.
Far too many companies keep repeating Amtrak's mistakes. They are reactive, assuming all their relationships are fine until it's much too late. This approach to customer-relationship management (CRM) is sorely outdated. Modern brands must go beyond relationships and prioritize consumer experiences. That means resolving issues seamlessly and behind the scenes, before customers notice anything is wrong.
Today's artificial-intelligence capabilities mean there's no reason firms can't quickly transition from CRM to CEM: customer experience management. In fact, their continued relevance depends on it.
ADVERTISING
Poor customer experience costs companies money.
Unfortunately, many companies' marketers remain in their bubble, detached from client satisfaction. Their approach is to wait for the phone to ring and then use the digital version of a Rolodex to address the problem. Only one-quarter of North American marketing executives currently employ customer-experience strategies to monitor satisfaction and detect problems.
That negligence is costly. Last year, research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan estimated brands lose $300 billion annually because of poor customer experiences.
Sponsored Content
Branding Your Business for Maximum Exposure
By Staples
Sponsored Content
How These Entrepreneurs Attracted an Army of Loyal Customers
By Staples
Long-Term Financial Success Means Embracing Future-Mindedness
Related: The Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Experience
Consider my experience with my internet-service provider. After an initial complaint and six consecutive months of poor internet speed, I called to see what was being done to resolve the problem. The customer-service representative blamed me for not telling him about my issues sooner. Fed up, I canceled my contract. Even if they had tried to retain me, their efforts would have been too little, too late.
A more attentive company would have detected my problems and offered solutions -- or at the very least, followed up on my initial complaint. I'm not alone in my frustration. Nearly nine in 10 U.S. adults want businesses to contact them proactively.
Good customer experiences bolster brands.
Brands can use artificial intelligence to create positive customer experiences. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, for instance, uses AI to glean information about individual customers' itineraries. That helps them draft informed responses to questions received via services such as Twitter and WeChat. The same year KLM upped its AI capabilities, consumers ranked it the third-most customer-friendly long-haul airline.
Focusing on CEM doesn't just delight customers, it also pays off. Companies that score highly on customer-experience measures such as ease and enjoyability of service interactions grew their revenue an average of 17 percent from 2010 to 2015. Firms that scored poorly on those measures experienced just 3 percent revenue growth.
Related: 6 Strategies Smart Brands Use to Satisfy and Retain Their Customers
AI can help anticipate customers' needs.
Some companies think artificial intelligence chatbots can deliver great customer service at scale. These automated customer-service systems can send texts or messages, but they're every bit as reactive as the human customer-service agents who wait by the phone. Both engage customers only after problems arise. AI's true promise lies in its ability to anticipate consumers' issues and needs.
Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business
Google Maps offers one example. It uses real-time data to proactively reroute drivers around traffic jams. Here's another: Apple recently patented an AI system that analyzes consumers' usage patterns and automatically adjusts devices to conserve power. An iPhone could switch itself to energy-saving mode in anticipation of heavy battery usage during the evening commute.
Finally, Adobe's Virtual Analyst, a digital business assistant, monitors company data 24/7 to check for anomalies and alert companies. When a bug started erasing items from a retailer's cart, a beta version of Virtual Analyst caught the error on its own -- saving the brand from a 70 percent spike in cart removals that would've cost the company $1.7 million a day in uncaptured sales.
Related: The Growth of Artificial Intelligence in Ecommerce
Every business has a choice. It can let problems fester and drive customers away. Or it can retain customers and grow revenue by actively improving consumer experiences.
​
Listen to Your Customers, Stay Focused, Profit
Conversations with customers provide insights into how well you are doing and plot where you're going.
Damage Control: 6 Ways to Respond to Negative Reviews
Image credit: Tetra Images | Getty Images
Alexander Maasik • Guest Writer
You lose focus. Whatever your job or whatever project you’re working on, as time passes you start forgetting why you’re doing it. You keep your eyes on your work and stop wondering if what you’re doing actually helps your team and company to move forward.
The best way to combat this it to take some time and speak directly with your customers.
This is what I did last spring. When setting my goals for the summer I added “getting direct input from clients” as one of my OKRs. Having now spent more than three months actively engaging different customers I can share why it’s important to stay close to the people who pay your bills.
ADVERTISING
Of course, most companies have customer support people who already give everyone feedback on a lot of different things. But if you’re an exec or a designer or a marketing specialist who relies only on reports and feedback from the sales guys and customer support, you are missing out a lot.
It’s a lot easier to implement these principles in a start-up then a Fortune 500 company. However, as I’ve previously written anyone can implement processes that have made many start-ups so successful.
Sponsored Content
How These Entrepreneurs Attracted an Army of Loyal Customers
By Staples
Sponsored Content
Branding Your Business for Maximum Exposure
By Staples
Sponsored Content
Keys to Building a Passionate, Engaged Team
By Staples
Related: 7 Ways to Use Negative Customer Feedback to Beat the Competition
Susan E. Wyse writes that “Despite the rise in popularity of online and mobile surveys, face-to-face (in-person) interviews still remain a popular data collection method,” and that it “provides advantages over other data collection methods. “
Here are the top benefits you get from spending time with your customers.
1. Remembering why you’re doing it.
Calling up customers and finding out what they think about your product, and why they’re using it, is a huge motivation boost. It helps you understand how your specific tasks influence the work of your entire company and resonates with clients. It reminds you that there is a purpose to what you do. That your work matters.
2. Helping you to get back on track.
It also helps you understand if you’ve gone in the wrong direction. You may be really excited about your work but find out that it actually doesn’t work for the paying customer. This is not a bad thing; it just sends you a signal that you need to change something. And it’s better to find these things out before you’ve spend days and weeks on something that, in the end, is unproductive.
Related: How You Can Take Advantage of Twitter's New 'Customer Feedback' Tool
3. Letting them know you care.
Even though the impact this sort of direct communication is good for you, it’s even better for the customer. As they see first-hand, that your company considers them a valuable client. Of course I don’t think you should change your product or offer new features because one or two customers ask for it, but it’s good to listen to them.
4. What next?
The biggest counter-argument to this sort of customer research is, it’s time-consuming. You could get a lot more data with a survey or with a focus group analyses. And you should definitely also use some quantitative research technique. However, I believe that qualitative research is worth a lot more and shouldn’t be neglected.
But due to its time-consuming nature it’s important to get as much out of this work as possible. In addition to personal feedback you need to use the data to help others. Make sure it doesn’t end up in some forgotten document somewhere, or in a TPS report no-one is never going to read. Use it to plan your long term strategy or as an in-office coaching material. Or write an article sharing your insights.
These interview can also be turned into case studies that show how your product is used which increases trust for potential clients.
Related: 5 Cool Things You Can Do With Customer Feedback
The Washington Post writes that “ one-on-one conversations with existing and potential customers allow you to uncover many nuggets of information that respondents may not otherwise share directly with the brand.” So talking with your customer gives you insight you wouldn’t normally get as well.
And in the end you’ll be smarter. Client will be happier and your product will be healthier.
Everybody wins.
​
read more...
Solving Contact Center Woes With Customer Engagement
Companies that operate call centers are rethinking how they interact with customers.
How to Push Your Customer-Success Level Beyond the 'Aha' Moment
Image credit: Reza Estakhrian | Getty Images
Given their experiences with them, customers may believe (or at least hope) that call centers are a thing of the past. When asked to describe call center experiences, many customers share stories about rudeness, unhelpful attendants or employees who sounded like they were about to die of boredom right there on the phone. It’s a rare occasion when someone tells a story about an insightful employee who took ownership of the problem and went above and beyond to resolve the issue. (A medal may have even been awarded by the caller.)
However, with a greater focus on customer experience, the companies that provide call centers are even rethinking how they interact with customers. Combining technology with an overall evolution in understanding how to engage with customers has led to a new approach that’s revamping the call center image.
Related: 5 Customer Engagement Metrics All Ecommerce Sellers Must Track
ADVERTISING
Start with solving problems....
Both customers and call centers themselves looked at their relationship as revolving around solving some type of issue that came up. This resulted in an environment in which customer call center reps were trained to deal with “difficult” customers and provided some basic scripts on how to handle this often contentious situation. The result, of course, was always an overriding sense that a customer would be difficult.
Likewise, the customer calling in to the call center most often assumed that the person on the other end really didn’t care and was just regurgitating standard responses. There would be no personal experience or enjoyment. The reality is that customers want to quickly resolve their issues without having to work through multiple auto attendants to find the right person to help. The businesses that call centers support improve the customer experience when they look at the customer as someone they are helping instead of a problem to solve.
Sponsored Content
Colorful Room Makeover for a Good Cause
By Staples
Sponsored Content
Keys to Building a Passionate, Engaged Team
By Staples
Sponsored Content
Branding Your Business for Maximum Exposure
By Staples
The problem was that this approach rarely happened until this most recent evolution in thinking and technology.
Related: The 3 Biggest Sins of Customer Engagement
To increase customer engagement.
Some call center companies realized the value in changing this relationship and turning the relationship into a way to build the business. Avoiding a reactionary approach could enable them to adopt a proactive mindset that welcomed customers rather than “handled” them. This could be an opportunity to make a great impression on the customer, help him, and then benefit by earning future purchases or, even better, recommendations to his peers about the brand.
Yes, call centers have become part of the marketing and customer engagement process. That’s why, for example, global leader in customer experience as a service TeleTech now refers to its locations as “contact centers.” That invokes the idea of personal touch and dialogue because it can include not just the traditional call-in method, but also live chat functionality.
Related: Why Customer Engagement Is the Future of Ecommerce
Technology deepens customer engagement.
TeleTech recommends the addition of technology to any company’s contact center strategy because it provides the ability to focus more on the customer and less on the work involved in maintaining this aspect of a business.
First, technology can provide a way to speed up the wait time for customers. One of the ways it can do this is by offering online content that addresses some of the most typical issues customers reach out to the center for help with. Live chat functionality is another option that prevents customers from being on hold.
Second, technology can also automate part of the customer contact process through the addition of artificial intelligence and can provide new insights that improve how the contact representative approaches each customer. AI has been a driving factor of innovation for many industries, and it has increased companies’ abilities to take full advantage of the torrent of data available today.
TeleTech Chief Revenue Officer Judi Hand explains, “Companies live in a world of data overdrive, with access to thousands of data points at their disposal. Viewed on their own, each point means little to nothing. When you can connect the dots to understand the intent, brands can take immediate action and become exponentially more effective at finding, reaching, and selling to the right audience in a fraction of the time.”
This capability not only makes the customer feel he’s had an exceptional experience, but it also solidifies the brand attributes in his mind and deepens that loyalty every brand wants.
Related: Why Big Data Is Your Key to Beefing Up Customer Engagement
Adding customer experience management tools.
Customer experience management, known as CEM, is a means of monitoring and analyzing customer interaction. While many call center companies have yet to truly leverage analytics, those that have strong relationships with their customers have used these types of tools to assess their customer interaction processes and look for ways to improve the experiences.
These CEM tools can provide ways to analyze conversations, including word choice and customer reactions to a call center representative’s tone and delivery. Monitoring these calls can help to identify patterns that should be the focus of performance improvement. In this way, training becomes a much more efficient and effective process that helps your customer service agents understand how to interact in the way that yields the best experience.
Related: What Social Media Can Teach Us About Managing Customer Experience
Understanding the benefits before implementing customer engagement strategies.
TeleTech advises that any of the aforementioned technologies be integrated thoughtfully. Understanding both the positive aspects and potential pitfalls of any new technology is an essential step — one that’s often overlooked in favor of rushed implementation. Call center companies are now transforming themselves into customer experience experts and learning to balance automation with the human touch for engaging and satisfying customer experiences.
To do this in your own business, TeleTech recommends seeking a partner who can provide the technology and framework to help you analyze your customer needs and identify key engagement opportunities. Implement technology solutions that allow you to maximize the return on these opportunities while targeting the most important aspects of performance.
Calling people to ask for help in solving a problem will likely never make anyone’s list of favorite things to do. By adding technology to their arsenals and putting the focus on improving the customer experience, however, companies can find themselves making people’s short ...
​
read more...
If 80 Percent of Success Is Showing Up Then 20 Percent Is Following up
The excuses are many, but the solution is surprisingly simple.
What Business Are You Really In?
Image credit: Hero Images | Getty Images
Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of success in life is just showing up. Now granted, Woody Allen also defended dating his adopted daughter by saying, “The heart wants what it wants,” so holding him up as a paragon of sound judgment may not be my best move. But if Woody is right, then I (another man whose history of poor judgment and worse choices would give a prudent person pause) would offer that the other 20 percent of success is following up.
Entrepreneurs often fail on both these counts. Showing up is more than merely putting in a physical appearance. It's also intellectually showing up. When you show up intellectually it means you are truly listening to your customer’s needs and pain points and crafting a solution to their problems. Instead, too many solution providers come into a sales call with a solution in mind and then expend copious amounts of energy trying to convince the customer that the prefabricated solution will fit the customer’s needs. When you sell hammers, all you see is nails.
Related: Instead of Worrying About Products vs. Features, Focus on Building Solutions
I see a lack of follow up torpedoing more deals than a lack of showing up. Some vendors (and I admit I have been one) practically make you beg for a quote. They get busy, and I get that. They have bigger and more exciting quotes to write; I get that, too. But I have an immediate need, and if they aren’t there immediately, well, there can be only two outcomes. Either I will get someone else to do fill it; or, I will realize that my immediate need wasn’t all that immediate -- or indeed, even a need. I’ve seem more deals evaporate that way than ones that collapse. In fact, I have lost more deals because of a lack of follow up than I have lost to price, to competition, or to outbreaks of the plague (an admittedly low percentage of my losses), added together.
So why do we do it? Why do we fail to follow up to be responsive to existing or potential customers? The most common excuses are:
No time.
Saying you don’t have time to follow up is ridiculous. It's like receiving atrocious service in a restaurant and being told with a shrug, "Sorry, we’re really busy.” Being the charmer I am, I usually respond by saying “that’s the kind of problem that tends to solve itself.”
Related: 5 Easy Ways to Lose Customers (Infographic)
Not following up because you are too busy resolves itself in the same way that water finds its own level. Customers who don’t want to get poor service or have inordinate wait-time go elsewhere, and you’re left with a clientele that is the appropriate size for your capacity to deliver. Not exactly a solid growth strategy. You had better hope that this clientele size matches up with your ability to make a profit or you will “too busy” yourself into bankruptcy. Not having time to follow up is akin to saying you don’t have time to be successful. You make time to be successful, and if that means biting the bullet and hiring more staff or weeding out the low performers, then that’s what you need to do.
Too much on our plates.
Having too many things on your plate may at first seem to be the exact same condition on as being too busy, but it really isn’t. How often do we find ourselves with hundreds of tasks that would take only a moment to complete, but we become so overwhelmed in the minutia that we don’t get them done? Or we tell ourselves that because it will only take a minute we don’t have to worry about it. The task gets pushed and pushed, and pretty soon the opportunity is gone. This isn’t a case of being too busy; it’s being too disorganized. This can be easily fixed either by delegating effectively, getting a highly organized assistant to nag you into getting things done, or training and discipline. But whatever you do it has to get done.
Related: How This Simple Trick Can Keep You Organized Every Day
Bottom of the pile.
Not all business opportunities are created equal and to treat a low potential or low yield opportunity the same as you would a game changing opportunity is just soft-headed. But you can’t keep stacking “higher priority” opportunities atop the less promising leads, otherwise there will never be any follow up. Instead of piling on top of the opportunity that requires follow up, delegate the opportunity to a lower level worker -- it’s a great learning opportunity and you risk very little by giving it to them. Remember those who cannot be trusted to handle small projects won’t get the opportunity to handle large ones.
​
read more...
If You're Asking Customers How You Can Help, It's Too Late
Artificial intelligence can help your company give people what they need (before they know they want it).
6 Critical Questions to Help Businesses Cut Through the AI Hype
Image credit: Westend61 | Getty Images
When political commentator Amanda Carpenter got stuck in an Amtrak elevator, she tweeted an SOS. Amtrak tweeted back -- seven months later.
Far too many companies keep repeating Amtrak's mistakes. They are reactive, assuming all their relationships are fine until it's much too late. This approach to customer-relationship management (CRM) is sorely outdated. Modern brands must go beyond relationships and prioritize consumer experiences. That means resolving issues seamlessly and behind the scenes, before customers notice anything is wrong.
Today's artificial-intelligence capabilities mean there's no reason firms can't quickly transition from CRM to CEM: customer experience management. In fact, their continued relevance depends on it.
ADVERTISING
Poor customer experience costs companies money.
Unfortunately, many companies' marketers remain in their bubble, detached from client satisfaction. Their approach is to wait for the phone to ring and then use the digital version of a Rolodex to address the problem. Only one-quarter of North American marketing executives currently employ customer-experience strategies to monitor satisfaction and detect problems.
That negligence is costly. Last year, research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan estimated brands lose $300 billion annually because of poor customer experiences.
Sponsored Content
Branding Your Business for Maximum Exposure
By Staples
Sponsored Content
How These Entrepreneurs Attracted an Army of Loyal Customers
By Staples
Long-Term Financial Success Means Embracing Future-Mindedness
Related: The Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Experience
Consider my experience with my internet-service provider. After an initial complaint and six consecutive months of poor internet speed, I called to see what was being done to resolve the problem. The customer-service representative blamed me for not telling him about my issues sooner. Fed up, I canceled my contract. Even if they had tried to retain me, their efforts would have been too little, too late.
A more attentive company would have detected my problems and offered solutions -- or at the very least, followed up on my initial complaint. I'm not alone in my frustration. Nearly nine in 10 U.S. adults want businesses to contact them proactively.
Good customer experiences bolster brands.
Brands can use artificial intelligence to create positive customer experiences. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, for instance, uses AI to glean information about individual customers' itineraries. That helps them draft informed responses to questions received via services such as Twitter and WeChat. The same year KLM upped its AI capabilities, consumers ranked it the third-most customer-friendly long-haul airline.
Focusing on CEM doesn't just delight customers, it also pays off. Companies that score highly on customer-experience measures such as ease and enjoyability of service interactions grew their revenue an average of 17 percent from 2010 to 2015. Firms that scored poorly on those measures experienced just 3 percent revenue growth.
Related: 6 Strategies Smart Brands Use to Satisfy and Retain Their Customers
AI can help anticipate customers' needs.
Some companies think artificial intelligence chatbots can deliver great customer service at scale. These automated customer-service systems can send texts or messages, but they're every bit as reactive as the human customer-service agents who wait by the phone. Both engage customers only after problems arise. AI's true promise lies in its ability to anticipate consumers' issues and needs.
Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business
Google Maps offers one example. It uses real-time data to proactively reroute drivers around traffic jams. Here's another: Apple recently patented an AI system that analyzes consumers' usage patterns and automatically adjusts devices to conserve power. An iPhone could switch itself to energy-saving mode in anticipation of heavy battery usage during the evening commute.
Finally, Adobe's Virtual Analyst, a digital business assistant, monitors company data 24/7 to check for anomalies and alert companies. When a bug started erasing items from a retailer's cart, a beta version of Virtual Analyst caught the error on its own -- saving the brand from a 70 percent spike in cart removals that would've cost the company $1.7 million a day in uncaptured sales.
Related: The Growth of Artificial Intelligence in Ecommerce
Every business has a choice. It can let problems fester and drive customers away. Or it can retain customers and grow revenue by actively improving consumer experiences.
​
Solving Contact Center Woes With Customer Engagement
Companies that operate call centers are rethinking how they interact with customers.
How to Push Your Customer-Success Level Beyond the 'Aha' Moment
Image credit: Reza Estakhrian | Getty Images
Given their experiences with them, customers may believe (or at least hope) that call centers are a thing of the past. When asked to describe call center experiences, many customers share stories about rudeness, unhelpful attendants or employees who sounded like they were about to die of boredom right there on the phone. It’s a rare occasion when someone tells a story about an insightful employee who took ownership of the problem and went above and beyond to resolve the issue. (A medal may have even been awarded by the caller.)
However, with a greater focus on customer experience, the companies that provide call centers are even rethinking how they interact with customers. Combining technology with an overall evolution in understanding how to engage with customers has led to a new approach that’s revamping the call center image.
Related: 5 Customer Engagement Metrics All Ecommerce Sellers Must Track
ADVERTISING
Start with solving problems....
Both customers and call centers themselves looked at their relationship as revolving around solving some type of issue that came up. This resulted in an environment in which customer call center reps were trained to deal with “difficult” customers and provided some basic scripts on how to handle this often contentious situation. The result, of course, was always an overriding sense that a customer would be difficult.
Likewise, the customer calling in to the call center most often assumed that the person on the other end really didn’t care and was just regurgitating standard responses. There would be no personal experience or enjoyment. The reality is that customers want to quickly resolve their issues without having to work through multiple auto attendants to find the right person to help. The businesses that call centers support improve the customer experience when they look at the customer as someone they are helping instead of a problem to solve.
Sponsored Content
Colorful Room Makeover for a Good Cause
By Staples
Sponsored Content
Keys to Building a Passionate, Engaged Team
By Staples
Sponsored Content
Branding Your Business for Maximum Exposure
By Staples
The problem was that this approach rarely happened until this most recent evolution in thinking and technology.
Related: The 3 Biggest Sins of Customer Engagement
To increase customer engagement.
Some call center companies realized the value in changing this relationship and turning the relationship into a way to build the business. Avoiding a reactionary approach could enable them to adopt a proactive mindset that welcomed customers rather than “handled” them. This could be an opportunity to make a great impression on the customer, help him, and then benefit by earning future purchases or, even better, recommendations to his peers about the brand.
Yes, call centers have become part of the marketing and customer engagement process. That’s why, for example, global leader in customer experience as a service TeleTech now refers to its locations as “contact centers.” That invokes the idea of personal touch and dialogue because it can include not just the traditional call-in method, but also live chat functionality.
Related: Why Customer Engagement Is the Future of Ecommerce
Technology deepens customer engagement.
TeleTech recommends the addition of technology to any company’s contact center strategy because it provides the ability to focus more on the customer and less on the work involved in maintaining this aspect of a business.
First, technology can provide a way to speed up the wait time for customers. One of the ways it can do this is by offering online content that addresses some of the most typical issues customers reach out to the center for help with. Live chat functionality is another option that prevents customers from being on hold.
Second, technology can also automate part of the customer contact process through the addition of artificial intelligence and can provide new insights that improve how the contact representative approaches each customer. AI has been a driving factor of innovation for many industries, and it has increased companies’ abilities to take full advantage of the torrent of data available today.
TeleTech Chief Revenue Officer Judi Hand explains, “Companies live in a world of data overdrive, with access to thousands of data points at their disposal. Viewed on their own, each point means little to nothing. When you can connect the dots to understand the intent, brands can take immediate action and become exponentially more effective at finding, reaching, and selling to the right audience in a fraction of the time.”
This capability not only makes the customer feel he’s had an exceptional experience, but it also solidifies the brand attributes in his mind and deepens that loyalty every brand wants.
Related: Why Big Data Is Your Key to Beefing Up Customer Engagement
Adding customer experience management tools.
Customer experience management, known as CEM, is a means of monitoring and analyzing customer interaction. While many call center companies have yet to truly leverage analytics, those that have strong relationships with their customers have used these types of tools to assess their customer interaction processes and look for ways to improve the experiences.
These CEM tools can provide ways to analyze conversations, including word choice and customer reactions to a call center representative’s tone and delivery. Monitoring these calls can help to identify patterns that should be the focus of performance improvement. In this way, training becomes a much more efficient and effective process that helps your customer service agents understand how to interact in the way that yields the best experience.
Related: What Social Media Can Teach Us About Managing Customer Experience
Understanding the benefits before implementing customer engagement strategies.
TeleTech advises that any of the aforementioned technologies be integrated thoughtfully. Understanding both the positive aspects and potential pitfalls of any new technology is an essential step — one that’s often overlooked in favor of rushed implementation. Call center companies are now transforming themselves into customer experience experts and learning to balance automation with the human touch for engaging and satisfying customer experiences.
To do this in your own business, TeleTech recommends seeking a partner who can provide the technology and framework to help you analyze your customer needs and identify key engagement opportunities. Implement technology solutions that allow you to maximize the return on these opportunities while targeting the most important aspects of performance.
Calling people to ask for help in solving a problem will likely never make anyone’s list of favorite things to do. By adding technology to their arsenals and putting the focus on improving the customer experience, however, companies can find themselves making people’s short ...
​
read more...
Listen to Your Customers, Stay Focused, Profit
Conversations with customers provide insights into how well you are doing and plot where you're going.
Damage Control: 6 Ways to Respond to Negative Reviews
Image credit: Tetra Images | Getty Images
Alexander Maasik • Guest Writer
You lose focus. Whatever your job or whatever project you’re working on, as time passes you start forgetting why you’re doing it. You keep your eyes on your work and stop wondering if what you’re doing actually helps your team and company to move forward.
The best way to combat this it to take some time and speak directly with your customers.
This is what I did last spring. When setting my goals for the summer I added “getting direct input from clients” as one of my OKRs. Having now spent more than three months actively engaging different customers I can share why it’s important to stay close to the people who pay your bills.
ADVERTISING
Of course, most companies have customer support people who already give everyone feedback on a lot of different things. But if you’re an exec or a designer or a marketing specialist who relies only on reports and feedback from the sales guys and customer support, you are missing out a lot.
It’s a lot easier to implement these principles in a start-up then a Fortune 500 company. However, as I’ve previously written anyone can implement processes that have made many start-ups so successful.
Sponsored Content
How These Entrepreneurs Attracted an Army of Loyal Customers
By Staples
Sponsored Content
Branding Your Business for Maximum Exposure
By Staples
Sponsored Content
Keys to Building a Passionate, Engaged Team
By Staples
Related: 7 Ways to Use Negative Customer Feedback to Beat the Competition
Susan E. Wyse writes that “Despite the rise in popularity of online and mobile surveys, face-to-face (in-person) interviews still remain a popular data collection method,” and that it “provides advantages over other data collection methods. “
Here are the top benefits you get from spending time with your customers.
1. Remembering why you’re doing it.
Calling up customers and finding out what they think about your product, and why they’re using it, is a huge motivation boost. It helps you understand how your specific tasks influence the work of your entire company and resonates with clients. It reminds you that there is a purpose to what you do. That your work matters.
2. Helping you to get back on track.
It also helps you understand if you’ve gone in the wrong direction. You may be really excited about your work but find out that it actually doesn’t work for the paying customer. This is not a bad thing; it just sends you a signal that you need to change something. And it’s better to find these things out before you’ve spend days and weeks on something that, in the end, is unproductive.
Related: How You Can Take Advantage of Twitter's New 'Customer Feedback' Tool
3. Letting them know you care.
Even though the impact this sort of direct communication is good for you, it’s even better for the customer. As they see first-hand, that your company considers them a valuable client. Of course I don’t think you should change your product or offer new features because one or two customers ask for it, but it’s good to listen to them.
4. What next?
The biggest counter-argument to this sort of customer research is, it’s time-consuming. You could get a lot more data with a survey or with a focus group analyses. And you should definitely also use some quantitative research technique. However, I believe that qualitative research is worth a lot more and shouldn’t be neglected.
But due to its time-consuming nature it’s important to get as much out of this work as possible. In addition to personal feedback you need to use the data to help others. Make sure it doesn’t end up in some forgotten document somewhere, or in a TPS report no-one is never going to read. Use it to plan your long term strategy or as an in-office coaching material. Or write an article sharing your insights.
These interview can also be turned into case studies that show how your product is used which increases trust for potential clients.
Related: 5 Cool Things You Can Do With Customer Feedback
The Washington Post writes that “ one-on-one conversations with existing and potential customers allow you to uncover many nuggets of information that respondents may not otherwise share directly with the brand.” So talking with your customer gives you insight you wouldn’t normally get as well.
And in the end you’ll be smarter. Client will be happier and your product will be healthier.
Everybody wins.
​
read more...
If 80 Percent of Success Is Showing Up Then 20 Percent Is Following up
The excuses are many, but the solution is surprisingly simple.
What Business Are You Really In?
Image credit: Hero Images | Getty Images
Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of success in life is just showing up. Now granted, Woody Allen also defended dating his adopted daughter by saying, “The heart wants what it wants,” so holding him up as a paragon of sound judgment may not be my best move. But if Woody is right, then I (another man whose history of poor judgment and worse choices would give a prudent person pause) would offer that the other 20 percent of success is following up.
Entrepreneurs often fail on both these counts. Showing up is more than merely putting in a physical appearance. It's also intellectually showing up. When you show up intellectually it means you are truly listening to your customer’s needs and pain points and crafting a solution to their problems. Instead, too many solution providers come into a sales call with a solution in mind and then expend copious amounts of energy trying to convince the customer that the prefabricated solution will fit the customer’s needs. When you sell hammers, all you see is nails.
Related: Instead of Worrying About Products vs. Features, Focus on Building Solutions
I see a lack of follow up torpedoing more deals than a lack of showing up. Some vendors (and I admit I have been one) practically make you beg for a quote. They get busy, and I get that. They have bigger and more exciting quotes to write; I get that, too. But I have an immediate need, and if they aren’t there immediately, well, there can be only two outcomes. Either I will get someone else to do fill it; or, I will realize that my immediate need wasn’t all that immediate -- or indeed, even a need. I’ve seem more deals evaporate that way than ones that collapse. In fact, I have lost more deals because of a lack of follow up than I have lost to price, to competition, or to outbreaks of the plague (an admittedly low percentage of my losses), added together.
So why do we do it? Why do we fail to follow up to be responsive to existing or potential customers? The most common excuses are:
No time.
Saying you don’t have time to follow up is ridiculous. It's like receiving atrocious service in a restaurant and being told with a shrug, "Sorry, we’re really busy.” Being the charmer I am, I usually respond by saying “that’s the kind of problem that tends to solve itself.”
Related: 5 Easy Ways to Lose Customers (Infographic)
Not following up because you are too busy resolves itself in the same way that water finds its own level. Customers who don’t want to get poor service or have inordinate wait-time go elsewhere, and you’re left with a clientele that is the appropriate size for your capacity to deliver. Not exactly a solid growth strategy. You had better hope that this clientele size matches up with your ability to make a profit or you will “too busy” yourself into bankruptcy. Not having time to follow up is akin to saying you don’t have time to be successful. You make time to be successful, and if that means biting the bullet and hiring more staff or weeding out the low performers, then that’s what you need to do.
Too much on our plates.
Having too many things on your plate may at first seem to be the exact same condition on as being too busy, but it really isn’t. How often do we find ourselves with hundreds of tasks that would take only a moment to complete, but we become so overwhelmed in the minutia that we don’t get them done? Or we tell ourselves that because it will only take a minute we don’t have to worry about it. The task gets pushed and pushed, and pretty soon the opportunity is gone. This isn’t a case of being too busy; it’s being too disorganized. This can be easily fixed either by delegating effectively, getting a highly organized assistant to nag you into getting things done, or training and discipline. But whatever you do it has to get done.
Related: How This Simple Trick Can Keep You Organized Every Day
Bottom of the pile.
Not all business opportunities are created equal and to treat a low potential or low yield opportunity the same as you would a game changing opportunity is just soft-headed. But you can’t keep stacking “higher priority” opportunities atop the less promising leads, otherwise there will never be any follow up. Instead of piling on top of the opportunity that requires follow up, delegate the opportunity to a lower level worker -- it’s a great learning opportunity and you risk very little by giving it to them. Remember those who cannot be trusted to handle small projects won’t get the opportunity to handle large ones.
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