Walker Information Blog

The Football Used in the Big Game

Friday, February 3, 2012 by Chris Woolard

I was downtown on Wednesday with my three big kids checking out the Super Bowl village and downtown Indy. To no surprise, downtown Indianapolis looks great and it was fun to be part of the buzz of the Super Bowl. I saw a few ex-professional NFL players and fortunately no one asked for my autograph*.

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(yes, my kids are Bears fans, which does not make me happy)

As I was down there, a colleague of mine e-mailed me some links about the company that makes footballs for the NFL, Wilson Sporting Goods. These footballs are what are used in almost every football game across the country and are considered the best out there. I actually owned one for a while and someone stole it from my garage so apparently they are pretty valuable.

As I read about the company, it is quite amazing what they do to get the footballs ready for the Super Bowl which you can read about here. What is more impressive is the apparent employee loyalty at this company. If you look at some of these videos you will hear people talk about being part of the company for 40 years or more, and they seem excited to talk about Wilson and their job. You listen to Willie talk about the bladder in this video and you can just see the pride he has when he talks about his job, it is inspiring. Look at how long many of those employees have been there. Generally in a manufacturing environment, employee loyalty can be lower than other industries so to have what seems to be very high employee loyalty is quite impressive.

Think about this for a second, do you take such pride in what you produce, be it either a good or service? Probably not. Why is that? Are you not proud of the products and services you produce? My guess is you are. Too many of you what you do probably feels like a job, that is why it is critical for Senior Leaders to articulate the bigger picture and then for managers to help employees understand their role and how they impact the organization overall and when possible, community and society as whole. For example, I heard about a company that produces products and technology to help improve animal wellness and productivity. However, they talk about their mission really being to help impact world hunger. Talk about being motivated to do your job, if you can take it past the day-to-day activities and how they are impacting something bigger than themselves, that is how you get someone excited about their job.

*Just to clarify, the only time I have been asked for an autograph is when I was 13 and did some freestyle biking at a local church to a group of elementary and middle schoolers and one of them came up and asked for my autograph.

Three levels of VoC action

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 by Patrick Gibbons

Acting on the voice of the customer doesn’t (or shouldn’t) happen in just one department or one area of the company. I like to think of it in levels. For simplicity sake, here are three common levels where VoC action should be taking place:

CORPORATE – At the corporate level, action should be very strategic. Based on customer insights, action plans should address issues such as overall retention, forecasting future revenues, projecting attrition, and considering customer perceptions on topics such as brand reputation, ethics, market position, and how you stack up against the competition.

FUNCTIONAL – Action at the functional level action becomes more tactical and involves specific areas such as business units and key departments. This middle level is the most diverse of the three. It refers to all groups throughout your enterprise that can benefit from the voice of the customer. These include departments such as service, account management, sales, and product development, R & D, marketing, and many others. In each case customer strategists should provide each group the customer information they need to improve their specific operation. What’s more, they should implement a prioritization process to ensure the most important issues are escalated to require action.

CUSTOMER-FACING – This is when action takes place one customer at a time. This is most common in business-to-business organizations where action is critical at the account level. To effectively manage at the account level customers advocates must work closely with strategic account managers and sales managers so highly customized information is provided to their people and they are trained on how to use it to drive business with specific accounts. Action at this level should be focused on improving account relationships to boost retention and grow revenue.

Too often voice-of-the-customer strategies are focused on one area or one department. Or, companies may do a good job of acting on customer insights at one level, but they don’t fully leverage insights across the organization. Customer strategists are wise to occasionally take inventory to determine the areas where customer insights could provide a well needed boost.

Patrick Gibbons
Principal/SVP
Walker

So, is that good or bad?

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 by Leslie Pagel

When sharing results from your customer survey research, have you been asked, "So, are we doing good or bad?"

When designing a voice of the customer (VoC) program, one of the best practices is to share some type of perspective when presenting results.

To do this, consider one of these four options:

Add benchmark questions to your survey: Many companies have a couple of questions asking the customer to evaluate a benchmark company. This is an ideal approach for many because it focuses on the perceptions of your customers and allows you to compare what they think about you versus another company.

Benchmark against yourself: Companies can answer the “good or bad” question by looking at key segments within their business. For this approach, identify the customer segments with high performance scores and use those as the benchmark. The benefit of this approach is the "best-in-class" score is most likely achievable with your existing products/services.

Look at scores over time: As a customer survey research program matures, it is natural to look at changes over time. This becomes a good source for perspective since it will highlight improvements and/or declines. In year one, you create the benchmark and then measure progress against it over time.

Secondary Research: There are a variety of secondary research options. These secondary sources can be a good benchmark. However, they do have some draw-backs, which are: timing of the program, differences in the respondent profile (e.g., different geographies or customer roles), or different research designs (e.g., scales used or questions asked).

As you prepare to share results from your customer survey research, don't just share the score, add some perspective by using one of these four methods.

Making loyalty actionable

Monday, January 30, 2012 by Patrick Gibbons

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

Getting to your destination

Thursday, January 26, 2012 by Jennifer Batley

As I write this, I am sitting in a plane. High in the sky. Over an ocean. And I’ll be up here for five more hours. And this plane I’m in… the thing is, it’s big. Also – it’s heavy. I don’t know exactly how heavy, but I know one thing for sure: this plane is way too heavy to be able to stay up in the air. Quite simply, it shouldn’t be here.

But here’s the other thing: I’m wrong. (That admission took a lot out of me… let’s agree to never speak of it again.) At any given time, there are hundreds if not thousands of planes flying around. And people who know more than I do about these things understand the why and the how of this.

And my point is this… for every one thing that we ourselves don’t understand or can’t believe is possible, there is somebody who does understand it. So when I fly, I need to start from a position of trust: trust that the experts have gone about this whole plane thing in the right way. Trust that I will arrive safely at my destination.

The same concept applies to any area in which there are experts. Including Voice of Customer programs – though here there often seems to be one notable difference: Voice of Customer is an area in which many people fancy themselves to be experts. They want to do it themselves, or poke holes in a methodology, or disbelieve the results because they don’t match up with what they were expecting. But here again is a situation which requires starting from a position of trust: you need to trust in the expertise of those who know about these things, get beyond your doubts, and spend your energy thinking about how you are going to use the results to improve your relationships, help your customers, and drive business performance. In other words, trust that the experts are going to get you to your destination.

Several weeks ago, I met with a client who had faced exactly this situation in prior presentations of Voice of Customer feedback. At the end of last year, when it came time for her to share results, she met with the most influential person in her audience ahead of time and they had a candid discussion: either they could spend a day wasting everybody’s time debating and defending the methodology and merits of the research and recommendations, or they could accept that the program was well-designed and well-implemented by a team of experts, herself included, and spend their day productively, building action plans to address customer needs. Can you guess what they did?

My macro-microblog series

Thursday, January 26, 2012 by Troy Powell

This post is the beginning of a series I'm titling, "Troy's Macro-Microblog." I use Twitter some but do not post very frequently. I struggle with the 140 character restriction, but I also find the restriction helps me be more concise and focused, something many of you know I struggle with given previous multi-part blog posts! So, I decided to launch a series of blog posts restricted to 140 words. Not sure how long I can keep this up (I just used 90 words introducing the series), but here it goes!

Post #1: Cynic vs. Skeptic in fact-based decision making

Cynic vs. Skeptic in fact-based decision making

Thursday, January 26, 2012 by Troy Powell

For those who are fact-based decision-makers, it’s important to know the difference between a cynic and a skeptic.

A cynic wants to put down any idea that is not theirs or they don’t already believe in.

A skeptic wants to find a solution but will require reasoned support that solution, even if it's theirs. That's a key differentiator: If you don’t hold your own ideas to the same standard of proof that you hold other people’s ideas, then you are a cynic.

Cynic: “That will never work because I don’t think it will work.”

Skeptic: “I think X and Y could cause a problem. Do you agree or disagree? Why?”

Fact-based decision makers have to be skeptics, but it is too easy to become a cynic, and that will destroy a healthy, fact-based problem-solving culture.

For customer focused leadership, be innovative....and lean

Tuesday, January 24, 2012 by Jeff Marr

Many companies struggle when it comes to actually enhancing the customer experience. Even after customer initiatives are planned, time may pass and leaders wonder why customer scores aren't improving. Good intentions and plans are often not sustained, getting overtaken by the running of the business. I believe that teams planning action or customer-focused change would benefit from knowing they are being innovators and by adopting principles of lean innovation.

After all, taking customer-focused action is innovation. Adjusting a solution or service to fit what customers want is an upgrade, whether we call it "version 2.0" or not. People working on such projects become energized when they are recognized for creatively producing something new and important for the business.

The emerging practice called Lean Innovation offers a fitting tool for customer action planning because these principles begin and end with customer insights. For example, the first rule is knowing the customer's large "monetizable pain point", which of course would be a key driver of customer loyalty/retention -- which is what action teams typically work on today. Armed with customer relationship insights, teams start out a step ahead in the game of Lean Innovation.

However, the next Lean Innovation rule reveals where some action planning teams get off track. Customers can't tell you exactly how to fix the problem, just where the pain is. After you plan a change, customers will say whether the new approach helps or not. But action teams should be quickly creating the new concept/change to test on some customers, rather than spinning wheels seeking more data up front, hoping that customers will play the designer role. As the authors of the new book,Nail it Then Scale it say, "Entrepreneurs innovate, customers validate."

Action teams can become more entrepreneurial and effective by following principles of Lean Innovation. In the five stages posed in Nail it Then Scale it below which I adapted slightly to fit customer action planning, note how customers are kept engaged through the design process in the early stages:

1. Nail the pain -- fix on a key driver of customer loyalty needing improvement (based on feedback); craft a revised solution/service/process concept.

2. Nail the solution -- obtain customer reactions to the new concept, then to a simple prototype, then to quick iterations of same. Ensure your design reaches the point where the customers see real value, will pay more, etc.

3. Nail the go-to-market strategy -- learning exactly how the customer will effectively use and/or buy the new approach; who's on the "committee" using it and deciding where the value is. Do real testing with real prices, if applicable.

4. Nail the business model -- use customer insights from above to work out predicted usage, revenue streams and costs; as needed probe customers on how they will use, what they will buy, etc. Keep initial applications limited until business side proves out.

5. Scale it -- once the business model is set and functional, the change can be rolled and grown.

Another term from design engineers that fits this approach to customer focused change is incremental innovation -- taking a worst-performing aspect of something key to customers and fixing it, then moving to other aspects. I hope more of those responding to customer priorities will see themselves as the innovators they truly are.

Building customer relationships - So 12 seconds ago

Thursday, January 19, 2012 by Patrick Gibbons

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

This type of customer strategy also prompts unexpected responses from customers. "I didn't really think anyone would read my comments," they might say. Well, that's the whole idea behind voice-of-the customer strategies - to listen to customers and act upon their insights.

Patrick Gibbons
Principal, SVP
Walker

4 Day Work Week

Monday, January 16, 2012 by Chris Woolard

In an interview with Slingshot SEO CEO Jay Love, he talks about the business advantage of having a four day work week. I know many of you are probably thinking, a four day work week would never work in our environment or I am already working 10 hour days every day, how could I get my work done in 4 days. Here is my challenge for you, instead of thinking it won't work, take five minutes and think about how it could work. I would be willing to bet, in most companies, it is not a matter of something like this never being able to work, it is a matter of people who refuse to entertain the idea of how could it work. I read through a number of the comments in this article and there were many employees who are working in this environment and love it. Many said they might still log in on Friday for a couple of hours to get ahead but they enjoy the flexibility the four day work week affords.

I truly believe the way we do work is going to shift dramatically over the next decade. Things like ROWE , compressed work weeks, etc., will be the norm, not the exception. (If you don't know what ROWE is, I have blogged about this several times here, here, and here.) Companies who understand this will try to stay ahead of the curve and work to see how these innovative work structures can be implemented now, rather than waiting until their top talent is gone in favor of these environments.

Let me give you a real life example that just happened last week. A friend of mine is currently looking for a job. One of the companies he was talking to said they are moving to ROWE in Q2. He specifically said that with all things being equal between different companies, he would go with this company because of the work environment. In fact, he went on to say he was so excited by ROWE that he would be willing to take slightly less to have the flexibility in his work schedule that ROWE affords.

In the upcoming battle on talent, and yes there will be one once the economy opens up, work environment issues will attract the necessary top talent and if all other things are equal, could tip the scales in companies obtaining the talent necessary to be successful in the future.

So again I challenge you, stop thinking it won't work and take a few minutes to think about how it could work. If you refuse to, you will be left behind in the war on talent.

The Past 200 Years

Thursday, January 12, 2012 by Listening to Customers

Take a look at this video of Hans Rosling describing 200 Countries in 200 Years. A few key things to think about from a customer strategy perspective:

Show results and data in ways people enjoy and understand.
Develop strategies for customers in both developed and developing areas of the world (although these are becoming increasingly more similar).
Consistently think of future trends when developing customer strategies.

How can your organization stay ahead of the curve when it comes to meeting the demands of developing countries?

Katie Kiernan

Vice President, Consulting Services

Where are you vulnerable?

Thursday, January 12, 2012 by Kitty Radcliff

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

Girl Scout cookies – Differentiating the customer experience

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 by Managing Strategic Accounts

It is a fair bet that all across corporate America, moms and dads are currently embroiled in a familiar marketing challenge – selling their daughter’s Girl Scout cookies to their colleagues. I’m new at this and have already seen how this exercise has some surprising lessons for customer experience professionals.

My daughter is the “newbie,” consider this her rookie year, if you will. So naturally this is my first experience in asking my coworkers for a small donation of their hard earned dollars. To make matters even more interesting, my workplace has been dominated by one individual (let’s call him Brad) over the past several years. Brad has a daughter that is several years older than mine and he has been the market leader within our workplace. Because of this long standing sole-source environment, my colleagues have not had a true choice in their purchase of Girl Scout cookies.

As I developed my strategy, questions abound. How do I sway colleagues to buy from me? Are they are trapped because they have never had a true option? What if Brad has taken the necessary steps to develop loyal relationships? How do I differentiate? After all, this is a highly commoditized product – everyone sells the same EXACT product for the same EXACT price. My plan evolves and I am focused on challenging the market leader by differentiating on the customer experience. Girl Scout

FIRST, I invested in a two-pronged launch strategy. (1) To assist in reaching the projected revenue target for the project, I have chosen to offer a reward to the person that buys the greatest number of boxes, and (2) I offered to include ALL participants in a drawing for a gift card to a local eatery (everyone has to eat, right?).

SECOND, I have deployed the trusty, emotional pull by sending all recipients a picture of my daughter in her Girl Scout Uniform with cookies in tow.

THIRD, I provided additional product information – a descriptive offering of each cookie (albeit more for humor than nutritional facts).

FOURTH, I offered additional service – to personally deliver each order to the recipient. This will be another way of differentiating my services since Brad has been able to summon customers to come to him to pick up their orders.

The jury is still out as to whether or not my strategy will succeed, but you can anticipate that it just might prompt another blog post.

Regardless, I couldn’t help noticing how this simple little scenario had very real customer experience strategy lessons. Think about it – when entering new markets, there are several considerations that need to be accounted for. Whether we are trying to move some cookies or a very complex product/service offering, we must differentiate the customer experience. Understanding your competitor’s weaknesses, the alternative choices, the switching costs, the commoditization of the offering, the communication strategy for getting your message out to the targeted audience and the uniqueness that you can bring to your brand will all play a major factor in your ability to succeed.So, whether you are selling Girl Scout cookies or widgets, think about your customer strategy. And if you are interested in making a donation of cookies to our troops (Operation Cookie Drop), please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Michael Good
Vice President

Unholy Partnerships and Bubbles -- Another on the Way?

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 by Jeff Marr

You don't have to be an economist (which I'm not) to recognize that extreme boom and bust cycles harm the economy. A market bubble such as the housing mortgage debacle has at its core some unhealthy relationships between the economic partners involved. I think those poor business relationships reflect on a larger scale what can happen to market relationships in specific industries. Unfortunately, I believe another economic bubble may be on the way.

Business/channel partner relationships that are healthy produce a "win/win/win" -- across the supply chain for original sellers, partners and end-customers. Delivering and receiving value at each chain link should be the metric for healthy partnering. Inadequate value will break the chain. Without good enough incentives or training offered by the original seller, for example, partners can't perform as well for the seller or the end customer. Or if a channel partner fails to support customers post sale, then the lousy experience for customers pings back to hurt the reputation and share for partner and original seller alike. Nobody wins.

On a larger scale, I think the housing mortgage bubble had unhealthy partnership relationships, between banks and mortgage brokers, realtors, regulators and home buyers. Housing prices became inflated because borrowing too much was made too available to too many. Fingers are still being pointed for blame. Suffice it to say that in the end, all those groups and more -- arguably all of us affected by the bad economy -- suffered as a result.

While less documented, another economic bubble disaster may be brewing, related to college lending and borrowing. I agree with analysts who say that higher education prices are inflated because too many are borrowing too much, in terms of lacking ability to pay back and/or lacking quality jobs. The enablers? Here include the usual suspects -- banks/financial aid brokers and regulators. But include as well the colleges and trade schools encouraging over-borrowing, and students and their parents who borrow more than they can pay back, and those studying for careers that can't pay enough earnings to warrant the cost.

Parenting four, college-educated children gave me a birds-eye view of seeing some of these dynamics first hand. But the broader evidence has come from analysis such as here and here (scroll down to chart comparing housing and college inflation rates with the CPI).

Unholy partnering, or a lack of true value for throughout the chain, never ends well. And as we've seen, large bubbles make big messes. I hope some behavior changes and we don't see this next one burst as some fear.

A good time to take a look in the window

Friday, January 6, 2012 by Patrick Gibbons

At the beginning of a new year many decide to take a good look in the mirror to consider improvements they want to make. That's how people often come up with new year resolutions.

This year, I'm suggesting you take a look in the window instead.

I've blogged in the past about The Johari Window and it seems appropriate to surface the topic again as we begin a new year. Paticularly as we consider the customer relationships that we manage and cultivate.

The Johari Window is a simple and elegant framework. It contends there are things that you know about yourself and things you don’t. As well, there are things others know about you and things they don’t know about you. When you combine these into a simple matrix, there are some practical observations.

It is clear from this that a look in the mirror only considers your viewpoint while the window provides four distinct perspectives.

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).

While this can be helpful for your own self-improvement, it also makes a lot of sense when you consider your customer relationships. Unfortunately we can all start to believe that we instinctively understand our customers. And yet, no matter how hard we try, we will never completely understand their perspective.

That's why we gather insights from our customers. That's why we develop customer listening strategies. That's why we do all we can to understand the perspective of our customers to build better relationships. And when we do it well and take action on what customers say, our business benefits.

Start the year right. Take a look in the window!

Patrick Gibbons
Principal, SVP
Walker

Look to Your Customers to Find Your Way

Wednesday, December 28, 2011 by Phil Bounsall

There is a saying (the only attribution I can find is that it comes from a fortune cookie!) that goes, “Though we cannot change the direction of the wind, we can adjust our sails.” With the uncertainty being thrown at us over the last few years, we have all had to make a lot of adjustments in our sails.

But, what adjustments do we make? What direction is the wind blowing? What direction will it blow?

There is no better compass for businesses than their customers. While simply asking them where you should go clearly sends the wrong message (a message of weakness), asking the right questions will help you find your way.

1. Ask your customers where their business is headed. Who better to travel with than your customers? Find out what they think is happening in their markets and work together to address those markets.

2. Ask your customers what challenges they are encountering. As the line from Jerry Maguire goes, “Help me, help you.” You don’t have to be quite that dramatic about it, but you get the idea. Nothing will endear you to your customers more than helping them solve their problems.

3. Ask your customers what challenges their customers are encountering. Not only is this a good indication of pressures in the market, it will also allow you to add more value for your customer by helping them help their customers to succeed.

4. Ask your customers where they are spending their innovation dollars. Are there any areas where co-creation might make sense? Working together in a successful initiative can create an unbreakable bond.

The real key is open communication with your customers about topics that will enable you both to adjust your sails and take advantage of the power created by the wind. Working together with your customers for the benefit of their businesses will have a dramatic and positive impact on yours.

A "Two-by-Four Moment"

Monday, December 19, 2011 by Kitty Radcliff

Have you ever had a two-by-four moment? By that, I mean an “a-ha” experience. It’s like someone hit you with a two-by-four and all of a sudden you have clarity about the situation. You see things in a brand new way.

Recently an executive of a leading U.S.-based distribution organization had a “two-by-four” moment when he reviewed their Customer Loyalty results. His company is pursuing a growth strategy, with the goal of increasing profitability and sales. In an effort to better understand the market position, the VOC initiative included a measure to gauge share of wallet. On first glance their results are extremely positive. They have the vast majority of their customers’ business.

But, wait a second. There is a small portion of business that is going to the competition. That share of business going to the competition is increasing. Furthermore, when you translate the amount of business that is going to other organizations into lost sales – here it comes – they are missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenue.

The two-by-four moment: They left money on the table by not pursuing all potential business with new customers.

· When acquiring new customers they targeted the core business, obtaining about 90% share on average.

· Over time, their share of wallet eroded as the customer grew relationships with other providers (e.g. down to 80% SOW within five years).

Are you maximizing relationships with your customers?

Kitty Radcliff
Vice President

The Blame Game

Friday, December 16, 2011 by Listening to Customers

We live in a world that involves a lot of blame. It’s there every time we turn our heads. How often do you hear things like this?

My child isn’t doing well in school, but that’s because his teacher isn’t spending enough time with him.
We would have won the game if the referee didn’t practically give it to the other team.
Our business didn’t do well this quarter, but that’s because the economy is down.
We didn’t reach our goal of bringing in new customers, but that’s because the market just doesn’t understand our value.

And finally, drum roll…

We lost that customer because they were too blind to see how we could help them. Okay, so maybe those aren’t the exact words that people within your organization may use, but the general sentiment is there. It’s hard to accept that customers may be leaving your company because there is a better offering – either product or service – out there. The dynamic is shifting from customers being just content with a good product and/or service. Retaining customers isn’t enough to meet growth targets - in order to now be successful customers are demanding partnership.

So, what exactly are customers expecting in terms of partnership? It boils down to 3 main components: Reliability, Credibility, and Mutual Success. Here’s a quick visual:

Partnership

Stop blaming others for shortcomings and change the focus in 2012. Truly partner with customers rather than merely “servicing” them!

Katie Kiernan
Vice President, Consulting Services

Grass is Always Greener-Employee

Friday, December 16, 2011 by Chris Woolard

A couple of weeks ago, Phil Bounsall wrote a blog about how customers can sometimes believe the grass is greener with another vendor, and by reaching out to those customers to find out what is important, you can help prevent wandering eyes.

The same concept applies for employees as well. I am sure many leaders feel the employees are never happy despite giving them a good salary, interesting work, and other perks. Many employees feel they are being taken for granted and aren't truly cared about despite these perceived perks.

Just like on the customer side it is important to ask the employees what they are looking for in the workplace and how the company can improve. While you may not be able to fix everything, you will at least have some direction as to where to spend time and resources to ensure you are having the desired impact on employee loyalty. For example, I talk with many companies who are throwing a lot of time and money into improving communications. However, communication does not have a large impact on employee loyalty. Focusing on things like development, fairness, and recognition, will generally have a much larger impact on improvement employee loyalty.

I know many people I speak with now are saying unemployment is high so they don't need to worry about turnover. However, I have seen several studies which indicate anywhere from 20%-30% of employees plan to leave their job in the next year. Generally these are the most talented people, the ones you can least afford to lose.

Another big problem I have found with organizations is despite unemployment being high, they cannot find the talent necessary to fill the positions. So despite having a stack of resumes on their desk, they don't have people that are highly trained and highly skilled to fill these positions. So combine that with the turnover that will be happening in the next 12 months and companies could be in for a difficult road. Therefore, it is more critical than ever to be reaching out to the employees on a regular basis to asses their perceptions of the workplace and what they truly care about in their job.

The Grass is Always Greener

Tuesday, December 6, 2011 by Phil Bounsall

Do you ever feel that no matter what heights you achieve, your customers are never happy? Do you ever feel that as a customer you are taken for granted? If you are like most everyone, your answer to both questions is, “Yes.” And here is the really crazy thing—those feelings are happening on both sides of the same relationship!

One pretty common human emotion that causes this is the propensity to feel like the “grass is greener on the other side.” Greener Grass

If our customers are thinking that we take them for granted, yet we are continuing to deliver and go above and beyond, what gives? What causes such a disconnect? We may think we are pulling out all the stops to make them so happy they would never think about trying the grass on the other side, but often we are trying the wrong things in the eyes of our customers.

Every restaurant wants to give me a punch card, and I know they are trying to give me a free meal to get me to eat there more often. The problem is, I hate carrying around the punch cards and I never remember to bring them so they become more of a nuisance than a gift. They may think they are going out of their way to do something nice for me. It just isn’t anything meaningful to me.

Reach out to your customers and find out what they need from you. What would show them your efforts to go above and beyond? What could you do that would surprise them (positively!) and keep them loyal to you?

Find out what they are thinking, what they want, what they need, and deliver. You know the grass is not greener on your competitor’s side of the fence. Now prove it to your customers.