Centrality of Clients
In an environment still coming to terms with the impact of COVID, businesses in both B2B and B2C areas are asking themselves, if they can rely on the loyalty of customers they had prior to January 2020?
Customer’s priorities have been impacted by the uncertainty and fear they have felt and by losses they may have experienced. How B2B and B2C businesses pivot and adapt to changing customer experience will, in large measure, determine their ability to consolidate and grow.
While there is much talk about the importance of the customer or client, often there is a disparity between the talk and the practice of the business. A subtle, unconscious inertia can pull organisations into being company centric rather than customer centric, almost without them realising what is occurring. In an increasing digital age and with the impact of COVID, organisations have a window of opportunity to review their practices and build a culture and practice which places the client at the centre.
Organisations that are company centric, channel the customer through a linear series of interactions that allow the business to control both the process and the interactions. However, customers rarely follow stepped out journeys. Instead, they follow their impulses, urges, whims, and preferences often in unplanned moments of opportunity. This means organisations need to understand these unplanned moments and provide opportunities that allow clients to make decisions to achieve their original intent.
The customer-centric, purpose-led approach is even more important for B2B organisations because longer buying cycles means keeping clients engaged in longer journeys that have more interaction points. This means more people, each on their own journey with their own purposes depending on their role resulting in a multi-layered client journey which is more challenging than an interaction in a B2C environment.
How do we create a stronger customer-centric environment?
The first step is to shift our thinking from a transactional perspective which is simply a buy/sell dynamic to one where both organisation and client are viewed in a symbiotic relationship. A symbiotic relationship is one that is mutually beneficial. In other words, we change our perspective from seeing the client as a path to achieve a purchase to viewing our relationship with the client as a means to achieve their purpose.
One of the ways businesses do this is by focusing on moments that matter to clients. Accenture, in research found there are specific client interactions known as “moments that matter” that have an outsized influence on customer happiness and loyalty. There are three moment that are particularly relevant; when a customer pays a bill, upgrades or changes services or calls with a technical question or billing issue. In considering these three moments that matter, organisations can boost customer happiness and achieve brand advocacy & loyalty.
This information provides the second step. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that to “delight our customers”, a phrase used by Jeff Bezos businesses need to provide them with something new and different. In fact, what delights clients is the opportunity to deal with businesses, with less effort. Life for clients is complicated enough, where businesses can remove friction from the customer experience and provide smooth, efficient, and fast service, they provide delight.
Removing friction from the customer/client experience provides small and midsized B2C and B2B businesses with a window of advantage, for while larger organisations may have greater resources, there is often, as mentioned a cultural inertia to change that allows opportunities for more nimble companies to better align with customers’ purpose and forge new relationships that strengthen loyalty between them and their clients.
Becoming customer-centric takes commitment and a dedication and willingness to look at every aspect of our business. It takes work to work against the inertia that drives businesses back to being company-centric. Yet, if we want to stand out to customers and clients, we need to walk the path of finding out and meeting our clients’ purpose.
[1] Designing Customer Journeys for the Post-Pandemic World (hbr.org) [2] Designing Customer Journeys for the Post-Pandemic World (hbr.org) [3] ibid [4] Portrait Of The Customer-Centric Legal Function (forbes.com) [5] Designing Customer Journeys for the Post-Pandemic World (hbr.org) [6] Customer Experience Can Be Data Driven—Here’s How (forbes.com) [7] ibid [8] ibid [9] Portrait Of The Customer-Centric Legal Function (forbes.com) [10] ibid [11] ibid [12] Designing Customer Journeys for the Post-Pandemic World (hbr.org)- Published in marketing
Rule of 7
The rule of 7 states, it takes 7 interactions with your brand before a person will engage with it and become a client or customer.
- Published in marketing, Psychology
Daring to be different
Fear creates uncertainty. Uncertainty creates a sense of dis-equilibrium within us that we try to correct, so we can feel balanced and in equilibrium again.
- Published in marketing, Psychology
Clickbait and the damage done
Clickbait is the tactic of teasing users with intriguing ads or posts of your content to entice them to click-through and read.
- Published in marketing, Psychology
The impact of Apple’s recent update on digital ads
On 26 April, Apple introduced its new privacy settings in the iOS 14 update. A feature called App Tracking Transparency (ATT).
Communicating in a segmented market
Developing clarity in our messaging takes time and space to reflect on the unique characteristics of the people to whom we are communicating. Ironically, as senior managers in organisations we do not believe we have the time to reflect and develop clarity in our messaging or to consider the unique characteristics of the people we are engaging. We are so busy planning, strategising, responding, emailing, phoning, talking, we do not schedule time to reflect on how to communicate effectively with clarity. Consequently, our communications are often muddled. We think we are communicating, but often what our listeners hear, is not what we think we are saying.
In our recent blog, Clarity & Communication, we spoke about the importance of distilling your message into three or four main points. Distillation in the process of making spirits takes time and equally it takes time to distil the essential message/s you want to communicate. Senior managers who are good communicators give themselves time to allow the key messages they to communicate to distil and become clear before they communicate.
As well as the constant noise of multiple communications one of the other challenge’s leaders face is the immediacy of the news cycle. It is easy to allow the pressure of the news cycle to drive our communications. The pressure to get something out to clients or stakeholders often leads to muddled communications that are unclear and lead to misunderstanding, possible rumour and in the worst-case false information being spread. Rumour and false information can have severe repercussions for both for-profits and not-for-profits in terms of profitability, impact on service delivery and reputational damage.
The other reason communications are often confused is we do not think through who the intended recipients of our communication are. We tend to think of amorphous groups such as “clients” or “stakeholders” and when we think of amorphous groups, we are likely to miscommunicate because we make broad assumptions about the “group” rather than thinking about individuals within the group which would give clarity to our messaging.
Markets these days are increasingly segmented. Within the broad umbrella of stakeholders, there are segments, groups of stakeholders with particular interests that are not necessarily shared by other stakeholders. Similarly, with clients, as many not-for-profit organisations know, services now have to be nuanced and created to meet the individual need of clients rather than the “one size fits all” model that operated in the 70’s and 80’s.
If we are communicating to a segmented market, then we have to understand as much as we can about the different segments or sub-groups. Most organisations, particularly not-for-profit organisations do not have the staff or time to really understand the unique interests of groups within their client base. This is something the Tonic Digital team with our skillset in analysing and understanding research, social, web and analytic data of people provides to our not-for-profit clients to extract valuable information on their client base and wider market.
Up-to-date insight on your client base is essential in creating a clear message that will resonate with the particular interests of people rather than a broad communication to a vague group of stakeholders.
Taking the time to craft clear messages to individuals will in the long run avoid the time and energy spent in clearing up miscommunications and the rumours and innuendo that arise from such situations.
Starting with intent
There is a sense of satisfaction that comes at the conclusion of our shopping escapes, and it’s not always just the shiny new purchase that affirms our behaviour.
When we set out on a journey to make a purchase, it’s not necessarily because we want that particular product or service, it’s because we have the intent to find a solution to a perceived pre-identified problem.
So where does our intent come from?
- Published in marketing, Psychology
