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• Recent Posts

  • What Did Mark Twain Know About Business-to-Business Customers?
  • E.G. Insight’s Eric Engwall and Nick Wassenberg Featured in Business Insider’s Voice of the Customer Series
  • E.G. Insight’s Gary Gerds Shares Best Practices in Gathering Actionable Business-to-Business Customer Feedback
  • Are Your Customer Relationships “Emotionally Intelligent”?
  • Three Reasons to Add Face-to-Face Reviews to Your Customer Feedback Efforts
  • Going Beyond Responsiveness to Meet Customer Needs
  • The Customer Confidence Crisis – Why Now is the Time to Rebuild Your Customers’ Trust
  • Martin Scorsese and Confident Customers
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As we’ve mentioned before, data about customers is multiplying. But information about customers – the kind that informs confident business decisions – can be harder to come by. So when I came across this quote on the blog www.gilliganondata.com, it stuck with me:

“A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.”
– Mark Twain

I think there is a lot of truth to that, and we see the effect in the work we do with our clients. When it comes time to make those big business decisions – like entering a new market, developing a new or improved product, or changing how customer service works – what leaders don’t need is more data. They need better information.

So, a big part of our point of view is that getting in-depth information from the most important business-to-business customers yields better information – and better decisions – than getting a pile of “shallow” data from a scattered sample. Selling to businesses is complex enough without mixing in data that comes from customer contacts who may not have much say in the actual buying decision. Less truly can be more.

So, when you’re looking into your next voice of the customer or other research project, it’s a good idea to think about what you’re really trying to get: one watch or two?

Nick Wassenberg
E.G. Insight

May 17, 2010 – Düsseldorf, Germany – In ongoing Voice of the Customer work with a global chemical company, Gary Gerds of E.G. Insight will conduct training for a group of key account managers. The training will amplify the effectiveness of the Customer Review Process (CRp^®), a structured method of gathering face-to-face customer feedback from an organization’s most important accounts.

Gerds, co-founder and managing partner of E.G. Insight, said:

I’m excited to bring our updated training session to a European audience. We’ve seen our clients leverage the Customer Review process worldwide in the past, and this training will continue to magnify their gains in customer loyalty, innovation, and confidence.

One consistent finding is that cultural differences never overshadow the need for suppliers to inspire confidence in their business-to-business customers.

The training will feature interactive exercises to improve how sales and account managers ask questions, probe for details, and incorporate actionable customer feedback into their strategic planning. Participants will also get an in-depth look at the Customer Relationship Hierarchy, the Customer Confidence Index^®, as well as learn best practices such as the “Nine Commandments of Effective Listening.”

E.G. Insight’s Germany-based client has conducted the Customer Review Process in Asia, Europe, South America, and North America since 2007. For more information about how the process has helped transform the way the organization listens to key customers, see the success story here: http://bit.ly/eginsightSuccessStory0510

About E.G. Insight - E.G. Insight helps companies worldwide develop and implement feedback processes that yield a better understanding of the current health of critical business relationships, and further assists clients to use that data to make better business decisions and guide organizational improvement.

For more information please contact Nick Wassenberg at 1.651.288.1469 or nick.wassenberg@eginsight.com.

In our work with clients, we help them to understand the confidence that their key customers have in their current and future ability to meet their needs. Among other things, many clients are interested to know whether their responsiveness to customers is perceived as a core strength or an opportunity for greater focus and improvement. Using our Customer Review process, our clients often include responsiveness as one of the performance factors they ask their customers to evaluate. The goal is to assess customers’ perceptions of such things as accessibility (are you there when I call?), willingness to listen, desire to help, and speed of response.

But is being highly responsive enough?

After reading comments in thousands of our clients’ customer interviews over the past ten years, it has become apparent that responsiveness doesn’t quite capture what customers are looking for. Any significant customer – particularly those that are highly dependent upon their suppliers – has a minimum expectation that they’re going to be able to reach a live person who can help them when the need arises. Finding a friendly voice at the other end of the phone to help with a quality glitch or shipping delays might be enough to solve the short-term problems, but customers are looking for more from their key suppliers. Responsiveness is what customers expect, but resolution is what they really need.

When asked about the responsiveness of their suppliers, here’s a paraphrase of what many customers say:

“You do a fine job making sure I can reach someone. You are also good at acknowledging my initial request for help or for information. I truly believe that the customer service person or the technical support expert is interested in helping me solve my issue, and most of the time they do. The problem comes when the issue to be solved is beyond their level of authority or expertise – when others in your organization have to get involved. So yes, you generally meet my needs for the initial response, but getting to the point of resolution on a more complex issue – that’s another story.”

In order to go beyond that first level of responsiveness, companies need to make sure that the people on the front line have a defined process for getting the resources required to resolve a customer concern. Companies spend a great deal of time and money equipping their customer service personnel with knowledge, skills and tools to solve and track customer issues – but the job is not yet complete. Beyond that first call for help, customers want:

• A plan for resolving the issue
• A timeline for implementing the plan
• Regular status updates from a trusted contact
• Direct interaction with those actually working on the solution
• Clear and candid communication when the solution is not forthcoming

The takeaway: For business-to-business suppliers and service providers, emphasizing the responsiveness of your frontline employees isn’t sufficient. The goal must be resolution – a shared understanding with the customer on the outcome of a particular need or request.

Eric Engwall, Managing Partner
E.G. Insight

As a company that helps other organizations listen to their customers, we also make a point to actively gather feedback from our own clients. And when gathering feedback from our clients, we’re often reminded of just how important the act of listening can be to a company’s strategy.

“The Customer Review process transformed this organization into a listening company, helped us shift the focus to the customer, fostered open and honest discussion, and took down lots of silos within our company.”
- President, Global Construction Materials Manufacturer

That is certainly a nice testimonial – and we’re grateful for it – but I think there’s a lesson in it too.

What makes this statement compelling is the language. It’s powerful, genuine, and distinct. Honestly, it’s the exact type of thing we’d love to hear from all our clients. (And the kind of quote we’d like our prospects to hear.)

But we probably wouldn’t have described the Customer Review process quite that way. It took a client to give us a fresh way to look at both our services and ourselves.

The takeaway: When you ask for customer feedback, you can get more than just operational improvement suggestions; sometimes you get a new way to see yourself.

Nick Wassenberg
E.G. Insight

When thinking about business-to-business customers, we rarely think about pizza chains - but maybe we should. Consider Domino’s Pizza: Advances in technology have helped improve their internal communication, shortened the time it takes to fulfill orders, and allow you to order a pizza online. Technology has been a huge part of Domino’s value proposition.

But they haven’t stopped there. In early 2009, Dominos tore a page out of the UPS playbook to let their customers track their orders in real time. That’s right, using Domino’s Web-based “Pizza Tracker,” you can follow your pizza from order to prep, bake, quality check, and finally delivery.

What does this mean if you don’t deliver pizzas, or don’t have customers demanding that kind of order visibility?

The takeaway is that your direct competitors aren’t the only benchmark for your customers’ expectations and preferences. Your customers’ requirements for things like responsiveness, quality, and support are influenced every day by many different companies.

The point is that customers - yes, even business-to-business customers - don’t experience your products or services on an island. After all, if customers can track a shipment online with UPS, why can’t they track their dinner too?

Asking the right questions when gathering feedback can uncover which products, services, or technologies shape your customers’ expectations. Having that knowledge can help you prioritize your investments based on real feedback, not just assumptions.

Nick Wassenberg, Research Analyst
E.G. Insight

As we look forward to 2010, we also reflect on what we’ve learned during the past year. One way to do this is to check out E.G. Insight’s “top five” postings for 2009—the most frequently visited articles at www.eginsight.com/news

Each of the top posts listed below share common themes of rebuilding relationships, using customer feedback to inspire action, or best practices in business-to-business customer feedback.

Feel free to browse any you may have missed. We’ll continue to build on these themes in 2010 and we look for your input regarding other topics you’d like us to cover. Thanks for reading!

1. B2B Customer Satisfaction Survey: Advanced Analysis Methods for Impact
2. Beyond Customer Satisfaction: What Really Makes B2B Customers Loyal?
3. The Collapse of Supplier Trust – and Four Steps to
   Rebuild It
4. The Seven Deadly Sins of a B2B Voice of the Customer Program – and How to Avoid Them
5. The Method is the Message
   

Think for a moment about the word “relationship.” What does it mean to you?

The dictionary defines relationship as: “Connection, association; involvement; dependent on something else for significance…”

When I think about the strongest relationships I have with my suppliers, two words come to mind: trust and predictability. I trust them to have my best interests in mind whenever we do business; I trust them to treat me fairly; I trust them to deliver, on time, on budget, doing what they say they will do when they say they will. Because I trust them, I can predict their behavior; I know they will come through for me. I trust them to maintain our good relationship.

Here’s another way to think about relationships: In this day of product and price parity, the one thing that you have that competitors can’t duplicate are your relationships. Your relationships with key customers are unique.

Good relationships help us win the close ones. They help us recover from minor mistakes. Good relationships don’t help when our price is twice our competitors. They don’t help very much when the competitor is the customer’s brother or cousin. They don’t help if we make repeated huge mistakes in quality or delivery.

In this economy, many supplier/customer relationships are the same way - it’s about the close ones. The difference between success and failure is often very slight. Strong relationships can make the difference between winning and losing.

Are your relationships strong enough to help you win the close ones? What can you do to earn more trust from your customers? Do you know how to strengthen the relationships with your most valuable customers?

Gary Gerds, Managing Partner
E.G. Insight

Folk singer Judy Collins, recalling one of her early encounters with Bob Dylan, said: “I saw this schlubby-looking guy singing Woody Guthrie songs badly…I thought he was so pathetic. But then I heard Blowin’ in the Wind, and I couldn’t believe that this rumpled guy could have written such a breathtaking song…then I realized that this guy is brilliant and I became a passionate, passionate fan.”

What changed Collins’ perception from schlubby to brilliant? The power of hearing Dylan—in his own words.

Nothing is as powerful as hearing directly from our most valued customers. Do you want to find out what your company is doing well? Do you need to find out what you must improve? Do you need to know how your customer’s world is changing?

We all don’t speak in poetry, but we’ve all had our turn at being surprised by what our customers are telling us. That’s why it’s important to have structured conversations and let customers tell us what they think—in their own words.

Rhonda Sunnarborg, Senior Consultant
E.G. Insight

I’m not saying sales and marketing leaders in the business-to-consumer (B2C) space have it easy. They don’t. But they often do have relatively easy access to meaningful data. Collecting information from customer transactions and investigating trends has been aided by scanner data and mountains of empirical results. Do you want to know about the latest trends in consumer preferences for salty snacks? No problem, there’s a study that will tell you.

For business-to-business (B2B) customers, the game is different. The complex relationships between firms result in multiple layers of influencers and decision makers. Mining the gold nuggets from these interactions can be difficult, but finding out what truly creates value has tremendous rewards.

Customer-focused organizations are discovering that different ways of gathering B2B customer feedback can unlock value, stimulate innovation, and drive loyalty. Savvy leaders are learning that bending – or breaking – the research rules can be their fastest, easiest, and most cost-effective route to success.

Rule to Break #1: You need a random sample to conduct valid research

If you’re doing a broad study of consumer preferences or trends, that’s true. If you want to get a deeper insight into what the key decision makers from your most important customer accounts are thinking, you don’t need a random sample. In fact, you need to gather data from a group that is anything but randomly selected.

Gathering feedback from strategically selected allies and adversaries at high levels will give you input that will help guide your business into the future. When listening to B2B customers, what’s more important than hearing from those people who are actually making the buying decisions?

Rule to Break #2: Keep your distance to avoid biasing results

As we’ve seen before, the method of gathering customer feedback is part of the message you’re sending to your customers. For B2B customers, trust is critical. And time and time again, trust is best built in a face-to-face setting. So, why not build trust while collecting feedback by sitting down with your customer and having a structured conversation about their needs?

Set the stage beforehand, ask the right questions, and probe when appropriate. Chances are you’ll get more valuable input than a more traditional survey approach.

Rule to Break #3: All customers and data points are created equal

B2C researchers will be the first to go down the path of segmenting results by critical demographics. Segmentation is key in the B2B space, too. But collecting detailed feedback from high-level B2B contacts can yield “aha” moments in other ways as well.

For example, if a high-level executive from an automaker tells me what it’s going to take to keep her account happy, I’m going to listen. A future product innovation, cross-sell opportunity, or details about an at-risk relationship could be in her next comment. It’s just one verbatim comment from one individual, but the implications could be huge.

Many traditional customer feedback methods can be applied to all types of customers, but keep in mind that bending – and yes, sometimes breaking – the research rules for B2B customers can often lead to more actionable and dynamic results.

Nick Wassenberg, Research Analyst
E.G. Insight

There is no shortage of salespeople competing for their customers’ time and share of wallet. There is no shortage of noise and clutter in the system; everyone is vying for attention in a difficult economy. Some companies are succeeding; others are failing at an alarming rate.

Companies that are succeeding are doing so because they offer specialized products or services unique to the marketplace, or—and this is more likely—because of the kind of relationships they have with their most valuable customers. These companies meet a need for their customers. They do something no one else can do or they are perceived as being unique.

Trusted Advisors stand alone atop the Customer Relationship Hierarchy as shown here:

(Click the image for a larger view. Copyright © 1992-2009 E.G. Insight. All Rights Reserved.)

Trusted Advisors are often involved in helping their customers solve problems. Their customers ask them for advice. When a Trusted Advisor helps find a solution, their customers usually reward them with a sale.

Product Vendors are usually contacted by customers once a solution is found. Product Vendors are often asked to provide a price—not advice, not a solution, just a price. We all know that customers often “window shop” by getting several prices before making a decision. If you are not the low-cost provider, and you did not help in forming the solution, you will probably lose the sale; it’s often as simple as that.

Here is the question: How do your most valuable customers perceive you? Where would they place you on the Customer Relationship Hierarchy today? Where do they want you to be on the hierarchy tomorrow? What will it take for you to get there?

Gary Gerds, Managing Partner
E.G. Insight

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