Improved Customer Communications

Published in: IPA Bulletin, January/February 2007

Only organizations that integrate customer feedback and provide customers with systematic,
useful information can expect to remain in business.

All organizations have challenges with customer communications. And it's those who aren't working to impove the customer communications - as an organization - that should be worried.

Customer Surveys we conduct tell us (repeatedly) that customers (and particularly new buyers) don't know their supplier's capabilities and resources. Anecdotally, client surveys over the last two years reveal that well over 50 percent of buyers first learned of their current supplier when they took their current job position. New buyers in particular don't know their supplier's capabilities. And the irony is that "as long as orders are still coming in, most folks at the supplier think everything is okay."

Strategic implications to this growing market conditions are multiple:

• Current suppliers tend to dangerously assume that nothing will change when a new buyer moves into position at a customer site.
• Most supplier-buyer working relationshps are not reviewed, and updated through a systematic exchange of performance-related information. This tends to be particularly true for "new buyers."
• One of the top three causes of customer attrition trails back to "new buyers."

Additionally, customers in general - and new buyers in particular don't believe their suppliers know the customer's business performance priorities, and needs.

If there's an additional curse operating between buyers and suppliers, it is contained in the fact that supplier representatives are generally not disciplined in systematically learning and updating their target customer's business performance priorities. Of a similar vein, suppliers tend not to relentlessly communicate their capabilities and resources in terms that are relevant to new buyers for elevating target customer's business performance.

Finally, if purposeful and systematic communications is, in essence, the challenge, then that challenge belongs to the entire supplier organization and not just the supplier's lead business development executive(s).

Our observations and biases include that there are multiple opportunities to improve what we know about our target customers, and what our target customers know about the supplier. However, without a focused, customer-based, organizational strategy, and plan that can be implemented, we are just playing with ideas - missing opportunities, and wasting precious resources.

Here are a few beginning suggestions for creating a more effective, integrated, organizational communications program for target customers.

Customer Communications Framework

Think of supplier-to-buyer communications, at its best, as having an "integrated framework" or orchestration involving four levels:

• Corporate: Creating a foundation or background that supports and directs;
• Policies and Procedures: Ensuring implementation and consistency;
• Personal Contact with Customers: Often involving every department and position; and
• Market Buzz: Involving suppliers, associations, and an organization's "street reputation."

Corporate: Corporate communication is as important as personal, one-on-one selling. Corporate communications elevate and reinforce the message, the mission, and the culture. Examples include websites, corporate sponsored conferences and educational programs, brochures, and "institutionalized programs" that are openly promoted and available to most customers.

For example, one client publishes its customer educational calendar each year - with one program every month. Another rare client - rolling to a 15 percent plus revenue growth year-on-year - has made Periodic Business Reviews its flagship activity for relentlessly developing major customers. Case studies are published. Account Executives set-up the sessions that include customer service representatives, key prepress personnel, and almost always the president.

Still another client makes a big deal of the customer surveys - publishing results and the follow-up of every major survey, which is conducted every 15 to 18 months. They also make sure donations to specific charities occur in the names of target customers. When the charity sends out its letter of appreciation, or press release, the customer organization in whose name the contribution was made is always mentioned.

Policies and Procedures: Supporting an organization's customer communications are written policies and procedures that work to ensure effective communications. For instance, imagine having written (even published for customers to review) procedures for:

• Dealing with emails,
• Acknowledging and returning voice mails,
• Handling "bad news" customer situations,
• Conducting Periodic Business Reviews,
• Explaining customer confidentiality policies for suppliers and employees,
• Handling day-to-day correspondence,
• Preparing proposals,
• Renewing and managing new buyers working relationships,
• Updating Customer Profiles,
• Integrating feedback from Press Check surveys and Plant Tour surveys into Customer Profiles,
• Effectively managing customer complaints, and
• Documenting and reporting missed business opportunities.

The organization that has put these activities and procedures in writing has stepped-up toward accountability.

I recently asked a production manager if he had any form of "continuous improvement" occurring in the plant. His response included, "We're always working to improve what we do on a situation-by-situation basis."

Then I asked, "How do you follow-up to ensure that a discussion and suggestion is implemented?"

He had no answer, and that's when we began "documenting and distributing what should be improved next time." Copies for anything that is to be improved are required to go to the servicing account executive, CSR, and prepress person as well as to be included in the customer's profile. As no small footnote, the customer is required to be informed of "what has been improved on their behalf." Feedback from target accounts has included, "You're the only supplier who does this for us."

Personal Contact with Customers: Personal contact should be considered a great responsibility and privilege. Leadership and ownership of this activity and learning what customers really want improved, emanates from the top, and should include all departments: bookkeeping, delivery management, receptionists, estimating, customer service, prepress, account executives, proofreaders, and even senior management.

I have personally witnessed in a few clients deep ownership for the opportunities personal contact provides. In these rare organizations, there can be a moment of pause as one experiences an organization in which each individual cares deeply about what he or she is doing throughout the day. Customers can feel it, and they say so repeatedly in the customer surveys.

Market Buzz: Market buzz comes from numerous sources, including suppliers, and customers. We have observed through our clients' customer surveys an exponential growth in new business originating from professional referrals, which I will define as friends, suppliers, local trade associations, and customers. A few organizations have it. Most don't. And it does not "just happen."

Interactivity or Feedback

All the above require maintenance and integration of customer feedback from all participants. Leave out the integration of customer feedback for continuous improvement, and "the system" dies. It's sort of a universal law of "systems theory."

Customer, supplier, and employee feedback should serve your market differentiation, your performance improvement, and your very reason for existing as an organization - to serve a discrete group of customers to consistent levels of excellence.

Recognize! Commit! Act!

Metcalf's law, paraphrased, runs something like: The value of a communication system grows approximately to the square of the number of users of the system. The more users, the greater potential to create value as well as opportunities to improve.

Every organization operating today has a significant number of opportunities to integrate and improve customer communications and, therefore, its future economic performance. However, so few recognize the opportunities, make a commitment, and then do something about it.

What's the next step? Ask your key personnel to read this article, and then be prepared to discuss: "Which items can we implement, and are worth our time?"

One thing is all but certain: Only those organizations that relentlessly integrate customer feedback, and provide customers with systematic, useful information - and performance improvement - can expect to remain in business.