“Do you hear what I hear?” — Listening to Best Customers

BJ Bueno, in a post on MediaPost Blogs on Dec 22, entitled “Attract Loyal Customers by Creating a Magnetic Brand,” provides 10 key strategies for building relationships with Best Customers. The second one is “Listen to what your best customers are telling you. Don’t be a transaction-making machine. Be a real person…”

I have been thinking as I have been traveling for this holiday season how much I would like to speak with the companies where I consider myself to be a Best Customer. Now, that is not necessarily to criticize. How can I tell Delta how much I appreciate the flexibility of the Seattle baggage check people in moving lines around to keep things moving swiftly, or the gate attendant who wished everyone a happy new year and a great 2010?

We have to make sure to share the good with the bad, or else eventually we will just be known as the “village kvetch” — the local busybody who does nothing but complain all day long.

It is much harder to tell companies about what I think as a Best Customer than it should be. I can go to the web site and see if I can find a “contact us” form, I can see if I can find a written feedback form and fill it out and remember to hand it in and then find someone who will take it, or I can tweet or blog about it, and hope someone reads it. All in all, I have to go way out of my way to share feedback — not just the bad, but the good as well.

We know we need feedback from our Best Customers, the 15% who drive 40-60% of revenue and more than that of profit. We don’t just need feedback, but we need conversations that help create and reinforce relationships. Customers who share their feedback, listen to us and then share again are committing to more than just transactions. Then we can get feedback and as importantly, we begin to earn commitment, the Holy Grail of relationship marketing.

But how do we do this? How do we create places where people can safely communicate with us and with other customers and respond to them, without spending a bunch of money we just don’t have.

This year, I plan on sharing more action steps with my readers, to make sure that this column is not just an academic exercise but a place where strategies can be shared to make a difference in your business quickly for minimal expense and effort. I call this approach “No Excuses Marketing.”

Here are the first three No Excuses Marketing ideas about getting feedback and having conversations with Best Customers.

1. Open a Facebook fan page and set up a part where you can get feedback. Let your Best Customers know about these pages through a special, dedicated email. Check the page daily, let customers know which ideas have been acted upon and which are still under review. Check out the Starbucks Idea section for an excellent implementation of this strategy. Their approach cost more than a fan page on FB, but you will get the idea.

2. Call your Best Customers. That’s right, call them. Have the marketing team each call a half dozen Best Customers every week and ask them about their last experience and what you could do better. Send an email from that employee to thank the customer afterwards.

3. Ask for feedback after every e-commerce delivery. Send a link to a form for feedback and then offer a small discount for the insight.

None of these are huge ideas individually, but they together set the starting point for more engagement in the future. Hopefully easy and valuable. What do you think? Do you have other down-and-dirty ideas for Best Customer feedback?

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Tagged as: Best Customer, bestcustomer, CRM, Customer experience, Customer Management, customer relationships, Customer retention, Customer service, customercentric, Database marketing, Electronic commerce, Facebook, Marketing, Website