Sales Advocate Newsletter

Understanding Business Through Your Customer’s Eyes

November 2004

Imagine how effective your organization would become, and the competitive advantage you would enjoy, if you could track customer feedback data regarding your products and services automatically and act on it quickly to drive business decisions, improve revenue, and enhance customer loyalty. While Inside Sales Managers consistently measure revenue, leads, and call and contact activities, most neglect to apply the same discipline to the customer’s experience.

If Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is truly about customer relationships, it must incorporate Customer Experience Management (CEM) and promote a truly customer-centric culture. CRM technologies are evolving beyond just unified customer views, sales automation, and account profiles to include an understanding of the customer’s state of mind and experience with company representatives, products and services — Customer Experience Management.

How Do Your Customers Feel? Just Ask Them.

Every day, inside sales groups and contact centers have hundreds, thousands, and even millions of contacts with customers. If you would like feedback regarding how your customers feel about your company and its products, all you have to do is ask.

Customers will tell you about the quality of service they received. They’ll tell you about your products, services, and their interests. They’ll even tell you about sales opportunities or whether or not they feel loyal to your company. In fact, they’ll be happy you asked - it reassures them that the relationship matters.

Effectively Engaging Your Customer

To get the best response from your customers, the questions you ask should be relevant to the interaction that just took place, and asked in a way that is objective and non-confrontational. You should ask them in a manner that is natural and does not require too much effort or time. If properly executed, they’ll give you information that companies regularly pay researchers and third-party consultants hundreds of thousands of dollars to collect – data that is often collated and reported weeks if not months later. There is no better way to understand, measure, and improve your customer’s experience than by asking your customer directly and in the context of their interaction. The most effective approach to invoke customer participation is to solicit feedback in real-time, whether the interaction is by phone or by web or email:

Phone - have the inside sales rep solicit feedback by offering an IVR-based survey at the end of each call. This can easily be accomplished with a simple script like, “To help me serve you better in the future, would you mind letting me transfer you to a system to answer three quick questions?”

Web/Email - automatically generate a short web-based survey directly from the site or via an automated email link.

Correctly implemented, with the right technology and business processes, this approach yields customer responses of over 80% to all questions asked - a gold mine for understanding customers, their perspectives, and how to improve business.

The Benefits of a Customer Experience Management System

There is no question that positive customer experiences lead to better relationships, higher customer satisfaction, and improved profits.Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is evolving to incorporate customer experiences and not just internal customer profiles. A Customer Experience Management system generates metrics based on real-time customer feedback and data. It delivers significant and measurable cost savings, increases in customer satisfaction, and improvement in customer loyalty. If you let the customer participate and provide information, research strongly demonstrates they will. The key to driving effective CEM and a customer-centric culture is to integrate customer feedback and data into business operations, business decisions and process improvement.

This article was written by Amae Software, the leader in Customer Experience Management (CEM) solutions. The Amae Software Customer Integration (CI)™ Suite automatically collects, analyzes, and reports intelligent customer-driven data across all customer contact points (Phone, Web, email, chat) and effectively networks customers directly into operations. Visit www.amaesoftware.com or call (650) 965-0820 for more information or to schedule a demonstration of the technology, benefits, and capability of the Amae Software CI Suite.

 

This newsletter is provided as a complimentary service from Phone Works, Inc., the San Francisco Bay Area's leading sales consulting firm. Phone Works helps technology firms increase revenue, shorten sales cycles and implement successful, repeatable sales models. The industry's largest technology companies and newest start-ups turn to Phone Works for lead-generation, lead-qualification, telesales and sales-productivity programs.

You can reach Phone Works at 510.749.9073.