Customer Loyalty « The Mountaintop

March 8, 2010

Appealing to Human Values in B2B Marketing – Part 1 of 3 on Online Demand Generation

Filed under: Customer Experience,Customer Loyalty,Demand Generation,Human Behavior — Jeff @ 5:15 pm

I have been working with large enterprise for the past 12 years primarily focused on Demand Generation, online Demand Generation to be precise. It took until until last year for one of what I consider to be, the last stones to fall into place on my holistic approach to this art form. Just 11 years to learn that lesson… not bad!

The lesson has to do with people and the conflict of personal and corporate values.

Who are We Marketing to?

I think many of us always tend to think about industries, positions, company types when we think of B2B targeting for our demand generation efforts. In my mind, this misses a crucial element in not only the messaging but the demand generation process which is the person we want to engage. So the first part of my realization is that no matter what, we are always selling or marketing to people, not businesses. A lot of you are saying, “yes, and???” because that’s not really something that’s rare knowledge. But here is where I followed the rabbit down the hole.

How Does this Make a Difference in Marketing?

Human beings are complex creatures, constantly processing tons of information every hour of every day to make decisions and stay within the boundaries of our own rules, society’s rules and the rules of the companies we work for. But what happens when a person has two conflicting set of values, say their personal values and the values of the corporation they are working for? Who wins the values conflict?

The answer depends on who you are targeting and how willing they are to compromise themselves and/or the companies they represent. So how do we market to someone who already has two sets of values in conflict? Are we going to push our own values on them to introduce a third factor in the conflict?

Understanding and Overcoming Values Conflict

A values conflict can be tricky depending on the type of person you are dealing with; some will be absolutely unwilling to compromise others will be very willing to compromise. Compromise could be personal compromise (based on the strength of the relationship you create) or corporate compromise where they are willing to bend rules to do business with you. Either way, there are several proven ways to improve your effectiveness.

Play the horse, not the course. Focus on improving your attractiveness to certain types of people, not companies. A example of this is to be able to easily engage CFOs and COOs, instead of just appealing to an industry or sector.
Align your values with the person. You can’t lose in this situation if you align to them instead of the brand they work for. Most times you will hit key values they both share anyway, but aligning to personal enables better engagement of the individual.
Focus on them, not you. Make sure your approach is customer-centric, not about you. Do your research and make sure you know what they want for their business and themselves.
Identify and Provide Solutions for Value-based Objections. This is probably the toughest one as it requires deep understanding of the customer’s values struggle. The best advice is to create scenarios that call values into question and create messaging, content and processes to overcome these with minimal to moderate compromise of personal values.

Much of this can be woven into your corporate websites, online content and digital presentations. Even corporate videos can be aligned to use this approach by using specific types of individuals and talk tracks to get the point across.

Closing with a Story

One of my fist clients and now a dear friend had a values struggle when I first met her. I was introduced to her by a colleague for a website RFP she was managing. While I came well regarded, my little company did not come near to meeting the requirements of this particular RFP. Her company absolutely forbid doing business with small companies as they were deemd unreliable from a delivery and service standpoint; a value her company held dear – reliable service and quality deliverbales.

As we talked and I got to know her and she began to understand me, a values struggle became clearly evident for her (although I didn’t recognize it at the time). For her, my approach was very different. I asked good questions, I listened intently, I was available at all hours of the night, I clarified things for her that needed to be clarified, and I quickly developed top of mind presence with her when it came to thinking about this project.

Her struggle came to a head when I submitted my proposal versus all of the other large vendors. Mine was 3 pages plus an exec summary of one page; all the others gave 20-30 page proposals full of rhetoric. She told me later that it was at that point she knew I had won her business, that I understood her so well that I could articulate a solution for her in 3 pages.

But the struggle she went through was intense and the final decision called on her to question the values of her company or rather the rules formulated from the values of her company and make a decision based on her own set of values. The project was a great success for her and 10 years later we are still solid friends.

Has it always turned out this way? No. But it has given my little firm the advantage many times and won us some great client relationships – relationships that last into today and hopefully many, many years into the future.

Disagree with me? Let me know; I love good debates and would like to hear other stories that support or debunk my theories.

Cheers!

Jeff – Sensei

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February 25, 2010

Updating the Mountain Top

Filed under: Customer Loyalty — Jeff @ 4:44 pm

Just spent some time with a good friend who thankfully is completely honest with me. Gave me some great feedback on the blog and we are going to be doing some changes over the next couple days.

Apparently to Mac users the blog looks like a steaming pile of crap. Do people still use Macs???

Thanks to Steve Harris for his time, good humour, and great advice!

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February 16, 2010

The Relationship Revolution – Online Human Behavior Series – Part 2 of 3

Filed under: Customer Experience,Customer Loyalty,Human Behavior,Social Media — Jeff @ 12:35 pm

I have been thinking for a long time that we have missed something. I feel like we are looking at the tail end of the horse as its walking into the distance. Here’s what is bothering me.

As human beings our strongest motivator in life is to build relationships that help us achieve our goals – personal, political and business included. No king ever gained power without the help of an army or political allies, no president ever took office without the help of millions of voters and no one ever married without first building a relationship with their betrothed; unless you include arranged marriages and even those allow the bride and groom to get to know each other. All this to say that relationships are very, very important to us. Two points really hit me:

This transcends our personal and business relationships to affect brands as well and the people that represent those brands.
Communication is the most important ingredient in every relationship – it is the enabler and without it relationships wither and die on the vine like fruit left to rot.

Sacrifice Communication in the Interest of Efficiency and Profit

Here is where I start to see some problems… In the mid to late 90s companies started changing the way they communicated with their customers. Companies began to think about how to improve efficiency (read: cut costs/head count) of communication between them and their customers introducing some wonderful web technology (such as e-commerce, online accounts, etc) and complex phone systems able to handle almost any customer issue. These system improvements had some wonderful upside to help manage customers but what was the cost? I am a firm believer in balance and that in this case the negatives of efficiency improvements were gradual, unseen and severe.

What Exactly did We Sacrifice?

Let’s start with relationships. When we eliminated the people connection from one end of the relationship, we eliminated communication. Simple. Now we can reach people (eventually) but companies have made it difficult, often complex to navigate these (both web and phone alike). This process increases frustration in just about everyone using these systems and frustration leads to? An indifferent or negative experience.

The other big one we sacrifice when we replace people with technology is loyalty. Think about it. Who are you most loyal to and why? What is the relationship you have with that brand that makes you so loyal? It’s a powerful connection of some kind that is based on a relationship.Now, granted this is a sliding scale depending on the industry with service, financial and retail industries ranking high in human connection and consumer packaged goods ranking lower.

Lastly, we may be sacrificing brand positioning. Why’s that? Well, if we leave it to customers to shop online without human intervention potential (like live help chat), we risk comparison based on the lowest competitive facts – price and features. When it reaches that level, we lose a lot of the hard work that marketing has done and combined with the above, we risk losing the loyalty of our current customers and minimize loyalty we can build in new customers.

In the end it is the relationships we have with companies that determine loyalty. These are built on trust and comfort with the people we deal with in B-to-B and B-to-C models equally. It is all about the answering the question: Do i feel good about doing business with this person?

The Cough

So what was a consumer to do? It was difficult to connect with anybody in a company, and even discouraged at times. Where do we go for our relationships? Well, let’s start with places like Yahoo groups and push onto heirs like MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube and Twitter. This is where consumers found the relationships where they could talk about the brands they liked, didn’t like and everything in between. Was it born solely of consumer frustration at not being able to develop relationships with companies? Certainly that wasn’t the only contributor, as Social Media channels provide all sorts of personal gratification, but it was a key contributor. Behind all of this is the evolving human relationship with companies. Gone are the days of keeping the customer in the dark and isolated; now the tables have turned.

Where is the Consumer (and B-to-B) Relationship Going?

Well, its very liquid and companies need to be looking forward instead of trying to catch up with today which could also be yesterday by now. Were I leading a large enterprise I would be investing heavily in ways (both new and old) to connect my employees with my customers to do two things:

Enable ease of access to my products and services, including fast and friendly resolution of customer issues. This includes looking at mobile-enabled service, stream lining of customer engagement processes, and greater empowerment of front line staff to deal with critical issues. In fact, front line employees should be rewarded based on this.
Build relationships with customers at the ground level. It is so critical to build personal relationships that can withstand the corporate bullshit that most customers have to deal with. Everyone needs a go-to person; someone who is their advocate with that brand. Is it so hard? Not really.

How Does Social Media Fit In?

Well, most consumers are now fairly comfortable with developing relationships online and have been doing so for a long time. Social Media provides a brilliant foundation for developing “one-to-one” or “one-to-many” relationships with customers. But here is the catch, I don’t think that Twitter or FaceBook are good alternatives. The best solution is something that is semi-private and based on your brand. A place where a customer can invite anyone they want to be a part of the community. And it should be focused on service. In an ideal world, the private environment would enable the customer to pass back and forth between the public (Twitter, YouTube, and FaceBook) and private branded communities.

Hell, I can even see a future where the internal employee social environment of a company is integrated closely with the customer environment. This is a shift that is on the way as we look at new engagement models like C-to-B and C-to-C.

The Secret to Mastering Customer Relationships via Social Media

It is one as old as human civilization; use it to build great relationships. But Social Media needs an unconventional approach – not the tired old ways of the Advertising and Communications industries. This a channel that is about being a part of the whole, not commanding an empire. It is about discussion and being part of ideas, not preaching rhetoric to the masses. It is about an evening of the playing field where a single consumer wields a voice as great as yours; sometimes greater.

My current projects are all about helping my clients be part of developing community around some great ideas. They are enablers and contributors, taking no glory and appreciating everyone equally. Is it a formula for success? Too early to tell. But it is heads and tails better than the current thinking of most companies. We believe it will lead to the brand being connected to some great and noble ideas and that when customers think of this idea, our work comes top of mind, not through us, but through the community.

The Diminishing Returns of CRM

The CRM industry is completely infatuated with data that looks at understanding the patterns of customer behavior for the dual purpose of expanding share of wallet and improving loyalty. These are selfish goals and customer know it. CRM needs to change direction to focus on customer relationships as defined by the customer. A probable future is a convergence of Social Media, CRM and front line service delivery into one super service channel. Now that’s a sexy future to me as a customer.

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February 9, 2010

People Behaving Badly- Online Human Behavior 101 Series – Part 1 of 3

Filed under: Customer Loyalty,Human Behavior,Social Experience Design,Social Media — Jeff @ 11:28 pm

I figured I would start out looking into the basics of human behavior online as it forms the basis of understanding for all of the other areas (social experience, customer experience, and demand gen).

The big question is: Do people act differently online than they do in real life?

The answer is yes. Sometimes dramatically different. But why?

The 3 A’s

Since the net began it has offered all people the same thing without prejudice. That thing is Access. Access to content, access to applications (of all varieties) and access to people (like minded or otherwise). Access has broken all of the boundaries people, society and governments have understood for hundreds of years. With it came all sorts of behavior new behavior and not many rules to manage conduct or behavior.

The second A is Acceptance. People could easily find like-minded individuals and whole groups who shared their interests no mater how normal, bizarre, and immoral those interests are. Social sites like FaceBook and Twitter by natural design encourage and support this characteristic. If you love nude marathons, there is a group for that. If you are a cross-eyed knitter, there is probably a group for that too. Acceptance is the glue in social networks and real life relationships alike.

The last, and probably most contentious characteristic is Anonymity. Anonymity allows anyone to do or say something without accountability. And when we remove accountability, we get radical changes in behavior. Suddenly without the typical boundaries we have in the real world where accountability is all around us and governing our behavior, we have the capability to be completely anonymous. And with anonymity, we are also stripped of many emotions that keep us from behaving badly; fear and shame to name just a few of the more powerful ones.

So where is the point at which people can potentially take a turn for the worse? It’s all about situation and the people involved in that situation at that specific time.

The Power of the Mob

I recently read a story of a speaker who took the stage at Web 2.0 Expo 2009. You can read the full story here, but it is shining example of how easily a mob forms out of what one can only assume to be decent people any other time. The problem came from a Twitter back channel and a rough start to a speaking engagement. This was no novice speaker either as she is a woman of wonderful talent and excellent insight; a great speaker by all accounts. But here we have a situation where a speaker stumbles and shows weakness. With the Twitter back channel going on behind her, the crowd begins to comment on her performance and it quickly spirals out of control right down to sexual remarks. Remember, this is a business conference filled with professionals…

But what would have happened had all of these people in the crowd used their real names and company information as part of their Twitter IDs for this conference? It certainly would have changed the situation because it would have potentially allowed for accountability for socially unacceptable behavior. Maybe this is where we have to go in the future? But that kind of control is very uncomfortable for anyone.

The Plight of the Corporation

Now enter the corporation, a powerful entity in the real world and masters of their domains. But online, they do not get the benefit of anonymity and are accountable for everything they do or say. This is the conundrum all companies face. How can we deal with people online who can easily hide behind a veil of anonymity while we have to expose ourselves completely.
In Social Media channels in particular where the conversation is happening about your company in hundreds of different conversations, most of them without you knowing, you are constantly exposing your brand to risk. So how do we deal with this imbalance? We can’t force people to be accountable.

Think Strategically

A solid strategy that encompasses rules of engagement for employees goes a long way. Don’t just send them in willy-nilly. Arm them with a plan and the tools to make it work. This includes an understanding of the environment you are getting into, how to resolve almost any problem (or escalate it quickly to someone who can), how to keep people engaged, and most importantly how to listen and appreciate what someone is saying. Listening to and appreciating people will help to keep behavior civil almost every time.

Know Your Audience

A little knowledge goes a long way. Research should always be the basis for any communications program, including Social Media. Next to this, understand why they are in this Social community and why/how they would interact with your brand. Again many times bad behavior is because of negative situations and negative situations arise when we lose sight of customer need in some way.

Find out who they respect or trust and why.
Find out who the leaders are and what their values are.
Understand that people are in Social Media environments to build relationships with like-minded people. If you are not there to build relationships, then why are you there?

Be Careful What You Ask For

If you go into Social Media channels asking for feedback expect you will get it. In fact, expect you will get it regardless of whether you ask for it or not. The last thing you want to try and do is control what people are saying by suppression of opinion (deleting posts, banning members, etc.). Just take Honda’s recent experience with the introduction of the CrossTour as an example of what happens when you ask for feedback and then start deleting all the negative comments. You can still see some of the comments here, but they deleted most of them, much to the joy of the blogoshpere who took that naughty behavior and told the world.

If you want to create a bad situation, start suppressing people’s opinions. It works every time.

Manage the Situations

The most important thing we can do is always been on the lookout for potentially harmful situations. What do these look like? Well, here’s where you need a practiced eye/ear to be involved in your Social Media program. Someone capable of spotting trouble before it happens and being able to defuse almost any situation by either dealing with it effectively or taking it offline and dealing with it effectively. The key is to do it swiftly and fairly; not heavy handed. If you deal with people harshly or unfairly you stand a very high chance of fanning the flames even higher.

Behavior can be Influenced

In the end, we can influence behavior once we understand what drives it. This is a learned experience and one that each company is going to go through as they explore Social Media channels. As each situation arises, always remember that the proper approach will win you relationships, many times create champions and the respect of many, many people. If you can always do the right thing for your customer, you stand a good chance of avoiding the mob and building a great and vibrant community around your brand.

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