“In the distance, our hearts embrace each other more tightly, and love becomes the bond that unites us” (Gabriel García Márquez).
If we bear in mind that sales is nothing more than a love story, distance should not be a barrier for the story to have a good ending, or even to be prolonged season after season and never end. The responsibility of every company is to bring that love story to life, building the right bridge for each customer at each moment, that is to say, the relationship channels that are appropriate for each moment. In this article we will discuss the importance of customer analysis and the most common mistakes.
Analysing the client.
The other day I was talking to an important director of an IBEX client, one of those risk-taking and courageous people when it comes to making decisions and trying out new ideas, and he said to me: “look, don’t mess around, if something has already been invented, let’s see how to bring it to us and improve it”. My first thought was, “what a bastard, here I am thinking outside the box and the guy is innovating from the simple”. So let’s go to them.
The first thing that has already been invented is to put the customer at the centre, analyse their empathy map and understand their needs. The customer of the past needed a face-to-face contact channel, what about today’s customer, what about the customer of the future, do they need it or could they live without it? Regarding the customer journey we have to understand the importance of each moment and the customer’s preferences, how and where do I like to look for information, how do I like to be advised in the purchase process, what do I want the relationship to be during the period of use, where do I want to be contacted, what do I need if I have a problem in the post-sale?
Mistakes or horrors in innovating relationship channels.
- Prioritise the business cost/benefit analysis of each channel rather than the customer’s preferences and point of view. Of course, this analysis is important and should reflect a positive outcome, but the most important thing is that the channel responds to customer needs. Otherwise, even if it costs very little, we are wasting precious time developing and implementing it only to have customers not use it.
- Forcing the customer to use a single channel to perform some function or part of the process. The new customer is used to being empowered and wants to be in control. They are the ones who decide whether they want to buy online or in the office, whether they want to be attended by a robot or a person, whether they want to be advised by telephone, video call or in an office, whether they want to use the electronic signature or come to the office and say hello, whether they want us to take the product home or prefer to collect it, etc.
- Offer different levels of service or customer experience in each of the channels. The new reality demands the death of multi-channel and the development of omni-channel. In other words, companies must offer the same experience in all channels so that the customer can continue to associate the process with the brand regardless of the channel. To achieve this, the company’s values must be firm and be reflected in each of the processes.
- Striving for sales and neglecting after-sales. This is perhaps the most common horror in commercial innovation. So much effort to position the brand and make the customer fall in love with it until they are sold, only to disappear when a problem arises and leave them with a robot or a tele-email unable to respond. All the agility and willingness to solve problems vanish like ashes in the wind once the sale is made. I sincerely believe that whoever is forcing the customer to use only digital media and tele-mailboxes based on robots and artificial intelligence is making a mistake. If the customer takes the trouble to call to resolve a doubt or incident, the least they deserve is good service.
Conclusion
Now you know, spend time massaging and analysing the customer, carry out small pilots to understand the value of each channel at different touch points and avoid falling into the 4 most common mistakes.
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