To Get Through Crisis Serve, Not Burn Customers

By Brendan Read
Senior Contributing Editor, Customer Interaction Solutions

One of the most telling conversations I had while I was at ITEXPO (News - Alert) West was with a senior business executive who told me that enterprises should focus on retaining customers and growing their bottom lines based on satisfaction and reputation rather than always seeking new buyers.

There are, as we agreed, no more big fields of new customers, waiting to be turned, and plowed, seeded, harvested and then forgotten about when the land has been played out, and then moving on to the next pasture. What we have is what is there.

That observation sizes up the US economy. It is fundamentally strong yet it is also mature, with slow growth, along with market share increases based more on product, price, service, and quality than on snagging buyers that want and have not yet purchased such items in the past.

Maturity is a concept that Americans, with the ‘think young, limitless horizon’ culture have, however, trouble accepting. Unfortunately as demonstrated with the financial crisis and a looming recession, pushing the markets beyond what they can sustain and ignoring sound customer bases, like an older person attempting feats done at half their age, risks collapse. This chain of events has been brought about in large part by firms, with government carte blanche, overreaching the markets by selling, building, and financing homes to prospects who could not have done so before instead of focusing on those who can buy them.

Yes, for the past 10-15 years the marketing mantra has been customer lifetime value: that it is less costly to retain and sell to existing customers than to acquire new ones, and that excellent customer service brings new and permanent buyers. Yet all too few enterprises practice these lessons, even though that these methods can make them money and can boost profits, because they have imbibed a blend of denial of limits and laziness. It is easier to sell than to retain, to promote rather than listen, and to market than service.

I had come across a business that in many respects epitomizes this attitude. This outfit yelled at its salespeople to ‘sell, sell, sell!’ It did not have a centralized customer database and its sales people were not allowed to contact customers once cash exchanged hands. Not surprisingly, reports began circulating that the sales per employee had dropped and quality had plummeted along with retention rates of high value customers, and staff.

To survive and prosper in today’s environment, and to advantage of opportunities when better times return organizations should change their cultures to growing, tending, and replanting their customers, rather than slashing-and-burning them. They should treat every one who has done or is doing business or could do business as golden, because they are: it is their gold they are spending. They should also welcome each opportunity to interact with customers and prospects as their lives depend on it, because they do. A firm is as only as good as its last interaction, sales, and product made, delivered, and used. The informationbased solutions: speech and data analytics, contact management/ CRM, BPA/SFA, EFM, knowledge management, QA, routing, and WFM/WFO are available to enable this transformation. These applications are becoming more functional, user-friendly, versatile, and affordable. One of the saving graces of even the toughest times is that individual ingenuity never dies, indeed it grows i.e. necessity is the mother of…

What is needed is the leadership to remodel enterprises so that they are truly customer focused, to make the investments in technology and training where needed and to pull together the entire team, especially those who interface with the customers: the contact center agents, retail staff, and sales personnel and imbue them with a mission to meet a common goal.

We are all customers. By enabling the best possible products and services, and services to support them we all win. And that’s a strategy that will see us through to a more stable future prosperity.

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