Egg Baskets

When I was young, I had a best friend, Jimmy.  I spent most of my time playing with Jimmy.  We'd catch grasshoppers in the vacant lot, build forts in the strangest places, and and ride our bikes everywhere we could and a few places we couldn't.

Then one summer, something changed.  I didn't realize something had changed until Jimmy stood me up at the bus to go to the city pool for the third time. It bothered me when I realized that Jimmy just didn't show up instead of telling me that he didn't want to go to the pool.

While it hurt a little that Jimmy had found other friends, the larger problem was that I spent most of my time hanging out with Jimmy.  I really didn't have that many other friends.  It was a long and lonely summer.

A lot of businesses, particularly small businesses, have the same problem.  They have one or a few customers who make up the bulk of their business.  All (or most) of their revenue eggs are in that basket.

This creates a difficult situation for those companies, especially if they are small or medium-sized. Company A cannot afford NOT to focus on #1 Customer.  They can't divert precious resources (at least very many) to finding and cultivating new customers because they need to keep #1 Customer happy because without #1 Customer, Company A will have little or no revenue and they will be done as a business.  On the other hand, Company A needs other customers to make up the revenue if #1 Customer ever moves on to another supplier, for whatever reason.

When your company finds itself with most of its revenue eggs in one basket, there are two primary things you need to do:

1. Take care of the basket with all of the eggs!  First and foremost, keep that #1 customer happy.  Make sure they don't have a reason to move on.  Obviously, to this point the company has been geared to serving this customer or small collection of customers.  Keep that focus on specialized customer service as strong as possible.  Innovation and new services, to the extent that you are able to offer them, should be geared toward addressing the needs of your current customers.  Meanwhile...
2. Put a few eggs in other baskets...just in case.  Whenever possible, cultivate additional customers.  For small companies, this most likely will be a small move at first.  But if done with regularity, you will be able to build up a more diverse client list, which will mean more relationships for the company and, more importantly, more diverse sources of revenues.  The services and innovation you introduce to keep and grow your relationship with the #1 customer is bound to address the needs of other potential customers.  It is important to do this because you never know when you might drop your main egg basket!

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Taking the Pulse

They say that you are supposed to survey your customers to find out what they think about your organization.   You tell yourself, "My customers ARE NOT shy about sharing their complaints opinions, especially when they perceive something is wrong.  Why should I spend time and resources asking for more?"

They say that it is important to understand your customers' motivations, interests and feelings.  You think to yourself, "I know when they make a purchase.  Why do I care about anything else?"

They say they can tell you within one standard deviation how your customers will respond to your new product or ad campaign or store location.  You wonder to yourself, "What the heck is a standard deviation?"

Market research is often the most neglected tool in the marketing tool box.  There are many reasons for that.  First of all, many business people who understand a lot about marketing don't really understand the processes or the terminology of research.  Second, market research often seems to gum up the works and slow things down.  We just want to get started and research seems to delay things with no tangible payoff.  With research, not only do you have to take time for the survey, but you have to analyze the results and hope that the results don't indicate a change in plans.  It seems easier to avoid it.  Kind of like the dentist.

But ultimately, I think the primary reason that market research is so often skipped is that marketers don't see the value. They have a view of the world that they are comfortable with and they don't want to risk disrupting that view with research.  As Nate Silver says in his book The Signal and the Noise, "[w]e focus on the signals that tell a story about the world as we would like it to be, not how it really is.  We ignore the risks that are hardest to measure, even when they pose the greatest threats to our well-being.  We make approximations and assumptions about the world that are much cruder than we realize."  Well-crafted research can help refine those approximations and assumptions.

Marketing is primarily about building and nurturing relationships.  Those relationships are with customers, staff, suppliers, board members, media, the industry, the public, politicians, the local community, the international community, regulators and the competition.  The degree that you develop relationships with any group on that list depends in part on your industry, in part on your product or service and in part on your marketing strategy.

Regardless of your industry, product or strategy, understanding those whom you seek to market to gives you an advantage.  Understanding their views and feelings about your organization and your product can help you take shortcuts to providing a product or service that exceeds their demands and expectations.  A simple, well crafted survey of your customers, prospective customers, or staff can help you break through the myopia that Nate Silver was writing about and see the world, and your product, as your customer sees it.

Ultimately, you do market research because you need to know what "they" say: about your organization, about your product and about their needs.

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Buddha Knows Customer Service

I came across a post on Facebook the other night that gave the 5 steps to happiness:

1. Smile more.
2. Think less.
3. Be present.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.

The watermark on the photo indicated it was from a source called Buddha Heart.

I started thinking that while these were excellent steps for general happiness, they were also a nice, succinct guide to providing excellent customer service!

Smile more.

You cannot go wrong if you are genuinely smiling, whether you are answering the phone or talking to a customer.  A smile shows you are happy to be interacting with the customer.  That goes a long way to helping address customer needs and addressing problems when they arise.

Think less.

I think sometimes we are our own worst enemies when addressing a customer.  If we are busy analyzing "what she really meant" or "how can I get out of this situation" we are not focusing on the person and the issue in front of us.  If you ask many professional athletes, who are in the middle of a slump, what is wrong, many of them will say that they are thinking too much.  Like professional athletes, employees should develop the muscle memory to provide excellent customer service by instinct.  Without thinking.

Be Present.

A lot of excellent customer service involves problem resolution.  In order to help a customer resolve her problem, however, you must be present in the situation, you must own the problem as your own and you must take responsibility for ensuring that the customer leaves satisfied, or at least satisfied that you are trying to help her.  Customer service, and especially problem resolution, cannot be effectively put off until later.

Give More.
Customer service is all about giving.  Giving of attention , giving of status (you have my attention because you are important to me and to the organization) and giving of authority (the customer is always right.)   It is extremely difficult to give too much customer service.

Expect Less.
You cannot do excellent customer service with any payback in mind.  Customers should be able to expect good service.  Customers who have a problem will cease to exist as customers if they don't get some timely attention to their concerns.  At a restaurant, an excellent server does a ton of little things that you might not even notice to help make your dining experience special.  An excellent server is doing that because she wants to do an excellent job and help you have a special experience, not specifically with a tip in mind.

Buddha knows customer service!

Could I have a few moments of your time?

The other evening, I got a call asking me to participate in a survey.  As I am a marketer and a communicator, I know the value survey feedback can provide and I am usually an easy mark when it comes to surveys.  I agreed after being told that the survey would only take "a few minutes."  15 minutes into the survey, with no signs of things slowing down, I was reminded of how a recent AP article reported that people are getting tired of being asked for feedback.  The article indicated that people in general are feeling fatigue when it comes to surveys.

Undoubtedly it is a good thing to ask your customers and other stakeholders for their input.  Without question, a company should consider customer feedback when evaluating new or changing product features.  And it is so easy these days!  Google the phrase "free survey tools" and you will get pages of options that let you send out quick little electronic surveys that look good and automatically tabulate the results for you.  You can generate charts and graphs of the results in seconds.  It is a beautiful thing!

Nevertheless, cheap and easy survey capabilities may actually be doing marketers a disservice.  When it costs thousands of dollars to even think about doing a survey, those hosting a survey have to carefully consider the questions they are asking and the value of the answers that they will get back.  Questions that yield answers that are not actionable are (usually) eliminated.  Redundant questions are culled.  Heck, some companies even pre-test their surveys!  Companies who pay to have their surveys done professionally have a financial incentive to make sure their surveys were tight and targeted and purposeful.

With the preponderance of cheap and easy to implement survey tools (Survey Monkey I'm talking about you!) it has been too easy to just dash off a quick survey without giving a lot of thought as to what the question is really asking, or what the results of the question will provide as far as usable and actionable data.  This means not only do we get approached to take more surveys on the computer or the phone, but the surveys themselves are more and more frequently confusing, inane, highly biased or just plain no fun to take!

So, if you are a marketer who is surveying your audience, my advice is to act as if you are paying thousands of dollars to have each question asked.  If you aren't going to get at least thousands of dollars of value from the answers, don't ask the question.

You might also like:Newspaper Survey

Doorways

Your customer is standing in your doorway.  In 5 seconds or less they are making a subconscious decision on whether they are going to have a good experience or a bad one.

What are you doing in those 5 seconds to convince them it will be good?

The Power of a Smile

There are few customer service tools as powerful as a smile.  Smile when you are dealing with a customer and it will make a difference.  I don't care if you are talking with them face-to-face, talking on the phone, or drafting an e-mail.  If you are smiling, you are providing better service.  It is virtually impossible to write an angry letter or e-mail if you are genuinely smiling.  And if you can't genuinely smile, smile anyway.  It will infect your mood too!

Have a nice day!  :)

As simple as a smile

It always surprises me the powerful impact that a genuine smile has on me. Smile! It is VERY cost effective marketing!