What is the state of your Contact Strategy?
This article is about the 10 questions we should always be asking ourselves to ensure that compass we use to guide our organisations is set to the operational equivalent of north. This exercise in evaluting Contact Strategy wsas developed by the Customer Experience Foundation.
Here are my 10 best questions to take into any meeting, new project or venture. This is the simplest way I know to find out if you have a Contact Strategy that is working for you in less than 1 hour:
Q1- Could this be us?
• Think about the organisations you admire the most and work out why.
• Think about the organisations who have the worst business practices and work out what the worst thing they do are and avoid them.
Q2 – Could we shut up more?
• What contact is not useful to our current relationship?
• Should we be saying more or less to our customers? Did you know that most people don’t read most of the junk that they get from their Banks Insurers Mobile Providers Utility Companies and other services? You should do because you feel the same. Most consumers do not trust their suppliers – you know that because you don’t trust your suppliers. Maybe if companies said less then maybe consumers would listen more. So could you say less?
Q3 – Could we listen more?
• Who to? Most companies survey their customers like a landscape they do not talk to them like people and then they don’t listen to the answers.
• When? There are times when listening to our clients more is important and most companies don’t know when or how. Customers use different language which means different things to different generations so are you really listening and understanding or just listening for key words
Q4 – Could people lie to us?
• Have you ever to a lie to a supplier to be polite?
– At the doctors
– At restaurant
– At a shop
– To get off the phone from a salesman or woman
• So who is lying to you?
Q5 – What are you honest about?
• Who to and what?
– Customers
– Staff
– Prices
– Service Performance
– Strengths
– Weaknesses
Q6 – What do our relationships look like?
The big 5 questions
• Who?
• What?
• When?
• Why?
• How?
Q7 – What do our relationships cost and how do we value them?
The cost of acquisition
The cost of churn
What is the yield per customer?
Per Product
Overall
Potential
Lifetime
Emotionally
This question is one that most companies cannot answer but interestingly I have heard some academics strongly suggest that the fact they cannot answer it is a breach of fiduciary duty. Knowing the cost and value of customer relationships is as important as knowing bank charges and wage bills. You could ask this question in a different way what is the cost and value of integrity. What is the role of Social Media in changing cost and value is one of the latest challenges but it is not the only one. Should I twitter or sell on facebook are questions will have unique answers for each organisation.
Q8 – What are the low hanging fruit?
What can I test quickly and cheaply?
What can I put on a runway tomorrow and launch change incrementally?
Q9 – How do I get momentum?
There are some key basics to developing momentum
Common Vision
Common Sense
Incremental change
Ownership for all
Q10 – What is question? 10
What is the question we are not asking?
Armed with these questions you will realise that there are a host of questions that you should be asking. The trick is not to be scared of the truthful answer. If you deliver bad service and your happy with it then move on to find out what are the right questions for you. At the moment I am starting work in a white paper about the changing boundaries if social media. I got to the end of the 2nd line about the impact of twitter and one of my children looked at it and said “Dad you are so out of date. Even Stephen Fry is giving up twitter” With that comment she shook her head sagely and left the room muttering something about old people. Consumers are reacting to change more quickly and change is happening more quickly because devices like I-Phones and App Stores are increasing the rate at which new things get to the market. The old idea that change was constant is now rather like the big bang theory – a little out of date. Change is getting faster and business needs to adapt more quickly than ever before.
So my 10 questions are already a little out of date because the 11th question should be – How do we keep up?
