Tag Archives: Communication

Importance Of The Internal Customer Experience

by on June 28, 2010 in Customer Experience, Organizations

A couple days ago, Eric Jacques wrote a post called How to Listen to Your Customers which was an excellent complement to my Listening to What Isn’t Said. In the post, he made one recommendation that really struck home for me:

Everyone in your organization needs to learn how to honestly and completely listen to customers (and remember the internal customers).

In particular, it was his reminder about internal customers. How many times do we focus so intently outside the organization that we forget about the folks we serve inside? And if you don’t think you serve anyone inside your business, take some time to reconsider. We’re not talking about employees serving managers and the execs at the C-Level. We’re talking cross-functional, about departments like IT and HR. We’re also talking about the sales manager who counts on marketing to support his or her efforts. And we’re talking about the engineer who depends on product managers to relay crucial strategic info from and to customers. No matter which department you fall into or what level you’re situated within the organizational hierarchy, there’s a good bet you serve someone else inside your company at least once in a while.

Here’s the million dollar question: Does your organization have a customer experience design that includes both external and internal customers? If not, why not? Making sure your internal customers are not only satisfied but have a remarkable experience is the bedrock of smooth teamwork and operations. Here are a few suggestions for creating a better internal customer experience:

Listen intently for needs and expectations. You can’t underemphasize the importance of listening. Your objective is to listen for understanding which transforms the action into an active process. Ask for clarification when necessary. Listen for what’s not said.

Help them become even better customers. When in the act of listening, don’t be a drone content with just collecting information. You know you have needs and expectations, so reveal them. And you know you have limitations so be clear about your own workload. Constantly ask yourself, “What can I do to help this individual be a better customer?”

Keep the bigger picture firmly in view. This requires an understanding of how the organization operates and your place within it. It also means that your service objectives should be in tight step with those of the whole organizations. They should resemble a bit of the holographic that I discussed a while back.

If you’re thinking that each of these suggestions can easily apply to serving external customers, then you’d be right. Any examples of organizations getting it right in terms of creating remarkable internal customer experiences?

photo credit: wonderlane (via flickr)

Nuance is Dead

by on March 14, 2010 in Creative

Yesterday, during danah boyd’s keynote presentation for SXSWi, she made a comment to which I had to stop myself from jumping up amidst a packed room and shouting, “Amen! Testify, sister!” Her comment consisted of three words printed on a slide deck:

Nuance amidst extremes

It was in reference to quotes and soundbites from folks who have argued that “Privacy is Dead.” In the continuum of extremes, nothing is more polarizing than declaring something dead or evil.

I fear we’re becoming much too accustomed to being at those edges, our interests numbed by a media obsessed with getting people to yell at one another instead of actually listening and having cogent arguments. We’re living in a culture where nuance is getting set aside like a quaint antique writing desk, a reminder of another time.

Why? Because being salacious and provocative gets attention, gets click-thrus, gets retweeted and Dugg and shared virally. It means we really don’t have to take the time to think about instances where our reasoning falls apart. It means we get to stick with our safe, comfortable ways of thinking and doing.

Does this scare the hell out of anyone else?

But I don’t think we’re entirely lost, yet. It’s one reason why I continue to love blogs. Writers can propose a viewpoint and then allow for others to join the dialogue in a very public space. Online communities can function in a similar way. Thriving communities know how to help its members to share feelings and rationales, absorb the points made by others, and consider new perspectives. The point is to help people generate new viewpoints rather than get mired in their own stale ways of looking at the world.

Rather than accepting a lot of other “me too” comments, let’s encourage more diverse points of view. As bloggers, we need to challenge the thinking of our readers, reply to their comments, encourage them to keep thinking more deeply about issues.

I’m continuously hopeful of our ability to grasp “nuance amidst extremes.” But we have to keep listening to each other, keep talking, and most important of all, keep respecting the viewpoints of others we come into contact with.

PS. Yes, the irony of this post’s title isn’t lost on me :)

How Not to Be a Social Media Jackal

by on September 18, 2009 in Relationships

Yesterday, Matt Singley (@mattsingley) asked a simple, but rather provocative question via Twitter:

What ensued was an interesting mini-conversation about how to successfully and effectively engage with a competitor’s customers through social media.

The set-up
Let’s say you work for Company Y in Matt’s scenario and have a social media/online monitoring program that watches not only for mentions of your company’s name but your competitors’ names, as well (and if you don’t already have such a program in place, I happen to know a very good agency that can help you).  In the course of your monitoring, you discover that Company X has screwed up and now has some royally discontented customers. What do you do?

Your first instinct may be to jump on this golden opportunity quickly so you can grab some new customers…and I’m going to suggest you squelch this instinct. By being overzealous in your online efforts, you can actually do more harm to your company’s online reputation than good. Don’t be the jackal eagerly waiting to pick off the discontented carcasses of your competitors’ customers.

What should you do, instead?
First, listen, do a little legwork, understand. Find out what happened. In our online world, it’s not that hard to uncover what’s going on when a competitor screws up. Do not – REPEAT, DO NOT – wade into any tweetstream or blogpost until you figure out what’s going on. Failing to grasp an initial understanding of how the customer feels will only make you appear insincere and predatory.

Second, be a human being. Sorry if that seems overly simplistic and obvious, but its astounding how often we forget that long-term sales relationships starts with treating customers like humans with respect. After gaining an understanding of the situation, practice some empathy. Ask yourself, “If I was this individual, would I want someone to start aggressively hawking their wares under my nose right now? Or would I prefer someone to treat me better than I’ve just been treated by Company X?” A little empathy goes a long ways.

What might this look like? Here is a fresh scenario from Twitter:
A customer becomes irritated with a rival’s product or service. Here’s an example from @Dotpage who is calling out @logitech’s slow driver updates:

Let’s say you work for Altec Lansing and uncover a tweet like this. Now maybe no one – including your own company – has drivers ready for Snow Leopard, but here’s a prime opportunity for you to approach a competitor’s disgruntled customer. A course of action might be to research the social media chatter coming from Twitter (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+to%3Alogitech) where you’ll find this issue is significant source of irritation among Logitech’s customers. Then, your first @ reply should be to note the problems faced by the individual – in this case, a lack of updated drivers. Perhaps send a tweet such as “Sorry to hear about the problems you’re having with speaker drivers…it sucks to not be able to hear sounds from your Mac.” Resist the urge to openly sell your product on first tweet. Remember, your aim is to build a long-term relationship not make a quick sale.

Not everyone you send @ replies are going to respond and that’s okay. For those individuals who do reply, here’s the opportunity to guide your competitor’s customer toward your own products and services. Ask what they want from a product, what drives them crazy, what a company can do to improve their experience. You now have a personal, one-to-one conversation with a buyer that can turn them into a raving fan. People become passionate about purchasing from other people, particularly those who genuinely want the best for them. This interaction can be a catalyst for introducing a customer to your own products and services without the need for even making an open sales call.

After you’ve made contact with the individual on Twitter, then follow them. Don’t make following the first course of action – this is the type of behavior that bots employ and again can be seen as an overly aggressive predatory tactic that will turn off the potential prospect.

Third, make sure every single person in your company is working from the same playbook. This is where breaking down silos and cross-functional planning cannot be under-emphasized. If just one person from your company leaps in like a jackal, then there’s a better-than-average chance your company’s image will be tarnished along with that of Company X.

Any thoughts or counterarguments here? What’s worked for you as a disgruntled customer? What’s worked or hasn’t worked for your company in having conversations like these?

Time To Break Up The Cool Kids Club?

by on May 5, 2009 in Communities

Open admission: I didn’t care too much for high school. The primary reason is that I didn’t fall squarely into the so-called Cool Kids Club. I was therefore an outsider, which in some ways proved to be just fine and in other ways was excruciatingly painful. In social circles, ostracism can be a brutal punishment. Maybe this resonates with you (and if you were one of the Cool Kids in high school, it’s fine now…I’m friends with many of them now via Facebook…funny how time changes us…but I digress).

The point I’m attempting to make is to be mindful of your own community. Do you have any cliques? Is there an “elite” class who may be excluding other members from their group? I’m not suggesting that allowing groups to form is a negative. Just be careful about the dynamics forming from this behavior. If members feel they are not included and welcome in different areas of the community, they’ll likely make way for the door.

What to do? Here are four ideas to get you started:

  • Build a language of inclusion into your community communications. Don’t miss an opportunity to express the values of the community. And if you don’t have a guiding set of values, create them.
  • Monitor discussions and interactions. Look at how community “elders” communicate with “newbies.” Is it respectful or disdainful? You may need to pull out some conflict mediation skills here.
  • Reach out to the individuals in the cliquish group. Chances are they don’t realize the potential harm of their actions. Calmly and clearly remind them of the community’s values and desire for inclusion.
  • Find members who model an inclusive approach and send them an appreciative message. You’re rewarding action that you want to see.

Have you ever had to break up a clique or flag inappropriate behavior like this? What did you do? Love to hear your stories.

Oh and by the way, Heathers is one of the most grossly underrated films of all time.

Sales Are Driven By Relationships Not Ads

by on April 21, 2009 in Relationships

How do you communicate with your current customers? Do you only send them mail when you’re launching a new product or email them when there’s an upgrade to purchase? Have you taken a good hard look at what you communicate and how often you communicate it? Is it all BUY, BUY, BUY?

If so, that’s a prescription for buyer fatigue. The reality is that sales are driven by relationships not broadcasted advertisements.

In many ways, this is nothing new. Years ago, when I took over as director of membership development for a professional association I encountered similar outreach attitudes. The only time the association sent a message to a member was when their membership was about to expire. For first year members, the communication path was to send an overwhelmingly large welcome packet (or the “hernia kit” as it was jokingly termed) and little else until their membership expiration notice nine months later. As you can imagine, that did nothing to build the kind of engagement necessary to guide that new member toward renewing for a second year. Does this sound familiar?

When I entered, we assessed the plan but we did more that just retool around specific objectives. We knew what we wanted: renewals. What was missing from the prior plan was what our members actually wanted. They wanted value, they wanted a relationship with the association, they wanted to be recognized as more than a walking wallet.

Take a look at how your company is building relationships with your customers. If your only communicating more ways for customers to buy, then you’re likely not cultivating the long-term relationships necessary to generate more sales to your current base. And this is a base that – if they’re wildly engaged and passionately loyal to your company – are going to spur referrals.