Implementing customer listening accountability is prescribed often, but very few do it well. Most don’t make it a part of a system of tracking and management. Every piece of incoming feedback has to have an operating area that will be held accountable for reducing, eliminating, or justifying (and I mean really justifying) that piece of customer frustration. This is a most critical part of the work—and the part that companies fail to do.
Metrics & Accountability
Build a “Listening and Understanding Engine” so you can identify issues early and act without waiting for a survey result.
Many companies already have all the information they need from customers about what’s broken and what’s getting in the way of increasing repeat business. Every day multitudes of comments and feedback come in as a result of customers reaching out or at natural customer interaction points. Yet these opportunities to track “unaided feedback” volunteered by customers are not prioritized, trended or organized in a deliberate accountability cycle across the silos.
A customer referral means that you’re firing on two important cylinders.
First, you’ve done enough things right that they meld together into an experience that’s more than the sum of the parts of your organization. Second, the connection you’ve created with customers through the delivery of this experience compels them to tell others about it. Your customers become your marketing department, relating their experiences and convincing others to try you.
You need to know how far you are down this path of building a customer base that would refer you. If you track the rate of referrals in general and by customer group, you’ll know the strength of your ongoing revenue stream before you even spend another dollar on marketing.
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Start creating accountability for operational metrics by consistently defining the customer experience and delivering on “moments of truth.”
Once the customer experience has been defined, get granular on the contact points. When you have established the moments of truth, identify the priority contacts. Understand the critical customer-facing contact points or moments of truth that make or break it for customers. A way to classify customer contacts is to identify categories of occurrences: 1. Rescuing a customer in distress. 2. Revenue building to increase the sale of goods or services. 3. Responding to a customer request. 4. Relationship building contact to strengthen the customer bond.
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Organic customer growth drives long-term profitability. So why isn’t the customer as important to you as quarterly sales goals? This is where the customer commitment falls apart because what’s actively asked for, measured and rewarded doesn’t always line up with what’s good for customers.
Here are five questions for commanding customer accountability inside your organization…
Your answers will tell you how well you are doing with managing customers as assets.
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Zane’s Cycles grows because they know and respect the lifetime value of their customers. They believe (and demonstrate) that customers are an asset.
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The best leaders in my life asked more questions than they gave answers. Too often we jump to prescribing. We feel we know what customers want. We believe we know the answers. But the real difference between an “everyday” company and a “beloved” company is how they answer questions. How they make decisions. It’s the intent and motivation that guides decision making that separates these companies from the rest.
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Why call them “guerrilla”? Because getting these metrics into your organization as a regular part of the discipline and conversation is a campaign you’ll need to forge.
Because the customer is not owned like a discipline, customer metrics come and go, but not much sticks. “Guerrilla Metrics” establish a new language for your organization so that you can consistently manage customers as assets…
As a Zappos Insights VIP Panel participant and host, I recently hosted the Webinar, “The Value of Net Promoter Score” with Fred Reichheld along with Satmetrix. Here are five highlights from the discussion…
Watch a brief (52 sec.) video clip from Jeanne Bliss about how to orient your business around customers as assets.
