An astute reader of my previous post, “The Many Sides of Me,” will realize that the behaviors are composed of three elements: transactions, intractions and attitudes. All three are critical to understanding customer relationships and building upon them in a customer-centric strategy. Let’s examine each in some more detail.
1. Transactions keep the lights on. There is no question that maintaining and expanding transactions are key to a company’s success. Yet, paradoxically, the more you focus on transactions in communications and offers, the less likely you are to have long-standing customer relationships. Transactions MUST be measured as an output, a lagging indicator. But if you constantly sell, sell, sell, you will forget to converse and to listen. Then your days of success are numbered.
2. Interactions are fuel relationships. Interaction are actually the leading indicator for transactions, although many companies still do not realize it. Interactions, as I refer to them here, are all non-transactional contacts that a company has with customers — customer service calls, web-site research, social media interaction with fans, detractors and others, salesforce visits, etc. Exceeding expectations on those interactions are often the greatest predictor of the next transaction, and the next, and so on.
Interactions are also hard to track, capture and analyze. It requires full company coordination to be able to assess interactions for individual customers. Yet those interactions can either lead to referenceability or toxic negative recommendations that all companies fear, yet seem in some ways to be powerless to influence.
Engage with customers in these interactions, facilitate their needs and refrain from excessive selling and you will reap the benefits. Proven.
3. Attitudes are the end result of interactions plus transactions. They start with preconceived notions about the company and then are either disproven or proven out through the tenor of the interaction plus satisfaction with the end product.
How do you measure attitudes? Well, the normal answer is to conduct surveys, but those only touch the survey-friendly portion of your customer base. So how do you understand customer attitudes. The only way that I have found to work is to collect, collect, collect information at every touchpoint, every interaction, every transaction. Collect these little “sparks” and gradually you will accumulate a light that can shine on your customers and provide insight for your contact and interaction strategy.
So “behavior” is actually comprised of three elements. Combine all three and you will create enough light to see into my relationship with you. Only with this knowledge can you speak to me in a way that makes me see you — not the impersonal company in the sky, but people striving to serve and help me achieve my goals, which is the most motivating positioning of all.
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