Do you value your customers? No, really.

I have been thinking recently about how customer-centricity ties to a company’s values.  I worry that companies who are layering a customer-centric veneer over a “make money at all costs” value system will be like putting lipstick on a pig.  You can do whatever you want, but a pig is still a pig. (no disrespect to my porcine friends!).

So I want to take a “left turn” today and talk about values.  Not values like “we support our customers, our employees and our communities,” but real values, the ones that are so important that they force a company into really hard choices.  Decisions that a company makes tell the truth about what values a company really has, regardless of what may be written in the company mission statement or in the annual report.

Let’s take a couple of tough ones and examine how they frequently translate into company behavior:

I have worked with a number of companies over the past 15 years that claim great values — customer-centricity, employee development, contributing to the community, only to “fall off the wagon” when the going gets tough.  Doesn’t anyone realize that when times get tough is the ONLY time that values are proven.  All your stakeholders — employees, community and customers — feel just fine about life when times are good and do not worry much about small value miscues.  But when times are hard, each of your stakeholders are watching you like a hawk, checking to see if the values are window-dressing or not.

Let’s apply this value-check to a focus on Best Customers.  Companies routinely proclaim that their best customers are are the lifeblood of their business.  Yet what does it mean when Best Customers:

• Send emails that go unanswered?
• Wait “on hold” for 30 minutes at a shot?
• Find out that new customers have access to special prices that they do not?
• Are forced to repeat their contact and payment information every time they buy something?
• Have to deal with salespeople who know less about the company’s products and services than they do?
• Do not hear from a company until a desperation sale goes on? And so on?

I want to stress — it does not matter what you say.

It matters what you do.

Here are some No Excuses Marketing recommendations for how to really make your company focus on Best Customers to be true:

1. Match metrics to values. If you value Best Customers, make sure that their retention, referenceability and spending patterns are tracked monthly.  Make sure to publicize those values through the organization.
2. Pilot “priority customer care” quickly. Set up small teams (2-3 people) with responsibility for Best Customer service and track the impact of those contacts on customer retention and spending.  Then you can assign value to those contacts and prove out their value.
3. Build a low-cost frequent Best Customer contact strategy. The more expensive Best Customer contact is, the more likely it is to get cut.  Best Customers do not need fancy, expensive communications that introduce and position the brand; rather, they want to hear the inside scoop and feel that they are being heard.  Consider Facebook fan pages as one low-cost approach to building relationships with Best Customers.  And don’t forget to measure and monetize those efforts too.

Look, unless you are the CEO, there is always a chance that you may be forced into behaviors that contradict the company’s stated values (and your too).  But by using some of the No Excuses Marketing approaches, you can make it harder for that money to be cut by your Finance department, unless they are willing to cut revenue forecasts at the same time (and they never are!).

What are your experiences in trying to maintain customer-centric values in a balance-sheet driven organization?  What other strategies have you found successful?

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Tagged as: Best Customer, best customer experience, CRM, customer centric, Customer Centricity, Customer experience, Customer Management, Customer service, customer values, customercentric, Database marketing, Facebook