Customer Intelligence
“It doesn't matter what we want, once we get it, then we want something else.” Lord Petyr Baelish
I was involved in a conversation last week with a CEO of a great business in the home building space - they're doing amazingly well! When talking about their role in Customer Service, I challenged about why they (as CEO) don’t (for example) make a proactive, congratulatory call to a customer spending a huge sum of money on building a home with them. The response I got was… (paraphrased), “the minute I call them, they’re always going to want to call me…”
From this CEO I heard angst and the burden from potentially becoming too involved in managing customers, particularly problematic ones… But let me unpack this…
How wise is it for a CEO to NOT want to connect with their customers? I am assuming most CEOs understand that the very reason they are in business is due to customers buying their goods and/or services.
What sort of customer would NOT be thrilled to get a proactive, congratulatory call from their CEO of their supplier or service provider?
What customer intelligence and information might you miss out on from connecting with a customer? It is highly likely they will offer some colourful feedback.
Even if the customer now has your contact number and continues to contact you to complain or otherwise, wouldn’t you rather have this intelligence than not? It may well reveal something very pertinent about your product/service, your team, the market etc
Should you make these calls to customers, how might you proactively manage the customer relationships to have them clearly understand the best way to communicate with your company, deal with queries/complaints/concerns etc? You then have a great opportunity to clearly state how your company will confidently and proactively communicate with them across their journey with you
Proactive engagement by a CEO with customers can only be seen as a huge positive. Depending on the size of your business, the number of goods/services you sell, you may need to segment your customers and be considered in who you contact? You ideally should seek a cross-section across segments.
Culturally, this also sets a standard and philosophy for your organisation. If the CEO creates boundaries around speaking with customers (i.e they don’t do it unless there’s a major problem), what message does that send to their business about customers? The flip side of this is, what message does it send if the CEO DOES make proactive calls to customers, and in fact it is part of their role!!
Just to be really transparent…I have shared these views with a number of people. Some simply didn’t agree, and in fact found it very confronting. I do however believe that upholding this type of approach to Customer Service can become a huge differentiator to your business!
In support of this, I was also reflecting on when I heard Gail Kelly (ex-CEO of Westpac and St George Bank) speak a number of years ago. She spent a lot of time talking about her approach to customer service. She always had a list of 5 customers on her office desk that she would personally call each week. This was mandated for all executives and line managers too. She had total belief that there was a strong correlation between employee engagement and customer experience. She believed it was a major key to their business’ revival and success.
To finish, here’s a quote from Richard Branson that I find very profound… “Good customer service begins at the top. If your senior people don't get it, even the strongest links further down the line can become compromised”. Whilst Branson’s quote does not explicitly state this, let’s be clear, "the top" is you – the CEO/Founder/Managing Director.
How many customers are you going to proactively call this week?
Please pass this on to your team, discuss it! And by all means, please pass this on to someone you believe will benefit from this.
Have a great week.
Grow well!!
Adam