Customer success journey.
Personal service can make all the difference to customer success.
Personal service can be the key to creating customer success. It can be most gratifying to be personally serviced by the business owners from the initial phone call to the successful sale settlement.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to service every customer on every deal on their journey; others must be involved.
Spreading the word about your services and customer successes.
Word-of-mouth is the most potent marketing initiative you can implement during a customer success journey. What better things for a customer to discuss than the services they have received and their customer experience?
While serving customers and fulfilling their stated wants and needs is crucial, it is not enough to ensure loyalty. Something else—something emotional —needs to be done to involve the customer, make a connection with them, and increase the likelihood that they will spread the word for you.
Help customers and communities learn from adversity.
During the first significant drought I experienced, I learned a valuable lesson about the customer success journey experience. What customer in their right mind would buy a big tractor or header harvester in a drought?
Offer terms that extend beyond the tough times.
In the agricultural machinery business, I remember going through tough times with a rural recession and droughts. Well, we had to make sales to survive during these significant and prolonged periods, and here are some of the strategies we adopted:
- We always talked about positive outcomes. What would happen when the drought broke and others scrambled to buy machinery?
- Providing extended interest-free payments for an extended period, which would hopefully go beyond the tough times, was always a winner.
- We had to provide our customers with reasons for their purchases. This helped them save face with their mates, who would say they were stupid to buy anything during a tough time.
Aggressively seek new ideas.
Most of you have had similar experiences. The “not-invented-here” syndrome in many businesses is merely another way of procrastinating about changing how you treat your customers. Unfortunately, disruptions are a fundamental part of today’s business environment. New means of providing a better customer experience are invented every day. Tap into your creativity, no matter how long it has been since you used it to innovate.
Action orientation.
Buy yourself a ‘playbook’ and start doodling; let your ideas flow freely. You might be amazed at how many good ideas and opportunities you will uncover. There are two things you can do to start thinking outside the box.
Winners are grinners. Know the value of closely targeted action orientation.
Quotable Quotes
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things”. Peter Drucker
“The more you engage with customers, the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing”. John Russell