Customer Focused Innovation

It seems like companies of all sizes have an annual or semi-annual customer event. But, in some cases the senior customer advocate doesn't have an active role in these events.

So, I've been wondering. Should customer advocates be an active participant in their own company's customer forum? Should they provide input into the event planning, present updates, and interact with customers throughout the event?

Below are four reasons why those in charge of customer listening, the customer experience, and customer insights should be involved in these key customer events.

1 - The chief customer experience officer should be visible and accessible to all critical customer segments. Your strategic customers should know that customer-focus is ingrained in the culture and has dedicated senior leadership.

2 - These events are valuable customer listening posts. Customers often share their challenges, needs, and best practices. Coupled with other customer listening posts, these are great inputs that can help guide future decisions.

3 - The customer perspective and insights are typically centralized and housed by those who are responsible for the customer experience. This information can be helpful in putting together a powerful event that targets specific customer needs.

4 - These events are a prime time to communicate how you are listening to the customer and using their voice to drive the organization forward. The customer experience officer should be a central figure in delivering this message.

If you are involved in your customer events, what have I missed?

Note: This post was originally published in Customer Connection on 9/16/2009.

It doesn't take much to convince business leaders that building customer loyalty is a logical customer retention strategy. Intuitively, it just makes sense.

In fact, customer retention is just one of many different reasons why a company would want to partner with a business consulting firm, like Walker, to develop strategies for building customer loyalty. But, one often overlooked reason is loyal customers will stick with you during tough times.

We have all worked for a company that has encountered significant change and times of change create uncertainty amongst employees and customers. Whether the change is a significant product upgrade, an overhaul of an order management or billing system, or the integration of a new call center, all have implications on the customer experience and customer loyalty.

Companies that have a strong and loyal customer base will come out ahead during times of change. The graph on the left is data for a company that is in the process of implementing a significant change that directly impacts the customer.

The horizontal axis represents the customer experience of the change, with responses ranging from "excellent" to "poor." The vertical axis represents the percent of customers who are "extremely" or "very likely" to search for alternative products. The two lines represent loyal customers and disloyal customers.

The key take-away - The difference between the slope of the two lines is extreme. Notice the dramatic slope for the disloyal group compared to the subtle slope for the loyal customers. When loyal customers encounter a bad experience they will stick with you. Whereas, disloyal customers will not tolerate a bad experience.

There are many benefits of having a loyal customer base. Which ones do you think get overlooked?

Note: This post was originally published in Customer Connection on 9/2/2009.

I recently attended a panel discussion where the panelists (who were all from the same company) shared the actions they were implementing based on customer feedback. At the end of the session, the moderator asked, "In two or three bullets, what does Nirvana look like for your customers?"

My two bullets:

1 - Customer Success - through the use of our products and services we're able to help our customers succeed.

2 - Exceptional Experience - our customers enjoy the experience when using our products and services.


What say you? What does Nirvana look like for your customers?

Picture credit - Vandan Desai

Note: This post was originally published in Customer Connection on 7/31/2009.
 

• Whether or not you are a natural, everyone needs the basics and needs practice.
• Some people need to practice more than others.
• Some people need to build their confidence, while others have no fear.
• With enough practice, it will become routine.
• While you might not ever forget how to ride a bike, if you don't get practice, you will lose some confidence.

One of the creative communication approaches that I'm seeing more of these days is the use of cartoons to communicate ideas and concepts.

One of Walker's first experiments with this approach was last year at a Walker Fall Forum. During one of the breakout sessions, Walker used a simple comic strip to communicate what the year 2013 might look like.

Take a look. I'm interested in your thoughts. Do you think this is an effective way to communicate with your customers? What do you think about Pam's Virtual Adventure?

Last week I attended a United Way collaboration and best practice sharing event and was reminded that the customer is the voice that pushes an organization forward.

As I attended the various break out sessions, I heard familiar stories of communication approaches, education and awareness resources, and creative ways to run your United Way campaign. As I sat there, it struck me that the United Way didn't create these best practices. It was the customer (or in this case the campaign coordinators).

What the United Way did was listen to the campaign coordinators and shared their stories broadly to help others be more successful. Sharing customer stories is one approach that will help our customers be more successful.
 

Through Walker's annual Usage Assessment, we've learned that the common barrier sales and account management professionals face when using customer feedback is getting enough of the right people to take the survey. This barrier has two parts:

1 - Getting the right people on the contact list (see related blog on Five tips for creating a great customer contact list).

2- Creating a call to action that will prompt customer participation.
 

To help with the second part, listed are four response rate related blogs from Walker and one tip we shouldn't ignore.

Response Rate - What is it and what should it be used for? - Basic overview of calculating response rates and how response rates don't necessarily indicate the quality of the study.

Response rates - What about survey format? The reasons why survey recipients don't take or complete surveys.

Increasing Response Rate by How You Contact the Potential Respondents. Three important things to consider when asking customers to take a survey.

You're ready to listen - are they there to respond? Four tips for improving response rates.

The one tip. Through Walker's own customer feedback programs we've tested many different approaches for increasing response rates, including video messages, various survey designs, the length of the notification letter, etc. Among all of the tactics we've tried, there is one that continues to stand out.

Specifically, we've found that a personal request asking for customer participation has a significant impact on driving higher response rates. The Walker test included a voice mail from Walker's Chairman and CEO, Steve Walker, expressing the importance of customer feedback. The result - an 11% higher response rate compared to those that did not get the voice mail.

Increasing customer participation by 11% is something we simply cannot ignore, especially if it will break down the barrier our account and sales management professionals face when using customer feedback data.

Oh, and by the way, I failed to mention that the process of leaving voice mails was automated (at least in North America where response rates tend to be lower).

Note: This post was originally published in Customer Connection on 7/8/2009.

This year, through Walker's annual Usage Assessment, we explored the contact management process for customer feedback programs and asked the question, "Within your organization, what is the best source for pulling contact names and e-mail addresses?" The results suggest we have our work cut out for us.

Among the 41% that mention their CRM system is the best source, over half of these individuals indicate it is only a starting point because the information is not reliable and is not kept up-to-date.

The remaining 59% suggest that there is no central location because customer contact details are maintained through different applications like Outlook, Excel, and a handful mentioned LinkedIn or other social networks.

Based on this feedback, which is largely from sales and account management professionals, we should be cautious when pulling contact details from a database and expecting it to represent the best contacts for the customer feedback initiative.

Below are five tips for building a great account-level contact list.

• Even with the best kept CRM systems it is vital to get the account team engaged in the process. Without their involvement the results might not be considered valid or valuable. If you anticipate resistance from the account teams, implement a form of motivation such as including an incentive based on their participation in the contact management process, make a competition out of submitting names, or perhaps withhold results from unwilling participants.
• Let the customer participate too. Having someone from the customer organization add, modify, and delete contacts helps secure their buy-in. Getting the customer involved is particularly important if you plan to share a summary of the results and collaborate with the customer on any improvement initiatives.
• Identify a good starting point. One-quarter of those responding to the Usage Assessment indicate a CRM system is a good starting point. Another great starting point is the contact list from the previous wave.
• Make the process as easy as possible. Some companies use a simple Web form to collect customer information from account managers. Others allow account managers to upload Excel spreadsheets into a database.
• Provide clear and simple instructions. Create a quick start guide like the ones you get when you purchase household appliances and link to the "manual" for more specific information. Include a grid to shows the types of people that should be included on the list. Include example titles, departments, levels, etc. to help avoid confusion or misinterpretation.

There is no doubt that the contact management process is one of the most important steps in the process and can be one of the most challenging. What tips have worked for you?

Note: This post was originally published in Customer Connection on 6/30/2009.

If you're looking for a reason to sign up for Second Life, consider this. Thursday, June 25th at noon Eastern Time, I will be talking along with others on the topic of 3D data visualization at the Gronstedt Group, Train for Success meeting in Second Life.

During the meeting we will explore and discuss using data visualization tools within the immersive Second Life environment. One example we'll show is a 3D chart from The 2008 Walker Loyalty Report for Software and Hardware.

If you've wanted to check it out, but haven't had a good reason, I hope you'll consider joining me later this month.

If you need help getting started, check out these tips from the Gronstedt Group or please contact me (lpagel@walkerinfo.com).
 

The use of customer feedback is applied in many different ways across an organization, but sometimes the selling process is overlooked. I'm often surprised to learn that companies are not collecting feedback in an organized and standardized way after a new sales opportunity has been won or lost. Collecting this type of feedback provides two key deliverables worth mentioning: 

• the difference between winning and losing
• the new customer experience.

One common analysis for this type of program is to segment results based on opportunities that were won versus those that were lost. There are three things to look for:
 

Another way to use customer feedback from the sales process is to look at the results for opportunities that were sold next to results from a customer relationship assessment.

The key with this type of analysis is to filter the results for those who shared feedback in the sales assessment and the customer relationship assessment. These two elements together show customer expectations after the sales cycle compared to their current perceptions.

In this example graph, higher scores are provided for the customer relationship assessment (in brown), which is desirable. But, imagine the opposite scenario, where customer perceptions drop after the sales process. This could signal that unrealistic expectations are being set during the sales process. Knowing how customer perceptions change between the customer acquisition and retention phases can be used to enhance the experience for new customers.

Using the voice of the customer throughout all stages is important for any customer-focused company. Do you use customer input to improve your sales process? If so, how?

Note: This post was originally published in Customer Connection on 5/20/2009.