THE 10 T’S OF CUSTOMER ACQUISITION AND RETENTION (7)

That kind of CRM can cost a fortune. But remember, you have some kind of CRM system in place now, whether it is in file folders or an in-house database. Don’t confuse a software solution with the important function we all share—managing the customer base. Improving true CRM, especially for a small company, can be what makes or breaks the business.

Simply put, technology can improve your customers’ experience. I’m not saying make your company robotic. Technology can make your organization more responsive and more humanistic by allowing your people to do their jobs better. Technology can free up your people’s time so they can handle the things that human beings do best.

Too often, small business owners believe that their customers always want to talk to them. That’s not true. What is true is that we’ve trained our customers that talking to us in real time, by phone or face to face, is how you get things done.When I speak about automating mundane tasks, many business owners think I am advocating a soulless, mechanized customer encounter. Far from it—the idea here is to provide a higher level of service in those areas where technology is the best tool.

When I was president of that corporate apparel company, 40 percent of the time our customer service staff spent on the phone with customers was answering two questions: “Is my order close to shipping?” and “Can I get another catalog?” By simply automating these two mundane, repetitive tasks via our Web interface, our highly trained customer service staff was able to become increasingly proactive, not reactive, and provide more high-value service. Computer systems don’t do a good job of answering questions such as,“How red are your red shirts?” They can’t answer questions such as, “Bob gained a lot of weight since last year’s show; do you think he needs an XXL or a 3XL?” These types of questions present an opportunity to really shine. Our well-trained staff could now devote their newfound time to answering these more qualitative questions. By freeing up our staff ’s time, technology allowed
us to provide more quality touches.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

THE 10 T’S OF CUSTOMER ACQUISITION AND RETENTION (6)

• Have you ever sent out marketing materials to people who are on credit hold?
• Have you ever invoiced people with standard terms after they’ve negotiated custom terms with your sales organization?
• Have you mailed out brochures to people who haven’t worked at that company for two years?
• Has your marketing department advertised services that the sales department says nobody wants to buy?
• Has your shipping department sent packing slips that bearnoresemblance tothe customer’s invoiceor sales contract?
• Have your people answering the phones been clueless
about what your customers have ordered and what offers
you have sent them by e-mail?
• Have customers ever tried in vain to return a product that they purchased online to your physical location?

To grow your business, you need a total view. You need to make sure anyone who interacts with customers in any way has a total view or at least knows where to go to get the answers in a hurry. Through training and our next T, technology, you can make it happen.

4. Technology
This book has a whole chapter on technology, but here I talk about technology that impacts your customers. Technology is making it increasingly easier to gather, store, and interpret information about our customers.

It has become popular in recent years to put in customer relationship management (CRM) systems. U.S. companies have spent billions to set up formal CRM software systems. This software allows companies to determine which customers have spent the most, get a view of customers’ past transactions when they call, and route them to the person who can serve them best. When it all works as advertised, a
CRM system can be a powerful tool. But much of the time it doesn’t, as we have all experienced when calling a big company’s customer service department.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

THE 10 T’S OF CUSTOMER ACQUISITION AND RETENTION (4)

Here’s another example.When I travel, I’m generally flying to one of a handful of specific airports.More than half of my speaking engagements are in the big conference and convention cities: Orlando, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Chicago. Some of the online travel agencies offer a free service that will alert me by e-mail when the lowest fare falls below a certain price that I determine. Recently, I was happy to see one of the fares drop way below the threshold, so I clicked on the
link. Instead of a screen offering me a way to buy tickets, I got a blank screen with this message:

HTTP ERROR: 403 Forbidden
Directory access not allowed

I’m no techie, but it was obvious somebody inserted a dead link of some kind in the e-mail, and whoever is supposed to check these things went home early or didn’t do his or her job. Regardless, here was a point of customer contact that could have resulted in a sale of three tickets immediately and maybe a hotel and rental car on top of it. Instead, the company blew it. Their home page address wasn’t in the e-mail, so I clicked on a rival’s site I had bookmarked. The company who had sent
me this prime information lost the sale and probably countless others because the customers’ experience wasn’t handled properly. The scary thing is that they’ll never know how much money they lost that day because most of their customers won’t say anything. I certainly didn’t.Most people just bought from somebody else that day and thought a little bit less of that company forever.

Every contact with the customer is important—and can have a direct impact on your customer acquisition and retention. This includes the initial phone call, credit terms, confirming e-mail, returns—everything that your customer sees and hears from your organization. Remember, finding and keeping customers is a touchy subject.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

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THE 10 T’S OF CUSTOMER ACQUISITION AND RETENTION (3)

2. Touches
Every time you come in contact with a customer, it’s a “touch” and an opportunity to shine. I worked as president of a company making apparel with corporate logos. Our competition saw touches in two places: the initial marketing communications and the first phone call.
We went beyond that to put effort into the art department, the sample department, and the shipping processes—even down to something as detailed as the packing slip—because when we got the order, that was just the first step. In the world of apparel, people return things, even if you do everything perfectly. The personal touches—how we handled the two returns out of 42 shipped—was how we won over the customer and got more business.We took what the customer perceived to be a potentially negative experience and turned it into a big positive. Removing the proverbial thorn in the lion’s paw allowed us to move beyond simple satisfaction. We were building lifetime loyalty and value.

What is far more common, especially with the big companies you are competing with, is the dropped ball, the wasted opportunity, or the negative that gets even more negative. We all have far too many examples of these in our heads, but here are two examples of customer touches that the company should have had complete control of, both related to outbound correspondence.

Like most people, I’m always looking for a good deal when I travel. One airline I fly most of the time does a pretty good job in some areas and a lousy job in others. Every week I get an e-mail from them with a host of special deals and offers. Invariably, when I call the reservations number to book a flight, they know nothing about the deal I just received in my
inbox. The right hand and left hand are in different worlds. Here’s a marketing department sending me a message each week, which I’ve actually taken the time to open, yet they can’t service me in the simple way I want to do business—over the phone. Sometimes I get an e-mail from this airline that will prompt me to pick up the phone and place an order. The first thing their automated system requires is that I enter my frequent flyer number. Then they know who I am. A customer service representative then asks me for my e-mail address so he or she can send a confirmation. Now keep in mind I have flown more than one million miles with this airline in just the past 10 years and have received literally hundreds of e-mails from them. How is it possible that their system cannot link their outbound marketing database with their customer service database?

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

THE 10 T’S OF CUSTOMER ACQUISITION AND RETENTION (1)

Trying to grasp all the factors that determine whether a customer buys from you and keeps buying from you can be overwhelming. That’s why I’ve developed the 10 T’s of Customer Acquisition and Retention. These are the most important elements for any organization interested in improving in this area.

1. Training
Do your new hires know what makes you tick? Do they know why you exist and what matters to your customers? The training I’m talking about is customer-driven training, not internally driven training. Most small businesses have some rudimentary form of initial training, but it is focused on how to work the cash register, how to input data into the computer, or how to file the paperwork.Yes, those things are necessary to learn, but they come with time. Most of that kind of training has little to do with what really matters from a customer standpoint. The answers to the following questions are what effective employees really need to be trained about:

• Why do people buy from us?
• What do we do differently from everyone else?
• Why do people buy from us and not the other guys?
• When people buy from the other guys, why do they do it?
• What makes us unique?
• What do our customers care the most about?
• What are the primary tasks you need to know, and how do those tasks relate to the customers’ needs?

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

The Milkshake Story (3)

I feel sorry for these big name business hotels. In an effort to be outstanding, they feel forced to invest in standardization. They spend a fortune crunching data on their customers to come up with “meaningful profiles” that mean nothing. Think of the billions they spend each year trying to train their staffs how to make me happy (because, believe me, I am the target). Despite all this effort, they often fail miserably in giving customers what they really want. The people who work there may be smart. They may even sincerely try their best to make each customer satisfied. But they are hampered by stupid systems.

Here’s the lesson of the milkshake story. Don’t allow your systems to make your organization stupid. Find ways to build flexible operating procedures so those best and brightest people you hired can do their jobs. Don’t make them have to be a systems analyst to input a special order that’s “off the menu.” Don’t make them shut down a whole shipping department to send a package to Canada. Don’t make your best sales rep jump through hoops sending triplicate forms to accounting because she had to give your biggest customer slightly different payment terms. And if you run a hotel, find a way to keep room service from resorting to a bowl of ice cream, half a glass of milk, and a spoon when all the guest really wanted was a milkshake.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

The Milkshake Story (1)

As a professional speaker and consultant, I’m on the road a lot. I average about 100 nights a year in hotels. There are many aspects
of business travel that can wear you down, but I try to keep a smile on my face at all times. One way I do that is by keeping my eye on the prize. To get through a trying day of planes, trains, and automobiles, I keep looking forward to something that will reward me at the end of the day.

Recently, I checked into a big chain, business-oriented hotel. On entering the room, I immediately went to the phone to call room service.My prize was going to be a vanilla milkshake. I had been thinking about it all day and could almost taste it.

“Good evening, Mr. Little, this is Stuart in room service. How may I help you?” a pleasant voice answered. “Hello, Stuart, I’d like a vanilla milkshake, please,” I replied. “I’m sorry, Mr. Little, but we don’t have milkshakes,” Stuart said. I was crushed.

After thinking for a moment, I said. “All right, Stuart, tell me this: Do you have any vanilla ice cream?” “Yes, of course!” he responded enthusiastically. “Okay, do you have any milk?” I then asked. “Yes, we have milk,” he replied.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

Technologies

Some technologies are passing fads. When a new development
is going to cause an undeniable change in the marketplace,
however, you need to move on it. This is what is commonly called a disruptive technology, and it is the real deal.
The steam engine, the electric light bulb, the automobile, the
airplane, and plastic are examples of developments that fundamentally changed entire industries. For that matter, so did
more humble objects such as the fountain pen, the twin-blade
razor, and the ball bearing.

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