Engaging the Enterprise

Do you ever wonder if you are even on someone's radar? Like, do they even know you exist?

While that may bring memories from your lovestruck teenage years, I'm actually talking about our roles in the business world. Specifically, I'm thinking about customer advocates and customer strategists that have an important role of delivering customer information and doing everything they can to make sure that information gets put to use.

If you are not on the radar of the people that are supposed to use all those good customer insights, you're sunk.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of distractions that compete for your spot on the radar, so what can you do? Here are a few quick thoughts:

First, the information you provide must be RELEVANT. If it means something to the user, you will get noticed.

Next, REPETITION matters. It helps to stay in front of your users as a constant reminder that their day-to-day decisions should be customer focused.

Build a strong REPUTATION for your voice of the customer program. If they see it as an important company initiative, they won't pass you by.

Finally, REACH your users in convenient places. Everyone uses email, which may be a good reason to try another vehicle. We currently work with a number of companies where we deliver customer information directly into Salesforce.com, via an iPhone application, through convenient SmartSummary reports and many other ways.

I believe most people want to weave customer insights into the decisions they make every day. However, because our colleagues are busy and overloaded, it is really important to make it easy. And it starts with just being on their radar.