You will hear me talk a lot about this phrase “Customer Connection”. That is because Customer Connection goes well beyond the traditional scope of customer service or support.
Think of Customer Connection as a combination of Sales, CS, and Marketing with one common goal….achieving growth through your current customer base.
Customer Connection focuses on a seamless and frictionless experience for the customer, while also cultivating an environment that breeds and capitalizes on brand advocates.
Here is what we know:
Customers are an organizations biggest untapped resource when it comes to revenue, new sales and marketing. That is a major portion of your business that your customers CAN and WILL help you grow.
How do we experience growth?
By building strategies based on the 3Es.....
EXPERIENCE
ENABLEMENT
EMPOWERMENT
EXPERIENCE
This is probably the most obvious of the 3Es, everyone needs to focus on a good customer experience right? Well, it is not just enough to have a CX strategy in place, it has to be effective. You would be shocked at the number of organizations who struggle with this one. Here are some things to keep in mind when building a CX strategy:
Every single member of the organization plays a role in CX - that's right, from marketing to sales, cs to product....everyone in the organization needs to understand and feel accountable for customer experience.
Customer Journey Mapping - do you have a full understanding of your customer's journey? If not, it is ok! I highly suggest you take an afternoon and workshop your customer's journey with your entire team. And cross functional understanding of each step along the journey will benefit everyone! (Here are some resources to help you: Customer Journey Mapping Workshop & Jobs to Be Done Framework)
Cohesive messaging - this is so important across the entire experience. Meet your customer where they are and use value-based messaging. What are their biggest struggles? How will your offering provide a solution?.....then keep the message consistent through the journey.
Seamless transitions and handoffs - use your customer journey map and assign team member roles along the journey. Ensure team members understand their responsibility, expectations, and empower them to be accountable for their role. Map out each hand off, define a clear and repeatable process and ensure open lines of communication throughout.
Personalizing and humanizing the experience - In the AI and automation era, this is quickly becoming a lost art and it is SO IMPORTANT. Sure, automation is extremely helpful when it comes to customer experience....but putting in the extra effort to personalize the experience goes a long way. You will be shocked what picking up the phone will do when providing customer experience.
ENABLEMENT
Customer enablement can be defined as providing resources and knowledge a customer needs in order to be successful. Do you have the resources, content, strategies, and education necessary for your customers to find success? Here are some things to think about for a successful enablement strategy:
Onboarding - do you have a defined onboarding process? Have you clearly defined the expectations and accountability of both your team and the customer? Creating a well defined process, where all parties are aware of expectations is crucial to a good customer experience.
Education & Training - Essentially, how can you teach your customers how to get to the first "aha moment" and see value in the quickest and easiest way? What mediums will you use in this training? 1:1 trainings, webinars, self-serve? If you don't have an established program, I suggest going back to the Jobs to Be Done Framework exercise I mentioned earlier and use these "Jobs" to outline your training.
Self-Service Tools - in today's day and age, this is crucial to customer experience. Do you have a knowledgebase, a chat-bot, a you tube channel where users can go to learn and troubleshoot at their own pace?
Nurturing - the worst thing a company can do to a user is onboard them and set them free.... nurturing your customers is so important not only for retention, but also cross selling, up selling and creating brand advocates. The key to nurturing is to not focus on your product features, instead on how you are helping solve their biggest struggles.
EMPOWERMENT
The notion of empowering your customers is so important. By empowering them, you are creating strong brand advocates that will ultimately help you grow. So how do you a an organization empower these customers?
Development programs - this one is so easy, yet so overlooked! You generally have a similar customer base, so provide opportunities for them to better themselves either in their career or personal growth.
Example time: In a previous role, some of my customers were junior level engineers and project managers. What did all of them have in common? They were eager to learn how to get ahead in their careers and start climbing the ladder...so we provided a community, webinars, guest speakers, and facilitated a mentoring program of some of our more seasoned customers. Multiple of those junior customers have since left for bigger roles and they have taken the tech with them.
Communities - build an environment where your customers can lean on each other, this will not only help with product stickiness, but it empowers customers to help others.
Customer Advisory and Feedback Loops - this is so important not only for product development but also in creating empowered advocates. Let your customers feel invested in the product, let them have an impact, and they will be loyal advocates.
Incentivize reviews and referrals - offer discounts, swag, shoutouts...you name it. The point is, if you incentivize reviews and referrals you are empowering your customers to speak for you, sell for you and market your brand for a very minimal expense to you.
Using the 3Es as the foundation for your customer strategy will cultivate a customer base of empowered advocates. Empowered advocates are the most important resource your business has. They impact your brand image, name recognition and ultimately your growth.
We are in the age of the customer, what are you doing to lean in?
If you are interested in learning more about "Customer Connection" and how CE can help you grow through your customers, reach out for a free consultation.
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