Customers begin their buying process way before they contact vendors that they are interested in.  Think about the amount of research you personally have done before deciding which vendor to contact about any product or service you purchased recently.  Personally, I’ve sent inquiries out to email lists for groups I belong to as well as put out inquiries on Facebook to get recommendations from like-minded people in my community who can recommend solutions to my problems. 

Customers are also using web search to become more educated before deciding who to contact.  Web search provides access not only to vendor websites and product/service information, but also community board, blog posts, and rating sites.

Being armed with all of the above information can help short circuit the qualification process as a buyer and your buyers know that.

By understanding what your customers are looking for at each step of their research process, and providing it, you can ensure that you are included in their short list of providers they will contact. 

And the best way to get a deep understanding of how your customers are navigating their buying process is to talk to both customers you have won as well as those you lost.  By conducting ongoing win-loss analysis, you can ensure that you understand the various points in their research and purchase process, what information that were looking for and what criteria they used to qualify vendors. All of this information is vitally important to making sure that your marketing efforts are hitting the target.

What do you know about the information your customers is looking for, and where?  You may be surprised…

Keeping customers happy and preventing them from being lured away by your competitors is a key strategy to having a stable customer base and healthy revenues. Part of a successful customer retention strategy is ensuring that customers know that they are valued and not viewed as a commodity that you can replenish as needed.

And when it comes to making your customers feel valued, a simple message of ‘Thanks for your business!’ does the job perfectly. Have you ever been on an American Airlines flight when they say “We know you have other choices and we appreciate that you chose to fly with us…”. I know it’s a script that the flight attendants are given, but obviously, it had an impact on THIS customer. It’s a great message…for all of us!

But words alone can only have so much of an impact. I just looked back at the July 2011 email I received from Netflix which was their first announcement of the debacle that led to a plummet in customer numbers and their stock price. “We realize you have many choices for home entertainment, and we thank you for your business.” And now we are going to raise prices on you and ‘encourage’ you to stop ordering DVD’s…what?! I felt ANYthing but valued after reading that email. And will never feel the same about Netflix, a company that I had been a raving fan of up until then.

An example of how ‘actions speak louder than words’: Yesterday a San Francisco gas station owner lowered gas prices by 50 cents per gallon for 8 hours as a way of thanking his customers and helping make their holiday travel a bit less expensive. WOW! No advertising of this offer ahead of time to get MORE business, just a concrete (and unexpected) thank you to his customers. And, how cool that his actions made the local news, but that wasn’t his objective. It was a pure token of thanks. Side benefits: extremely loyal customers who hopefully won’t be tempted by saving a few cents per gallon at a competing station and who will spread the word about this station to others.

Here are a few ideas for how you can say thank you to your customers, not only during the holiday season, but ANY time during the year (or ALL year!):

• Send an insert with all orders (or orders over a certain amount) that provide a discount on future orders…with a message saying “Thanks for your business!’
• Create a culture in your organization for anyone who interfaces with your customers (sales reps, support staff, cashiers, customer service reps, etc.) to make sure they say a sincere “Thank you for your business” after each interaction.
• Have executives proactively call key customers for the express purpose of saying “Thank you”…no selling involved.

Those are just a few deas to get your juices flowing…let us know what you have done, or are thinking of doing, to let your customers know how much you appreciate their continued business!

And thank YOU for taking the time to read our blog! We’d love to hear your comments…

It’s extremely important to pay attention to the information being posted online about the impressions that people have of your products and your company.  This information can complement the work you may already be doing to collect customer feedback via customer satisfaction questionnaires or any other research you do to understand how to better meet your customers’ needs.

There are many social media monitoring tools available to collect information from public areas of the Internet.  Most of them automatically classify each comment using natural language processing technology (NLP) to help assess whether they are positive or negative.  This approach can help take a broad sweep at assessing what the sentiment is out there about your company and your products.  Monitoring these metrics over time and seeing what variations occur in conjunction with new product launches or organizational changes is very important, however this just tells you ‘what’ people are saying and doesn’t tell you ‘why’ people feel that way about your company/your products.

In order to get the biggest benefit from monitoring social media, it’s important to look at the actual comments that are collected and analyze what is behind them.  For people that are frustrated with your company or products, is it the purchasing process, installation of your product, or actual daily use of your products that is the core of the problem?  This information can be very helpful in making decisions about where to invest improvement efforts, product enhancements, etc.

Likewise, it’s very helpful to understand what it is that customers like most about your products.  This information can help you ensure that you don’t mess with the elements of your product that customers like most.

Getting full understanding of the social media noise requires in-depth analysis of a sampling of the actual comments.  Some organizations have the bandwidth and expertise to do this in-house, however, sometimes it is necessary to bring in external resources.  Researchers who do qualitative research such as interviewing, focus groups, etc. have the expertise to know how many comments to review in order to have a valid sample that represents all of the comments that are out there.  A good researcher can glean the details behind the comments and look for trends to help you get clearer about what to do to improve the perception of your company and products.

Net net: be sure that you are not only looking at social media metrics, but also investing the time to analyze what those metrics mean via thorough analysis.

• Get information from your sales team or contact database to identify accounts that you ‘won’ and those that you ‘lost’ (aka didn’t WIN) in a given period (monthly or quarterly is most common)

• Have a conversation with the key contact(s) at each account to understand the following:

                   - Who they consider your competition

                   - What their key criteria were for evaluating their choices

                   – How you measured up against your competitors on their key criteria

                   – Their perception of the sales process

These efforts don’t require a huge investment of time or money: these conversations can be brief and you don’t need to talk to a lot of people—you can pick a random sample of people who bought or didn’t buy your product/service.

The rewards for collecting this information are huge! To have a regular, ongoing perspective on these items will help you make sure that you have a finger on the pulse of your marketplace and that you anticipate issues before they become huge problems. To understand how your customers/prospects perceive you and the marketplace, is extremely valuable…and in some cases, the side benefit is that you make a great impression on a lost prospect which may turn their impression of your company around and change their mind (I’ve seen it happen!).

Think about how win/loss analysis could help you or your clients…it could be the perfect tool to get insights that you need in order to make some key business decisions with your customers’ needs/wants in mind.

The evidence continues to accumulate: happy, satisfied, highly engaged employees help increase customer satisfaction.  And vice versa.

Why is this?

• Customers like to do business with people who have good attitudes.

How many times have you done business with a company and gotten the impression that people just don’t like working there?  Their unhappiness/dissatisfaction oozes from their pores and can’t help but impact their interactions with customers.  And it makes you want to shudder to think about how your employees’ negative attitudes about your products/services could impact your customers’ own attitudes…

• Knowledgeable, experienced employees make it easier to do business with your company.

Employees who have worked at your company for a long period of time and have mastered their jobs, understand procedures, and know when to escalate issues are a huge asset when it comes to providing satisfying customer interactions.  And the only way to retain your employees is through high levels of satisfaction and engagement.  Starbucks makes this a very high priority, knowing that there are bottom-line benefits for them.

• Your employees are an important tool for understanding your customers.

Your employees who work directly with customers are constantly receiving input about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to doing business with you.  And they also know what other options your customers have and how you measure up.  It’s important that your employees feel engaged and invested enough to share this information with others in the organization, enabling you to ensure that your products, services, and policies are in synch with what your customers want.

There are other factors at play which drive the close relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, but these are three of the most important ones.

And if you wonder why good service is hard to find these days, consider this: only about fifty-percent of employees are satisfied with their jobs — and only one in five are passionate about their work.

Some very successful companies have a radical approach: employees first, customers second.  There must be a reason for that thinking.

If you consider customer satisfaction and loyalty an important strategy for your company, be sure to invest some energy in understanding and measuring your employees’ satisfaction/loyalty also.  The results could be enlightening and help you understand why your customer sat/loyalty numbers aren’t quite what you are hoping for.

Is there anything more important in your efforts to keep customers happy?

I’m in the middle of a situation with Samsung where my new networked printer isn’t working because it requires a new network card.   Samsung handled things great.  After several support calls that didn’t fix the situation, they realized that the card needed to be replaced and ordered a new one.  And escalated me to receive in-person support to install the card through a third party company.

This is where things got frustrating.  I was promised that someone would call me to make an appointment to come work on the printer.  No such luck.  After 4 business days, I still haven’t received a call from the support company, but have called THEM 6 times to follow up to see when someone is coming out.  Apparently they themselves can’t get the local technician to respond to them after many phone calls.

OK, understood.  You have a ‘bad’ employee.  Good to know.  So, what are you going to DO about it?

Your customers shouldn’t have to chase you down to get your products to work.  We all know that there are going to be problems with technology or service from time to time, but we expect the companies we do business with to take responsibility and make the situation as painless as possible.

My advice for how to keep your customers happy when products and/or service fails:

1) Communicate to your customer to let them know the status of the situation.

Once you/your reps realize that the normal system hasn’t worked as planned, they should proactively communicate with the customer vs. expecting the customer to follow up themselves (or hoping that they won’t?).

2) Let them know that you care.

Your customers will be extremely tolerant if they know that you understand the imposition that your product/service failure is causing IF you use a little empathy…put yourself in their shoes.  God forbid, maybe even APOLOGIZE.  It goes so far!

Likewise, if you fail to do this step properly and sincerely, you are on your way to losing a customer.  Who wants to do business with a company that doesn’t value you as a customer?

3) Have a back-up plan and don’t be afraid to use it.

Have logical escalation points and processes to put into place when the standard systems don’t work.  Again, don’t make your customers do the work…have the back-up plan in place and know when to use it.  Your reps shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to serve your customers.

4) Do what you say you’ll do.

Make sure that if your reps say they are escalating something that they DO so.   And then they go back to Step #1 until the situation is resolved.

Training.  Processes.  Commitment.  CARING.

That’s what is involved.  It’s the cost of doing business.  If you don’t do these things, you just don’t deserve my business.  Period.

How many of you have been asked the following question (or some variation) at the end of an interaction, whether in person or on the phone?

“When you receive our follow-up survey, will you give me a good rating?”

Sure, it’s great that customer service staff who ask this question 1) know that they are being measured based on how satisfied customers and 2) care about the measurement.  But when they ask this question, do they REALLY want to go further to ensure that I’m a satisfied customer?  What will they do when they get a ‘No’ response?

I personally think that referring to ANY post-encounter survey, except to encourage you to take the time to complete it, is just TACKY…certainly there are better ways to ensure that you have fully met a customer’s expectations such as:

• “Is there anything else I can do to help you today?”
• “Have we resolved all of the issues you called about?”

These variations still help ensure that you have a satisfied customer on your hands, but don’t come off quite as pushy or needy…but what do you think?

Earlier this year I read Bill Stinnett’s excellent book, Think Like Your Customer, which should be required reading for anyone in Sales and Marketing, especially if you market high-value products and services.

A glaring Marketing Operations disconnect for many companies is our tendency to over-focus on What and How we want to sell, when we really need to develop a deeper understanding of What, Why and How our customers buy. Those of us in MO need to assert leadership in aligning our company’s sales process with our customers’ buying process.

The healing starts at home. Our collective lack of effectiveness in supporting one of our primary customers, Sales, surely speaks to the growing emphasis today on Sales and Marketing alignment.

Yes, Sales and Marketing have equal roles in this often dysfunctional relationship. Yet it is incumbent on us as marketers to take responsibility for cleaning up our side of the house if we want a shot at a healthy, mutual partnership with Sales. If you’ve been in a long-term business relationship or a marriage, you know what I mean. Our unilateral thinking and actions impact the overall health of the system, for better or for worse.

So how does all of this relate to Stinnett’s book? I’ve gleaned a couple of key insights below that are especially meaningful to me. I also discuss some possible implications of these insights, which I recommend my fellow marketers and MO practitioners seriously ponder:

1. We need to remember our customers are buying a desired outcome, not a solution. Our organizational focus should be on understanding the gap between our customers’/prospects’ current state and their desired future state – the motive, the urgency, the payback, the consequences of inaction, the means to act, the perceived risks in acting.

Implications for marketers: We can best support Sales by providing the process and means to better understand this gap. We also need to deliver collateral and marketing programs that attract prospects interested in bridging the gap. We need to continually ask ourselves some key questions to ensure that our selling process is not just aligned with the customer, but with our business goals. How well can we fill the gap for the customer and still meet our profit objectives? How can we support Sales to ensure that new sales reps are properly trained to act in accord with this customer-centric approach?

2. We need to understand our customers’ buying process and imperative to buy. Where are they in the buying process? What do they need to do next? Who else is part of the decision process? How can we enable our customer champions to take the next step in the buying process? We need to understand the motive behind the potential selling opportunity motive to support sales reps. Is the reason to buy a planned replacement, an unplanned replacement, a
new purchase to keep up with the competition or a new purchase to get
ahead? Is the initiative supported from the top-down or is it
bottom-up? How does this initiative rank in terms of priority compared to other initiatives the customer might choose to fund? If we don’t understand these fundamental buying factors, we won’t be able to support Sales with strategic intent. We’ll just be providing air cover, absent a battle.

Implications for marketers: The programs we establish, the campaigns we develop, the tools we create need to be geared toward helping Sales help our customers to buy. Does Sales believe our marketing programs, campaigns and sales tools contribute to gaining greater access to qualified prospects? Reaching “hidden” decision makers? Equipping customer champions to sell on our behalf? Is there significant tension for the customer to buy? Our credibility with Sales is at stake. Our sales reps need to trust that the leads we provide are legitimate qualified opportunities. They’ll have much greater respect for us and the quality of our leads if we take the responsibility to nurture prospects until they are truly ready to buy. This means, when the customer has demonstrated that they know what they are buying, why they are buying and how they are going to buy it. The last thing we want to do is waste our sales resources on a sourcing decision (“Who will I buy from?”) when we (and/or our prospect) don’t have a strong handle on the why, what and how.

It really comes down to aligning our internal sales and marketing process (with our internal customer, Sales) with our customer buying process. This is a fruitful area for Marketing Operations to focus. Our contributions can make a real difference in our organization’s ability to:

• Attract and win the right prospects and customers
• Nimbly and appropriately respond to sales opportunities, based on a sound understanding of where prospects are in their buying cycles
• Optimize our sales resources to focus on high-touch, ready-to-buy opportunities
• Empower our customer champions to be highly effective advocates of our value proposition
• Mobilize our marketing resources – programs, campaigns, collateral – where they will have the greatest impact

Gary Katz is founder and CEO of Marketing Operations Partners, a training and consulting firm seeking to evolve the emerging Marketing Operations discipline into a valued Chief of Staff function for the CMO. Gary is a visionary and thought leader in the Marketing Operations field, who began teaching the first known US university class on Marketing Operations at UCSC Extension in 2008. For more information, visit www.mopartners.com.

Many companies fear social media.  But the good ones have less to worry about than they might fear. While SM can be intimidating (especially with all those lawyers out there chomping at the bit in our sue-happy America), the truly good companies will find that social media is a friend.  In fact it is their key ally. Why? Because Social Media may expose your vulnerabilities but it also amplifies the good.  GREATLY! Here’s why.

Four companies in the past month have so impressed me with their service that after just this one experience with each of them I am probably a customer for life!  So what did these companies do?  Simply put they:

• indulged in good old fashioned customer service
• delighted me, the customer, especially when I was down /stressed
• simply kept the promises they made in all their ads and promotional materials when they signed me up or attracted me to their business.

Sidenote; If you know my philosophy of marketing then you know I simply call this marketing.  Everything else especially when people say “yeah it’s all just marketing…” is very simply, lies.

So how did this good get amplified?

1. I am a customer for life. And what’s my life time value compared to what they gave me in terms of goods and service?
2. I am so impressed that the competitors can quit calling or writing me. No matter how good their marketing they are wasting their time — not until there are exaggerated instances of bad service from my current companies in the future — highly unlikely! A good culture, like a bad culture, sticks!
3. I am telling everyone – on Yelp, Twitter, on my blog here, everywhere… And where I used to tell 10 friends I am telling all my followers in Twitter, I have told everyone on Yelp and this blog post even shows up on LinkedIn since my posts on this multiple through all my networks.

Some old fashioned stuff is not a fashion after all; it’s a classic.  Know how to recognize it, preserve it, cultivate it with great care AND let social media amplify it for you!!

In case you’re wondering, those companies are:  Geico, America’s Tire, Enterprise Rent A Car and Zappos.

Reena Kapoor, of Conifer Consulting, (www.ConiferInc.com) helps organizations with new product & marketing strategy.  She brings over 18 years of new products & brand management experience from Fortune 100 CPG companies and venture-backed Silicon Valley companies.   Reena has deep consumer brand, product management and marketing leadership experience and brings this background to her work in helping organizations define their businesses based on a strong marketing/customer focus.

I traveled with my family on a Carnival cruise to Mexico 2 weeks ago (yes, we had fun and gained a cumulative 11 pounds among the 3 of us!).  We were all prepared for a sub par cruise experience since, after all, it WAS Carnival (and not the higher priced Royal Caribbean or Princess lines which we have cruised before).

Our actual experience was not that much different from our experiences with other lines…there were little things that were different, however Carnival did a great job of spoiling us and ensuring that everything was in place to have a great time.  We walked away from the cruise thrilled that we had done the trip and ready to recommend Carnival to anyone that considered cruising an exorbitant luxury.

But what absolutely DELIGHTED us was the level of service we encountered when we reported my son’s passport missing (it actually wasn’t MISSING…we knew exactly where he left it!).  Within 24 hours of filing an electronic ‘claim’, we received a personal email from the Guest Relations department, telling us that they had, in fact, located the passport and that we would be hearing back from a designated representative within a week (they had to get the passport from the ship to a post office…at that time, it was back at sea on its way back to Mexico!).

Even better than hearing back from someone, less than a week later, we actually received the passport in the mail!  I was shocked…we had the passport back only 9 days after we had left it on the boat.  And no one was hitting us up for a ‘handling fee’ of some kind—I was totally prepared to pay $20 or so to cover the extra effort required to return the passport.

What this experience reminded me of is that even though all of the work that organizations do on their ‘core product’ is important, it’s the LITTLE things (like how you handle your Lost and Found department or your Returns process or your Tech Support desk) that are opportunities to exceed customers’ expectations and really wow them.  Those situations can go a long way to helping your customers really understand how devoted you are to making it easy for them to do business with you and that you really care about their business.

It sure worked for me…I’m now a loyal Carnival Cruise Line customer!