1.
Compile account-specific survey results. Once your firm has
implemented the prerequisite steps, previously covered in the
series “Unlocking the Value of Your Customer Satisfaction
Surveys”, you are now ready to compile an account-specific
report. This entails creating a report of the specific
customer’s feedback resulting from your surveying their firm.
The report will outline: who was surveyed (names and titles),
the levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction by person, and
any comments they shared during the survey. What you may find is
that the individual users are totally-satisfied with your
service, while management within the customer’s organization is
not. This may result from the fact that the manager, responsible
for financing the purchase of your services, doesn’t see the
return-on-investment, while the end-users within the customer’s
organization find the service mission-critical in the
performance of their job. You need to take this opportunity to
proactively manage the customer’s perception of your firm. The
remaining steps outline how you can do this, by leveraging your
customer’s survey results.
2. Engage senior management in your customer's experience.
While it is not expected that each of your customers have a
relationship with an executive from your company, it is highly
beneficial to have your senior executives (VP and above) develop
relationships with 2-3 of your firm’s highest priority accounts.
Highest priority accounts can be defined as those that generate
the most revenue, have strategic name recognition or are an
important partner in the industry within which you operate.
Having your executives develop relationships with your highest
priority accounts forms the basis for a very effective and
long-term partnership between your firms. A specific step that
your executives can perform is that of an interactive review of
survey results, with the customer’s Account Manager and the
customer. This provides opportunities for your executives to
hear "unfiltered" feedback from your customer-base.
Additionally, it is an excellent opportunity to turn problem
situations into new business opportunities. Executives typically
don’t get bogged down in the details. Instead, they generally
strive to form strategic relationships built upon mutual
respect. Finally, with your executives this close to the
customer you demonstrate to all your constituencies the
commitment your organization has to the customer.
3. Prepare for the customer review meeting. The major
activity in this step is holding a rehearsal, or dry-run, of the
customer meeting between the Account Manager and the senior
manager assigned to the account. The goal is to determine the
appropriate strategy for the meeting and what messages need to
be delivered to the customer. You may want to assign the
discussion points so that the senior executive covers an
overview of the corporation, future plans and reasons for
conducting the survey. The Account Manager then discusses the
customer’s survey results and asks three key questions: 1) What
can I, the Account Manager, do to improve Customer Satisfaction?
2) What can the Company do to improve? 3) What is everything
necessary for you to become Totally Satisfied?
Performing a
dry-run is crucial, as you will typically identify a number of
issues that require several hours, or days, to address to ensure
a positive outcome with the customer.
The final step
is scheduling appointments to meet with key contacts at the
account. The Account Manager will want to schedule a meeting, or
meetings, to ensure that you have an opportunity to provide a
review of survey results and future plans with: end-users,
decision-makers and key influencers. When scheduling face-time
with the customer, use this opportunity to indicate that you
will be bringing a senior manager from your firm, and would like
to have senior managers present from the customer’s firm as
well. By your taking the posture of presenting analysis
material, that will benefit the account, instead of selling, the
Account Manager can enter offices that may have previously been
closed. The Account Manager now has an excuse to move
horizontally and vertically within the account’s organization in
order to present the results and extend their sphere of
influence.
4. Meet with
the customer. You are now ready to meet with your account to
review the report specifically designed for them. You will share
what your company has observed as broad trends across your
customer-base and what is being done to respond globally. Then
you will discuss the customer’s specific concerns and finally
your response, which may not have been covered in the broad
programs previously reviewed.
The main
goals of this meeting include:
- Clarify
account issues
- Identify
additional business opportunities
- Understand
how the account evaluates your products or services
-
Demonstrate to the customer that you are taking their input
seriously and are responding to meet their needs
5. Educate
your organization and engage resources to respond. You will
now want to educate others in your firm and engage the
appropriate resources to respond to your account’s feedback. You
will have information that needs to be shared with other
organizations such as Marketing and Product Management that may
lead to future enhancements to your products or services. And,
you will likely need to pull together your extended account team
to respond to the customer’s specific feedback. Too often
customer satisfaction is left on the shoulders of account
management and/or the customer contact center. While these are
key functions impacting the customer’s overall satisfaction with
your firm, many other personnel touch the customer (technical
support, billing, credit, collections, etc.). As such, you will
need to bring together members of the extended account-team to
ensure that each organization understands the areas of
satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the particular account and
knows what they can do to positively influence this customer’s
perception of your firm.
6. Continue
the process. By now you will have realized many benefits of
implementing account strategies and want to continuously loop
through the process on a monthly or quarterly basis with each
account that you include in the program. During each subsequent
meeting you’ll want to start off by providing an update on what
you’ve done, the programs you’ve put in place, or steps you’ve
taken to respond to previously identified areas of
dissatisfaction. You will find that each pass at this process
builds upon an increasing relationship of trust, respect and
mutual profitability.
Remember,
implementing account strategies is not something that you will
necessarily do for all of your customers. This is a program that
you would perform, in its entirety, for only your
highest-profile accounts. With that said, however, it is highly
recommended that your Account Managers leverage survey results
to hold similar discussions with their lower-profile accounts.
While senior management from your firm may not be engaged the
Account Managers and the customer will realize positive results
here as well.
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