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  Stop Shouting, Start Listening!
 
How long does it take the bartender in your local bar to remember your usual? Three visits, four? How quickly does your business get to the heart of your customers' requirements? Indeed, do you get there at all?
 
Over the past decade the number of ways of interacting with a customer has exploded. From web sites to digital TV, the channels of communication are numerous. Yet, the increase in channels has simply led to a lack of sophistication in customer communication and in managing customer relationships.
 
When business relied on traditional face-to-face customer interaction, organisations took pride in remembering both personal and commercial details about the client. Today, the service goal appears to be fast, efficient and low cost, with minimal client interaction. Clients are encouraged towards impersonal self-service web sites and deadpan call centres. There is no personal relationship and no attempt is made to understand the ways in which the client wants to interact with the business.
 
Indeed, despite an investment in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, or maybe even as a result of these systems, the Business to Business (B2B) market has been enticed into bombarding clients and prospects with information. Blanket emails, telemarketing, even text messaging, appear to offer a cheap way of communicating with their marketplace. Cheap, maybe. Effective? Certainly not. Such communication, after all, is just one way.
 
Clients can hear the message - they just don't like it. It is rarely relevant, it is too frequent, too impersonal and it is an imposition. The approach also provides no platform for response - other than order placement. Combine this one-way blanket marketing with impersonal call centres and clients feel less than valued. Businesses may be shouting but their clients are certainly not listening to them.
 
CRM Hi-Jack
The problem is that CRM has been hijacked by the B2B marketplace. CRM is not about self-service, contact centres or providing information to people on the road. It is about gathering information from customers to increase understanding of their requirements and behaviour. A Sports Association, for example, by collecting information on its members' skills, can ascertain how many members are also referees or coaches, or may have children keen to join a youth section. Such grass roots information drives the delivery of services, from coaching courses to league creation, as well as providing a more detailed proposition for potential advertisers.
 
The value of deep customer understanding is beginning to be realised. Not, however, in the B2B market which persists in its 'loud hailer' approach to clients - but in consumer centric organisations where there is a growing recognition that customer knowledge underpins the delivery of good, appropriate services and drives business strategy.
 
The UK government's focus on eGovernment is a prime example. The goal is to deliver good services to the citizen through a variety of traditional and new media. The requirement is excellent knowledge about the citizen. This knowledge has a two-fold implication on Government. Firstly, more knowledge, information and understanding will support the development of appropriate services and service delivery mechanisms. Secondly, it will drive understanding of who we are as a nation, encompassing demographics and levels of education, for example, and support the creation of policies to move the UK forward towards the nation we want to be.
 
This level of constituent understanding is as relevant to a government with 60 million citizens as it is to Sports Associations with thousands and it depends on maximising each constituent interaction.
 
Maximise Interactions
Customers interact with organisations in a myriad of ways; so don't waste the opportunity. Web sites and call centres will retain their place - particularly in the delivery of static information, such as library opening times and membership prices. But learn from these interactions. Real understanding can only be achieved if each customer interaction, from web site to phone call, is maximised, if that information is recorded and, critically, used to improve understanding of the individual.
 
Most CRM solutions simply store information on what products and services a customer purchased. But CRM can deliver a new level of granularity: did they look at the web site and then call the contact centre? What did they look at on the web site? Technology exists to track and monitor customer footprints around your website. Combining this new media information with actual purchase or even product inquiry information provides a much deeper understanding of each customer's behaviour.
 
The advice is therefore to gather customer information through letters, phone calls and the web and listen to that information. If you are not listening, you are not doing the right job. An organisation that stores enough relevant information on its customers will be able to articulate relevant messages, offers, services or products, to that customer in the most appropriate manner. And, critically, such an organisation provides a clear opportunity for customers to communicate with the organisation, closing the loop.
 
Business to Business lessons
If businesses in the B2B market treated their business clients in the way in which consumer led organisations are beginning to manage their customers, they would be more likely to achieve successful CRM implementation. 'Success' is not about selling product but listening to client requirements and managing the relationship to the benefit of both parties.
 
A good example of a B2B business that has recognised the requirement to build new relationships with customers is the Food and Drink industry, despite the fact that sales are made via distributors rather than direct to the retailer. Rather than simply relying on consumer response to above-the-line advertising to prompt retailers to purchase product from distributors, beverage manufacturers work directly with the retailers to generate brand recognition and loyalty. Face to face contact is backed up with in-store promotions, and local marketing activity. As a result, beverage manufacturers are building direct relationships with the retailers, attaining a new level of understanding of their business issues and delivering new services to improve both businesses.
 
Conclusion
The message is clear:
 
There is no such thing as too much relevant customer information.
 
Good customer understanding is at the heart of every successful business. Organisations need to stop looking for cost effective customer interaction and keeping their clients at arm's length and they need to stop broadcasting inappropriate information to their increasingly deaf customers. Instead, they need to maximise the value of each interaction through improved customer understanding and service delivery.
 
Stop shouting. Start listening.