Customer Listening

Launching a new voice of the customer initiative is a big undertaking. Unfortunately too many companies do just that – they launch! They charge into an initiative without taking the time to develop a thoughtful plan. Given the potential impact of a company’s customer engagement strategy and the importance of doing it right, it makes sense to conduct an assessment to consider all the elements that will be critical to the launch and implementation of a results-oriented program.

The following 11 key elements are the key factors to consider in a well-executed assessment.

1. Scope – The scale of this undertaking is understood and the necessary resources have been identified.
2. Readiness – The degree of organizational readiness has been assessed and it is understood what will be necessary to create buy-in for the initiative across the organization.
3. Alignment – There is a clear line of sight on how customer insights tie to business results.
4. Listening posts –The organization has determined how they will collect and integrate the most important information for making customer-focused decisions.
5. Stakeholders – The information needs of the organization have been assessed and it is understood how customer insights will be distributed and used across a variety of functional departments and customer-facing associates.
6. Education – Programs to drive awareness, understanding, and action have been identified to bring about the necessary corporate culture for customer-focused success.
7. Communication – Communication needs have been outlined to understand how the organization will drive internal awareness, deliver actionable reports, and communicate externally with customers.
8. Technology tools – Technology tools needed to facilitate the collection, analysis, and distribution of customer insights have been identified and it is understood how these tools will integrate with existing technology systems.
9. External resources – There is an understanding of what additional resources will be necessary for methodology, research, technology, training, and additional consulting.
10.  Metrics – The key metrics for the success for the company’s customer engagement strategy have been established.
11.  Roadmap – A detailed plan or roadmap has been developed that includes a timeline of activities and a breakdown of the necessary individuals to be involved in a practical, phased program.

Patrick Gibbons
Principal/SVP
Walker

Usually when we think of relationships, we think of having a connection with another person.  Relationships are so important that Facebook profiles indicate you are “in a relationship” when you have a special connection with someone. 

A friend made the decision to home school her oldest child this year.  The reason?  Family interactions were turning into a series of transactions.  They were losing the key ingredients of a real relationship.  Every day they went through the same routine:  Wake the kids up, get them to school, go to afterschool activities, do homework, have dinner, and then bed time.  By simply going from event to event, they were missing the critical connections of being a family.  Home schooling is changing their interactions – from going through the motions to having a lot more involvement in each other’s lives.  It’s not for everyone, but it is making all of the difference in how this family connects with each other.

As a customer strategist you might think about how this applies to your company.  (Yes, there is a connection…) 

1. Is your company in a relationship with customers?  Or, do you simply have a series of transactions?


2. Is it possible that you might have even fallen out of relationship with your customers?  Are you simply going through the motions?


3. Do you think your customers have started connecting with someone else (e.g. your competition)? 

To be in a relationship, you should take time to understand customers’ needs, expectations, and wants.  Know how well you’re doing and where you need to make changes.  Customer Listening Programs are a great way to obtain information and the insights needed to develop a Customer Strategy to create or enhance customer relationships.

My advice is to make sure you are not just focusing on the transaction at hand.  In addition, be in a relationship with your valuable customers!

Kitty Radcliff
Vice President, Consulting Services

One week from today, I will be co-presenting with EMC (a Walker client) at the Clarabridge Customer Connections conference in Miami (#C32012).  We’ll be showcasing the success EMC has achieved through their commitment to extract maximum value from the open-ended feedback generated by their customer listening programs, and reinforcing 3 tips that any organization can implement to get the most out of text analytics.

Over the last 18 months, EMC has been on the forefront of the movement to apply text analytic technologies to the open ended comments that customers are providing through transaction-triggered CSAT surveys. To date, we’ve partnered with them and used Clarabridge’s tool to categorize and assign sentiment scores to thousands of comments. The results have been integrated into broader reporting which has led to actions to address newly identified issues and issues that had previously been known only anecdotally.  And while it’s early going on many of these changes, their impact on the customer experience is becoming evident as we continue to monitor the analytics.

3 Tips to Capitalize on Text Analytics in VOC

Entry # 2 in my macro-microblogging series.

The Service Recovery Paradox says an effective problem resolution can result in a stronger customer relationship than if the problem never happened. A strictly efficient, time-to-resolve mindset will result in few observable instance of this paradox. But combining timely and effective resolution with soft skills aimed at tapping into these 6 psychological phenomena that drive positive customer behavior will greatly increase the chances of experiencing it.

1. Build a relationship by listening, understanding, and taking appropriate action
2. Clear memory of the failure by creating a more recent positive emotional memory
3. Establish mutual understanding by exhibiting sharing and caring behavior
4. Drive customer desire to reciprocate by exceeding customer expectations of the interaction
5. Build customers' trust and confidence in the company through professional behavior
6. Implicitly ask for forgiveness by admitting the company's role in the failure

Taking action is widely mentioned as the top challenge in a customer listening initiative or voice-of-the-customer strategy. One method to making customer loyalty more actionable is to begin with a good framework.

The Loyalty Matrix is a very practical framework that segments customers into four groups based on their responses to a small battery of questions. The two axes in the matrix represent the two key aspects of loyalty – behavior (what a customer plans to do) and attitude (how they feel about working with your company). This forms the following four quadrants:

TRULY LOYAL – These customers have every intention of continuing to do business with you and they have a positive attitude towards your company. They like working with you and are more likely to increase their spending and recommend your company to others.

ACCESSIBLE – These customers have a good attitude about working with you but do not plan to continue their relationship. Since this is a rather odd combination, it’s not surprising that it is often a very small percentage of customers. It typically means something has changed in their business and they do not need your product or services any longer.

TRAPPED – These customers show every indication of continuing business with you, but they’re not very happy about it. They feel trapped in the relationship. This is common among organizations that are locked into a long-term contract, lack a suitable substitute, or find it too hard to switch. Eventually, trapped customers will find a better option.

HIGH RISK – As the name implies, these customers do not intend to return and don’t really like working with you anyway. Typically, they’re halfway out the door and not only will they no longer be a customer, but will also talk poorly about your company in the marketplace.

Many organizations use this framework and find it to be more versatile, more practical, and much more actionable than satisfaction scores, NPS, or other approaches. Here is a link to a short paper on the Loyalty Matrix if you would like to learn more. 

Patrick Gibbons
Principal/SVP
Walker

I get a kick out of the AT&T ads (examples here and here) showing how the pace of things is so fast that the savvy user of the HTC Vivid with 4G is always informed and ahead of the game.

While the commercials are informative and entertaining, the application makes sense for how customer strategists build better customer relationships.

The most common example that has gotten attention is the way some companies have monitored social media sites to identify customer complaints and quickly address them. In doing so, they salvage a customer relationship and impress consumers with their attention to customer issues.

I prefer to consider uncommon examples, like complex customer relationships in a B-to-B environment. We've seen terrific examples of companies that have closely monitored feedback from surveys that trigger alerts notifying account managers of customers issues that need to be addressed and opportunities to pursue. In one example a company identified more than 5,000 issues that were logged and prioritized for action. What's more, they prompted sales opportunities that delivered more than $200 million in new sales.

This was all done by setting up a system that included the following:

• Good lists - insights are gathered from the right customers
• Good design - to incorporate triggers to identify issues, opportunities
• Good training - account managers understand their role
• Good buy-in - everybody sees the benefit for them and for the company
• Good tools - an online documentation system ensures follow up
• Good measurement - the ROI is measured to validate the payoff

As a customer strategist, your role is to help your organization listen to customers and develop customer strategies that will help to earn more from customer relationships. (e.g. Strengthen customer loyalty. Retain customers. Attract new customers. Grow market share. Develop new markets. Be innovative.) It’s a big responsibility. As a result, it is important to have the required knowledge, experience, and expertise. 

But, what if you don’t have all of the answers? Our culture often sets the stage for people to feel compelled to give the impression they have all the answers - even when they don't. Despite that cultural phenomenon, I am starting to see signs where vulnerability is valued.

·         In the book Getting Naked, Patrick Lencioni challenges service providers to be, “completely transparent and vulnerable with clients in order to overcome the three fears that ultimately sabotage client allegiance.” 

·         A recent Harvard Business Review - Management Tip of the Day encouraged readers to, “Admit you don’t know all of the answers.” 

·         Steven D. Levitt made the case that it can pay to say, “I don’t know,” on the new Freakonomics Radio Podcast.   Pretending to know the answer to something can be destructive and makes it impossible to learn.

Of course one can’t use this approach all the time. But surely, no one is fooled into thinking we always have all of the answers…

Kitty Radcliff
Vice President

• Things about you that everybody knows – your hair color, your eyes, your height, weight, etc. (arena)

• Things that others know about you, but you do not see - annoying habits or shortcomings (blind spot).

• Things you know that others don’t – your habits, your secrets (facade).

• Things you don’t know about yourself and others don’t know – subconscious things that make you do the things you do (unknown).

Serving customers in a way that creates a loyal following is hard. Add in the complexities created by an indirect go-to-market strategy and the degree of difficulty rivals the reverse 4 ½ somersault in the pike position (4.8 out of 5.0).

Why is such a strategy difficult? The main reason is that many of the actual interactions with the customers are conducted by your channel partners, not by your people. It also creates a more complex relationship comprised of several relationships as shown below.

There are several companies that have built a strong channel and leveraged that go-to-market strategy to drive revenues and create market expansion. Here are some of the ways in which these companies have created a strong customer experience with indirect customers.

1.      Listen to your customers. It doesn’t matter so much whether the customers are served directly or indirectly, their demand is still driving your revenues. A strong Voice of the Customer program helps understand the customer experience from their perspective. Make sure to share the feedback and insights with your channel partners—much of the action and follow-up required might come from the partners themselves.

2.      Listen to your partners. Lots to learn here. First, how can you improve the experience of partnering with you? How can you make it easier to work with you? How can you build a preference for your brand? How can we drive more business together, benefiting both our businesses and growing our market share?

3.      Listen some more to your partners. Your partners are dealing face-to-face with your customers and they are learning from your customers every day. They are learning what it is like to experience your products, what unmet needs they have, and how they interact with your partners. These insights can help us to create the consistent experience we know customers thirst for.

4.      Treat your partners like customers. I know we don’t think of them this way, but channel partners are customers. We sell to them (and through them), we invoice them, we collect from them. While they are a conduit to the ultimate customer, they buy from us and help us drive revenues. We need to treat them like customers and focus a little attention on them. Part of being customer-focused is being partner-focused.

The best way to deal with complex situations is to break them down into manageable pieces. Eat the elephant one bite at a time. In this case that means understanding all aspects of the channel and understanding how we interact and create an exceptional experience for channel partners and customers.

Everyone agrees when customers share their insights, employees should put them to use. So why is it so hard? Without a doubt, taking action on customer insights is the number one challenge of customer listening programs.

Here are three reasons why employees fail to take action:

First, they aren’t aware. In most companies there is so much happening and so many initiatives taking place that customer programs hardly get noticed.

Second, they don’t understand. It’s not clear how customer insights are to be put to use and people don’t understand what they are supposed to do with the feedback they receive.

Third, they don’t believe.  Either they don’t think the feedback is accurate or they don’t think any action will make much difference.

The Hierarchy of Engagement is a framework that helps make sense of how customer strategists can prompt more action from customer listening programs. Good customer strategists do much more than gather insights and crank out reports. They promote customer initiatives, train users of customer insights, and show employees how it all makes a bottom-line difference. In other words, they prompt action.


Patrick Gibbons
Principal/SVP
Walker

This is the fourth part of our ongoing series designed to understand some of the dynamics that help explain how companies in the Walker Index outperform the market by over six-to-one. So far, we have explored the dynamics of Relevance and Alignment, Team and Resources, and Information Gathering. In this entry, we will focus on the role that Communication plays in supporting and reinforcing the customer listening process.

Mary Young and James E. Post published an article in 1993[1] that outlined the approaches that world-class companies use in communicating with employees. Even though the article is a bit dated and focuses on employee communication, the content is still quite relevant. Moreover, I would make the argument that the principles work equally well when considering how to communicate with customers.

The eight approaches outlined by Young and Post were as follows:

1)      The CEO’s role as communicator – Young and Post make the case that the CEO has to not only be the chief communicator, but also must be a believer in communication. Those who excel in this tend to have frequent communication, reinforce their vision, are good listeners, are willing to answer tough questions, and are more disposed to quickly responding to sensitive topics.

2)      Walk the talk – If you talk about being committed to customers, make certain your actions reinforce that – for example, make certain your infrastructure is designed to serve customers effectively, and make certain you view your processes from the customers’ perspective.

3)      Be Open to Two-Way Dialogue – Surveys and other listening methods are a good way to start gathering the perspective of customers, but customers want (and expect) more. In an age of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets, customers expect a two-way dialogue. At a minimum, be certain you are communicating back what you learned, what your action steps are, and when customers can expect to see improvements.

From an internal employee perspective, be certain that employees have an outlet to share their thoughts and ideas on how to improve. This personalizes the experiences for the employee and helps them to see how they can contribute to the bigger picture – plus, from an execution perspective, employees will often be able to identify with the issues the customers articulated and will often have thought of possible countermeasures to address those issues.

4)      Face-to-Face Communication – Customers want you to close the loop and to do it in a way that is personal; when possible, a face-to-face session can help to not only address issues that you have learned about that particular customer’s experience, but can also have an ancillary benefit of providing a framework for strategic account planning.

Employees, too, want to engage in a face-to-face conversation. Given geographic dispersion of companies, it may not be feasible (or cost-effective) to have the CEO (or Chief Customer Officer) visit every single location; however, the management of each location can and should endeavor to engage in a face-to-face communication process to ensure the core messages are being sent and to engage in the two-way dialogue that Young and Post recommend.

5)      Having a Shared Plan of Communication – While the CEO can be the chief communicator, it is incumbent that all employees be aware (and committed to) the key messages you wish to send to customers. This means that a rigorous, detailed plan of communication should be developed to ensure messages are reinforced in a consistent manner at the level that makes the most sense. One method in a B2B context divides the core messaging between two groups:

Senior Management – Addresses the “why,” “what,” and “when” of changes customers can expect related to strategic initiatives that emerged from a customer listening program

Account Managers – Address the “who,” “how,” and “what” of the changes – in other words, those that are generally more focused at a customer vs. systemic level.

6)      The Bad News/Good News Ratio – It is tempting to focus only what is working well; however, if you focus on only the positive, it can suggest that you did not hear the pain points that customers are experiencing, which can further imply that you are not really customer-focused. So, you should plan to share some of the less-than-stellar feedback – it will not only illustrate that you are listening and that you are intent on improving, but it will also make the good news more believable.

7)      Tailor the content to the audience – When communicating, it is important to consider who your intended audience is, what their needs and expectations are, and what methods work best in communicating with them. Even within an account, there are often different strategies for communicating – for example, the way you communicate with your client’s CEO will no doubt be different from how you communicate with your front-line contacts.

Also realize that your employees are a target audience as well. This means making certain you are communicating a consistent set of core messages both internally and externally in ways that best resonate with the unique stakeholder groups.

8)      Communication is a process, not an event – Young and Post suggest that companies migrate from communication being a transactional event that is focused on tactics to building a focus on process and strategy. They further recommend that firms focus on some specific aspects in this process:

a.       Communicate the what, why, and how – Tell a comprehensive story in order to set the expectation of what will occur from this point forward.

b.      Be timely in communicating – This is more important in our fast-paced, highly connected environment of today than it was when this article was published in 1993. It is better to communicate in a timely fashion, even if that means you do not have all the answers. Not doing so risks a loss of engagement and trust from your customers.

c.       Continuously communicate – This is particularly important if you are being timely in your communication – new information and details will emerge, which means you should communicate that not only as soon as possible, but also in an iterative fashion to reinforce the message.

d.      Make the connections – When describing what you learned, be sure to connect how your actions at a macro level will impact the experience the customers has at a micro level – in other words, make certain the message is relevant. For employees, tying how their work will lead to greater levels of customer loyalty (and the financial impact this has on the firm) is extremely important in securing commitment and buy-in.

Having a disciplined approach to communicating both internally and externally will help to ensure that what you learned in your customer listening process is internalized by both customers and employees. However, this internalization by itself is not enough – the communication must represent the initial action that the company takes on the results. This initial action must be followed up by action in both a macro (company) level as well as a micro (account) level. We will tackle the topic of Action in the next entry of this series.

Mark A. Ratekin
Senior Vice President, Consulting Services

Each one teach one.

[Full disclosure: I stole that phrase.  From somebody who borrowed the African proverb and tuned it into a philosophy.  That somebody is Stephen Leafloor, better known as Buddha, and I stole the phrase from his TEDxOttawa talk… and since those talks are about ideas worth spreading, let’s call this spreading, not stealing.]

At its core, “each one teach one” is about each of us having mentoring responsibility for another.  Now, Buddha applies this phrase in an environment where it literally changes peoples’ lives, and I encourage you to learn more about how he is improving the future of our youth through the power of hip hop by clicking on the image to the right.  But I want to talk about how this philosophy can help overcome one of the common challenges faced by those who lead customer listening systems: gaining initial buy-in then sustaining momentum for customer-focused action.

If we can embed “each one teach one” into our corporate cultures, we will develop an environment in which each employee feels a sense of responsibility to perform their job functions in a way that sets an example for other employees.  This can develop in an organic way, supported of course by communication of the message; but it can also be developed intentionally, by seeding the organization with employee champions who are trained to be advocates for the customer.  As their actions and attitude spread through the organization, they will be teaching other employees to think and behave in the same way.  And so on, and so on, and so on…  

At the recent CXPA Members Insight Exchange, Fidelity was highlighted for their customer ambassador program… proving that it IS possible to launch this type of mentoring initiative and have it be successful.  Perhaps each of us can be the ‘each one’ who starts the ball rolling in our organizations.

If you go to a horse track and intend to place bets on certain horses, you will likely end up looking at a racing form that looks something like this. My first reaction? Wow, there is a lot of data here and I’ll bet most of it is important. But, what I really need to know is which horse is going to win and how much should I bet on that horse.

Same thing happens with customer listening initiatives. There is a lot of data … answers to several questions provided by many customers. And, it is likely all important in some way. But where the rubber hits the road (or in this case, where the hooves hit the dirt) is in the analysis that is predictive (what is going to happen?) and prescriptive (what should I do about it?).

These initiatives should tell you:

1.      Which customers are likely to defect and what can we do to stop them (assuming they are good customers and we want to stop them!)?

2.      Which customers are likely to refer us, buy new offerings, give us additional share of wallet, etc., and what can we do to leverage and accelerate these behaviors?

3.      Given our current customer experience, what is likely to happen to our market share, customer profitability, top line growth, etc., and how can we optimize those success measures?

4.      Which customers are not likely to help us grow and what are the irritants causing them to refrain from helpful behaviors?

Whether you are betting on the ponies or betting resources that you can improve your growth and profitability, having the right data, analyzing it correctly and focusing on the important insights will increase your odds of success. A focus on your ultimate objective—increased shareholder value through profitable growth, rather than an artificial score like satisfaction or NPS—will point your analyses in the right direction.

Companies that have excelled at the art of customer focus display many admirable traits, but key among them is empathy for their customers. Here are three ways empathy is manifested in the way they operate:

1.      Focus on Customer Success. There is a strong realization that focusing on helping their customers succeed is the best way for them to succeed. These companies are always thinking about helping their customers. The goal is customer success, not sales figures or customer loyalty scores.

2.      Implement World Class Customer Listening. These companies generally have multiple listening posts and are very focused on understanding the ways in which they interact with customers. Their customer listening efforts are designed to understand the relationships they have with customers and what really drives those relationships. These companies are constantly looking for new and additional ways to generate insights about the ways in which they touch customers.

3.      Never Be Satisfied. One of the common threads I have noticed among some of the most successful companies is their inherent inability to ever be satisfied. These companies constantly strive to make the experience for their customers better. Better than it was the day before, better than their competitors and better than the customers expect.

Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes. Understand what it is like to work with you—from their perspective. If you aren’t too easily satisfied with the status quo, you just might find opportunities to help your customers and your company succeed.

Today an Indianapolis Star article began with, “The machines ARE taking over.” 

According to the article, mobile phone use continues to grow, to the point there are now more mobile devices than human beings in the United States. In fact, some estimate mobile phone penetration is already at more than 80% globally.

Steve Largent, president of CTIA reinforces the importance of mobile devices, “Clearly, we’re using wireless more every day, and the consensus of experts is that demand will continue to skyrocket by more than 50 times within the next five years.”

As customer strategists, we need to pay attention. We have to consider the ramifications on how we gather customer feedback now and in the future. It is very likely that some of your customers are already using (or trying to use) smart phones for your Customer Listening effort. 

Take the impact of mobile devices into account for your 2012 Customer Program program to improve the customer experience: 

·         Make certain the survey system recognizes when a mobile device is being used.  

·         Ensure the survey format adjusts so that mobile users find it easier to navigate through the questionnaire.

·         Consider survey length and assess the need to have alternate paths depending on the type of technology being used. 

Some early research suggests that drop off rates are in line with traditional online respondents, however, given the nature of mobile phone use and potential connectivity issues, I recommend that you consider the experience from your customer’s perspective.   It’s even more critical to make sure the survey is relevant and keeps your customer engaged.

Our technology at Walker recognizes mobile users and has the ability to adjust the survey/research accordingly. Your Walker account team can help you with survey content. What are you waiting for? 

Kitty Radcliff
Vice President, Consulting Services 

Over the past few months, I have been facilitating action planning workshops with a client who is in the first year of their customer listening program.  Much of our focus has been on educating local teams about the information that they now have at their disposal, and on teaching them how to use customer feedback to identify improvement areas within their business.

The thing is, customer feedback has almost unlimited use scenarios – for any business challenge that a company is facing, there can be a customer perspective.  And while the information collected through your voice of customer program may not have been specifically designed to answer the question of the day, it can often be mined for relevant insights.

I was reminded of this at one of the workshops I mentioned.  As we were sharing results and talking about opportunities, the country manager realized the information we were sharing might offer insight into a conversation the business was having around competitive strategy, specifically: should this company be more aggressively pursuing growth with a specific set of customers whose strength of relationship with a competitor was in question?  They had considered internal perspectives and anecdotes along with comparable situations in other countries, but up until the workshop, they had not had any objective measure of the customers’ willingness to switch. 

After learning more about the opportunity they were pursuing, we were able to dig in to their customer feedback and come back to them with a customer perspective.  In fact, much of the customer base they were considering targeting was very loyal to the competitive supplier --- but there was a pocket of opportunity where this loyalty was weaker.  Armed with this information, the team was able to refine their strategy and dedicate resources to the most likely "wins."  We're looking forward to hearing about their successes!

What questions are you grappling with, and how have you used customer insights to develop your strategy?

When we are faced with uncertain times, the most important decisions we must make are centered around resource allocation. It usually boils down to answering this 2-part question: Where should we continue to spend (maybe even increase spending) and where should we cut back?

Different companies take different approaches, some going as far as cutting programs and resources that they admit are necessary to grow and succeed once we emerge from the economic funk we are in.

Let me propose a customer-focused approach to making these decisions. A quick clarification first: customer-focused does not mean do whatever the customer wants for whatever they want to pay. We still have to balance the needs of our business and our shareholders with that of our customers. But an approach that considers the customer and recognizes that the best way to succeed is to help customers succeed is a customer-focused approach. Your customer listening programs should give you incredible help in these decisions.

The areas in which we should continue to invest and perhaps even increase resource levels during tough times are those areas that are valuable both internally and to customers. Innovation is one of these areas…our customers are looking for new solutions and we need new solutions to grow. Innovation benefits us both and should probably continue to get resources. Initiatives that help us to deliver more value to our customers and therefore continue to realize reliable revenue streams are mutually valuable and need continued investment.

By contrast, some areas are important or valuable to neither our customers nor our businesses. You cannot cut fast enough in these areas. (Blogger note to self: any example you give here is going to hack off someone because you will be calling their efforts low value. Be smart for once and don’t go there. Better yet, create some crazy example that no one would believe. Nah, don’t be lazy, think up a real life example that is a good one…). John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems didn’t just cut in a low value area, he turned a low-value resource eater into a mutually valuable one. Chambers dumped private plane travel (no value for the customer, very little if any value for the company, high convenience value for the traveler) in favor of more frequent communication via Cisco Telepresence, putting Cisco’s product line in plain view of strategic customers. Kudos to Chambers for true Customer Focused Leadership.

Spending that is high value to the customer but low value to the company should be maintained unless it is actually detrimental to the company. In other words, low value might be acceptable if it is important enough to customers, but no or negative value is not. Same goes for spending that is of high internal value but not that valuable for our customers; maintain these areas unless they are of negative value to your customers (there are many items of no value to our customers—quality control, forecasting, accounting, bureaucracy—but necessary for our business. These are ok to maintain as long as they don’t hamper customer success. ). (Blogger note to self: Yep, you just had to go there.) These areas are important. But from our customers’ point of view, they are not value-added. Take quality control. We must deliver quality products or services and need quality checking to make sure that happens. But, customers expect it done or produced right, there is no value to them in terms of how you get there.

This model only addresses resource allocation and not individual performance. We still must deal with performance issues and look to increase the competence of our teams. After all, those teams deliver the value to our customers.

Before you cut, consider how many degrees away from customer success you are cutting. Lowering the value you deliver will start a cycle that has only a bad ending. Focus on your customer, think about your business. Find the areas that neither of you need and redeploy those resources into areas that neither of you can do without.