Each customer experience affects your customers’ beliefs and perceptions – their realities.  The changes can be subtle, unrecognizable at first; but they will continue to evolve in a positive or negative direction until they manifest into tangible change. 

The slow evolution of customer relationships can be out of your control to a great extent, which is why it’s imperative to your B2B company’s success that customers are given a consistent voice.  Proactively engaging customers to understand their realities through Voice of the Customer insight enables companies to have more control over their customer relationships.

Issues and misconceptions are normal because we’re all human, and communication breakdowns happen frequently as the intended message communicated is not heard and understood as expected.  Add to that the barrage of uncontrollable external influences that by their nature you are unaware of their occurrence and impact on your customer relationships.

Without a voice, issues and misconceptions can be left undiscovered.  Seemingly small infractions accumulate and aggregate into larger issues, disappointments and resentments.  Left unspoken and unresolved they become time bombs threatening to annihilate customer relationships and their long-term revenue streams at any moment. 

Can you afford the risk of not capturing your customers’ voices on a regular and consistent basis? 

 Attitudinal Information = Emotional Information

Measuring attitudes is a relatively new thing to do. The purpose is to understand the “spark” of the relationship. What was it that got them interested in the first place, and what values drive them to remain interested and engaged?

This information can be uncovered through asking attitudinal questions when gathering customer feedback. A critical step is to understand the role that emotion plays in the consumer decision-making process.

Given that customers remember the emotion of a brand experience, it is logical that much of their attitude about a brand is based on the emotional connection they have formed with that company. Yet many businesses continue to act like much of what drives their customers to buy is solely based on other factors, such as baseline products and features.

Customers get emotional about their business relationships, much like personal relationships. That helps explain these staggering statistics:

• According to Target Training International, more than 60% of all customers stop dealing with a company because of perceived indifference on the part of an employee.
• 70% of the reason customers leave a company has nothing to do with the product, and 84% of customers that leave do so for poor service. Forum Corp.
• Tarp Worldwide research found that customers who experience mild or strong dissatisfaction will tell between 9 and 16 other people.
• Up to 80% of defecting customers describe themselves as “satisfied” or “very satisfied” just before they leave.  Business Week, October 2006

These statistics exemplify the issue facing businesses today – customers make decisions about staying or leaving a business relationship based upon a multitude of factors – and attitude and emotion play major roles. By collecting feedback in real time, and at all possible customer interaction points, a company can learn firsthand what customers think when interactions happen and why customers become emotionally charged.

Get a Complete Customer Relationship Picture

Customer attitudes reveal the softer side of the business relationship. Knowing why customers do business with you is critical to maintaining that relationship and to adding new customers in the future. The difficulty in business is that many of the solutions today reveal only a portion of what is needed to really understand the customer. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are a good example. Most CRM-derived information is transactional in nature. It is solid information – critical to any business – but it doesn’t tell the entire customer relationship story. It tracks the ‘who, what, when, where, and how’ of the business relationship.

The missing element is often ‘why.’ Why do your customers do business with you? To uncover the ‘why,’ you must understand the basic principles driving any business relationship. A good relationship survey will reveal this. However, a relationship survey should not be your only Voice of the Customer component. Use it as part of a comprehensive program with transaction-based surveys, ad-hoc surveys, and unsolicited feedback management. Together they can offer you a clear picture of what your customers think, what drives their emotional connection with you, and how you can move the needle.

Just up the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, credit union executives from across the country gathered last week to ponder their own economic fates. U.S. Central, the largest corporate credit union in the United States, had recently announced investment losses large enough to require intervention. And just like the United States looked to taxpayer dollars for economic recovery, the National Credit Union Association (NCUA) weighed a financial assessment on credit unions to support U.S. Central and the failing “corporate credit union” structure.

All of the people I spoke with at the CUNA conference agreed: the NCUA’s Corporate Stabilization Program will have a significant impact on the credit union world. The assessment will hurt profitability. More importantly, there was significant distress that the assessment amount had not yet been defined. There will be a cost to every credit union, but no one knew exactly how much or how many times credit unions will be asked to contribute.

At some level the challenge facing credit unions is the same challenge we are all facing: How can we do more with less? Whether our incomes have gone down or our expenses have gone up, spending decisions are now integral to the survival of our organizations. Even though I don’t have an answer to the corporate credit union crisis, I can suggest one way to “do more with less” – and it comes from a personal experience.
 
While on a business trip to Portland, Oregon last year, I stopped at a small deli for a bite to eat prior to meeting with a CEO of a local credit union. As I stepped up to place my order, I noticed a small stack of business cards on the counter. The cards were from one of the credit union’s lenders who I was about to visit who undoubtedly provided services to the deli. Seeing my interest in the cards, a woman behind me leaned over and declared: “That is the best credit union in the whole world!”

What’s significant about this experience is that the credit union received free marketing from a person who had an obvious emotional connection with their organization. And the truth is, every organization has customers like her. They are out there, and they love your company. To borrow a term, they’re “engaged” with your company. If you ask them, they’ll be happy to tell you why they feel the way they do and what influenced them so strongly. If you can get more of them (the same way you got the first one) you can generate more and more of this kind of free marketing.

This kind of viral marketing is not only free…it’s ridiculously effective.  Allegiance conducted a study last year and found that 19% of “engaged” customers recommended their bank to an average of 4.1 friends—and 23% of those friends actually switched banks!  Your mileage may vary from industry to industry, but what a great way to acquire customers with very little incremental spending!

My experience at the deli have left me wondering: What would happen if the U.S. Government borrowed a page from the credit union playbook…

Brady Wycherly, District Sales Manager, Allegiance

I was curious this evening about ostriches. Specifically, whether ostriches really bury their heads in the sand to avoid facing things. This is what I found: “Contrary to popular belief, ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand…When threatened, ostriches run away.”

I guess the same thing can be said of some organizations when it comes to listening to their customers. They don’t exactly bury their heads in the sand–they just run away or abandon an avenue for customer feedback.

I recently read an article about a decision that a major airline made to drop a customer call center that took compliments or complaints after a flight, telling customers to send a letter or e-mail instead. The airline said it would stop publishing its customer relations phone number, which will be turned off altogether at the end of April. A spokeswoman for the airline said that the company is able to respond better to customers who write, since they often include more detail, making it possible to provide a more specific response. “We did a lot of research, we looked into it, and people who e-mail or write us are more satisfied with our responses,” she said.

I’m not saying that the above statement is false. In fact, those who wrote or sent an e-mail may have been more satisfied with the responses they received. But after reading the article I asked myself why the aforementioned customers would be more satisfied with those answers vs. a phone call.

I thought about my own role as a director of customer care, as well as the last complaint that I personally made to a company as a consumer/customer. Take a walk with me for a minute…

Do you recall the last thing that really annoyed or upset you about a product or service? Why do I immediately jump to a complaint? Well, because let’s be real – Most people don’t have the same sense of urgency when it comes to paying a compliment as they do in getting a problem or concern that they have resolved. I’d also like to point out (as a director of customer care) that when customers complain, it’s one of the best opportunities to increase their loyalty and engagement–as long as the company that the customer is dealing with responds promptly and positively to their complaint.

After all, put yourself in your customer’s place. When you’re upset and ready to “vent your spleen” what do you reach for first? Your keyboard? Your pen? Your phone? Etc. I know which one I’d go for first, but I’ll get into that in a minute.  

My point is that I’m willing to bet that if I took a survey asking which form of communication people would prefer to voice a complaint, I’d get a number of different answers. Because each individual is different, their choice for communication is different. But what is critical is that a customer has a choice! By removing one of those choices (no matter what the justification) you cut off a way for a certain group of customers to communicate with you–many of whom can provide you with valuable feedback. You also send a message to your customers that you don’t care enough about them to listen to them–in whatever way they choose to communicate with you. You can tell your  customers that they’ll provide you with more valuable feedback by communicating differently with you, but you’re telling and asking *them* to change (i.e. that’s not good for building loyal and engaged customers) instead of taking a look at what your business needs to do and/or how your business needs to change to better meet your customers’ needs and resolve their concerns.  

O.K. Back to the last time that I personally had an issue with a company. What did I do? I picked up the phone and called first. I didn’t feel like composing a letter or sending an email. I wanted another human being to hear me and acknowledge I was being heard. By the way, I never got a hold of anyone to register my complaint, so I then composed an e-mail to them to let them know that they needed to contact me to avoid losing my business. I haven’t heard anything back yet (it’s been several days).

Oh and by the way,it was an airline.

Did anyone just hear the sound of a running (and flying) ostrich?

Kevin Mellander
Director, Customer Care

Keeping tabs on customer information is an important piece of your company’s operations. Can you imagine what would happen if your company had to manually monitor and file all of the customer information that has been gathered over the years? This is why CRM software was developed – to ensure that critical customer information is managed and handled efficiently. CRM simply helps corporations capture, manage and store their customer’s personal information.

Where CRM’s fall short, though, is in their ability to analyze data. This is where EFM software comes to the rescue. EFM – a relatively new industry – helps manage customer and employee feedback company-wide. While CRM helps you capture , manage and store your customers’ personal information, EFM helps you capture, manage and analyze your customer and employee feedback – making your organization more customer and employee-centric.

In the age of advanced information technology, automating the process of gathering each and every type of customer information is vital to a business’s success. This is why CRM and EFM software are both important.

The right CRM software will allow your company to:

• Increase productivity
• Develop effective marketing strategies
• Reduce production and operational costs through proper information management
• Improve the customer’s overall experience with the company

The right EFM software will complement your CRM software by:

• Helping you manage feedback company-wide
• Quickly route and manage your company’s feedback
• Predict where in your company you can focus to improve customer and employee loyalty
• Gauge how satisfied your customers and employees are

Aside from these benefits, the right CRM and EFM software will allow you to identify your company’s most valuable clients and customers. This way, preferred and loyal customers can be given more priority so that their business can be retained. In the same vein, customers who have a good potential of remaining loyal to the company can be given incentives to stay with the company.

On the administrative side, these software packages will make customer interactions flow smoothly and data analysis can be done more efficiently. With all these advantages and more, CRM & EFM software is truly something that major corporations in any industry cannot do without.