March 24, 2012

Customer Complaints Are a PAIN or ...

Most Winners are Losers
I Know You KNOW, But Do You FEEL?
Sales Need To Be Secret Agents

It all depends on how you look at it. Most organizations look at complaining customers as a ‘nessary evil’ and part of the job that needs to be done, but which is not looked upon with a great deal of delight.

Customers complain, frontline employees try and explain the company’s position in hopes to appease the annoyed customer and the customer goes away either satisfied or even more angry.

BE DiFFERENT organizations, on the other hand, treat a complaining customer as first, a source of Customer Learning, and second, as a potential opportunity to recover and actually build customer loyalty.

Customer Learning goes beyond traditional Market Research and is a continuous process of learning from customers what works and what doesn’t in your organization. It focuses on every customer contact and seeks to drain as much information from the experience possible in order to enhance market performance.

A customer complaint is an excellent touch point from which to learn. It may not always be pleasant for an employee but it can provide rich information for you. Some companies treat complaint getting as a key strategic imperative, and honor those who do a great job at it.

NORPAC Controls of Vancouver BC is a company which believes that great employees attract complaining customers. They measure the number of complaints each frontline person handles successfully and they recognize the best complaint getter. Interesting cultural philosophy. The company is very well known for its ‘Be the Customer Vision’.

A customer complaint could be a Service Recovery waiting to happen. If the complaint is the result of a company blunder, handling the complaint the BE DiFFERENT way might be the difference between you losing the customer forever and enhancing their loyalty to you.

I have talked about the Recovery Practice before. It’s about fixing the problem and then doing the unexpected for the customer based on what you know about them. If you give ‘em what they DON’T expect, they will be dazzled and give you an ‘A’ for your efforts.

So stop talking about ‘complaints’ and start calling them Recovery Opportunities to get a DiFFERENT focus on how to deal with them.

Develop the process to turn complaint handling into successful recoveries and train your people on how you want it done. Measure their performance and communicate it far and wide internally. Honor those that excel in doing it.

Who are your Complaint Handling Heroes?

Cheers,
Roy

REMEMBER TO FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER

Posted 3.24.12 at 05:25 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 21, 2012

Go Small or Go Home

Back to School for Sales 
Secrets to UnFORGETTABILITY 
Bonding is In; Flogging is Out

If you want to distinguish your organization from the Competitive Herd you must create VALUE for your Fans that is RELEVANT (something they really care about) and UNIQUE (something that ONLY you provide).

So how do you achieve Customer Relevancy? Here’s a formula for you: Individual Customer Relevancy = 1/Group Size. Customer Relevancy is inversely related to the size of the group the person is a part of.

Simply stated, the smaller the group you focus on, the more you can get to know that wants and desires of each individual in the group. AND the more relevant you can be to each person in terms of the value you create for them. If you are looking at a 1,000-person Tribe, you will typically know less about each individual in the Tribe than if you targeted a Fan Group of 10 people. It just makes sense.

The “average” customer doesn’t exist. Mass market myopia produces “round-the-corners” marketing where products are designed to satisfy everyone, But unfortunately these products end up being unremarkable, forgettable, common and lost in the blur of others in the market that we looking a customers the same way. Mass market mentality encourages customer irrelevancy.

Small is good. Smaller is better. They can be insatiable communicators. Small groups have effective and constant communication going on among the individuals in the group. They have Social Power in the sense that together, because of their connectivity, they are able to create a powerful word-of-mouth “epidemic” behind the ideas they like. Think about the marketing opportunities in a small, cohesive group of Fans that care about what you do and who are talking you up to others constantly. WOW!

Group Power in a marketing sense is being better understood today. Malcolm Gladwell in his excellent book, The Tipping Point, discusses the Rule of 150 which states that a group beyond 150 actually loses social power and tends to be ineffective in viral opportunities. So there’s a guideline. Go find a group of 150 Fans who love you, are connected with one another and who communicate with each other on a regular basis. Go deep with each and every one of them and learn their secrets to create personalized VALUE for them.

A BE DiFFERENT approach. A way to make your marketing UnFORGETTABLE. A winning formula.

Cheers,
Roy


Join me on Twitter
Connect with me on LinkedIn

Posted 3.21.12 at 06:03 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 19, 2012

I know you KNOW, but do you FEEL?

There are lots of smart people out there these days. MBA’s. Doctors in this. Doctors in that. Our world is robust in well educated people. And that’s a good thing.

And businesses are always in the hunt for the cream of the crop when it comes to recruiting capable individuals. Aggressive competition for The Best of the Best. Which usually comes down to who has the better marks and which college or university did they graduate from.

I think this recruitment process is severely flawed. Focusing on academic outcomes is NOT the determining factor in whether someone will be successful or not in your organization. It is an important decision making element but it is not the be-all and end-all consideration.

Knowledge is a given as far as I am concerned. Table stakes. Expected. A characteristic of The People Herd. But it doesn’t necessarily make a person Special. Remarkable. Stand-out. Visible. DiFFERENT.

Its not what You KNOW, but how you FEEL that places you in these categories. Special people FEEL. They CARE. They exude TRUST. They have CURRENCY among their colleagues. They earn RESPECT.

Knowledge isn’t enough. Seek out FEELERS. Hire them.

Cheers,
Roy
Join me on Twitter
Connect with me on LinkedIn

Other Articles You Might Like
Are You Generic?
Dream Fierce
It’s NOT. A 10 Step Leadership Primer

Posted 3.19.12 at 05:48 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 18, 2012

Sales as Secret Agents

One of the critical components of mindlessly focusing on your Fans marketing strategy is to go beyond understanding the needs of customers to discovering their secrets. This BE DiFFERENT Practise seeks to understand the deepest desires of those you have decided to SERVE and then to create Value Packages that reflect their uniqueness.

Sales should be held accountable for secret gathering given their strategic position in any organization.

Sales are often in the best position to ask the right questions, LISTEN, take notes and record what they hear and report back to marketing. Yet they are rarely asked to perform this function. The world continues to be in the product flogging mode and as long as the salesperson understands the features and benefits of the product they are ok. The problem is they are like every other organization out there and have no opportunity to BE DiFFERENT.

Besides opening up additional marketing opportunities, secret gathering facilitates the relationship building process. After all if your salesperson takes the time to actually be interested enough to try to understand the customer at a deeper level they obviously care about them, right? You can’t ‘grin’ the customer by the way and fake that you actuality care. You will get caught and the customer will walk!

Build “Secret Gathering into Sales performance plans. And ensure Sales compensation plans include it as well otherwise it won’t get done.Sales bonuses should assign a material weight to this component to get sales attention - I suggest at least 25% of the sales bonus should be based on secret gathering effectiveness.

Who decides how effective Sales is at secret gathering? THE CUSTOMER! Create a Customer Report Card detailing the sales behaviors you expect from the salesperson to exhibit when in the secret gathering mode. Then get the customer to rate the salesperson on each behavior on a one-to-five scale - ‘1’ says nothing is being done; ‘5’ says secret gathering is being done effectively and consistently.

Cheers, Roy Osing

Remember to follow me on Twitter

Related Blogs
Institutionalize Customer Learning
Customerize your Marketing
Discover Customer Secrets
Holistic Value Offers
Sell Relationships NOT Products
Brand your Sales Warriors
Lose a Sale But Save the Customer

Posted 3.18.12 at 05:39 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)