“Things to Think About” for the Reference Professional

#crlp Smile when you talk to customers – even if it’s over the phone.

“Things to Think About” for the Reference Professional is a weekly blurb to get you thinking. You can find content here on this blog or at Twitter under the hashtag for Customer Reference and Loyalty Professionals #crlp.

10 important questions to ask your customers – once you have their attention

Now that you have your customer’s attention, what do you ask them? After years of talking to customers, interviewing them and getting a feel for them for media opportunities, press releases, case studies as well as sales and analyst requests, I have boiled down the most important list of questions to ten. Sure, you’ll probably want to ask other questions based on the opportunity that you think they’re good for, but these 10 are critical to the success of your program. I generally ask these questions during a 30 minute phone interview with them to gather information for a press release and/or case study. With the exception of the first question, they are in no particular order.

 

1-       Do you still have time to talk? (Set the tone of the call at the very beginning and let the customer know that you value his/her time. It’s possible they got pulled into a meeting scheduled 5 minutes later or that they need to finish a last minute project for their boss.)

2-       On a scale of 0-10 (10 being the best), how likely are you to recommend <enter your product or company here>? (A quick way to find out how happy and loyal a customer is. Anything below an 8.5 and I’d think twice about putting them in front of the media.  See my previous post about this)

3-       Are you willing and able to speak to the media/analysts/references either publicly or anonymously? (This sets the stage for what you will be able to do with the customer. It’s very possible that the customer will have to ask their PR team, but it gets them thinking outside of the press release and/or case study box.)

4-       If given a media opportunity, what do you feel comfortable/not comfortable speaking about? (You want the customer to talk about what they are passionate about and don’t want to put them in an awkward position by having a reporter ask them a question you don’t want to know the answer to. This also helps you select the most appropriate customer for each opportunity)

5-       Is there a PR person that I should work with to help move the process along? (There’s nothing worse than spending time interviewing, writing and getting approvals on a press release or case study to find out that there’s a PR policy against it. This can also help reduce the amount of time your customer contact has to spend chasing down approvals.)

6-       How did you hear about <enter your product or company here>? (This is a great and fast way to figure out which Marketing programs or partners are working for your company)

7-       If you saw your CEO in the elevator, what would you tell him/her about <enter your product or company here>? (This would be the customer elevator pitch (literally) and gives you an idea of the top things that the customer sees as important or valuable with your product/company.)

8-       May I use your company logo on our Website? (This is a separate question from using them as a public reference because some companies branding is their logo and not necessarily their name. For example, professional sports teams generally won’t let anyone use their logo unless you sign a contract and pay a nice wad of cash to use it. The logos are their branding.)

9-       What publications/blogs/Websites do you read? (This will help you watch what your customers are reading and will give you a list of publications to target for pitching and advertising.)

10-    Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you want to tell me? (This is a great opportunity for your customer to tell you how great support is or how awful the Website is. In the case of negative information, take it as positive criticism. I’ve had use this time to tell me how wonderful their Sales person is and of course, I then send that information to the Sales person and :cc their boss!)

 

By going through this list of questions, you get a feel for what your customers are willing and able to do as well as what influences them.  You have their attention so make sure to ask the questions that you want an answer to.

 

Net Promoter customer loyalty training

I spent three days last week at Satmetrix’s Net Promoter Customer Loyalty training. At initial glance, I thought that the price tag was a bit much for what I thought would be a very high level training class on how to subtract the amount of detractors from promoters. Boy was I wrong! We spent three days going into depth on how the Net Promoter Rating is more than just a number and how to figure out what your customers are really telling you and then what that means to your business. We heard case study after case study on how worldwide companies such as GE, Experian, Harley Davidson and Allianz have deployed the Net Promoter customer loyalty program – and it is much more than just a number.

Something that I found extremely interesting was that there were people from many different roles within an organization at the training – an HR manager to call center manager to SVP of Customer Experience to a CMO and President of a company. It goes to shows that having a complete and successful customer loyalty program requires input from a plethora of groups within a company.

If you don’t have the budget to attend one of the training classes, I understand that the conferences are very good too. If you don’t have budget for that, read the book “The Ultimate Question” by Fred Reiccheld.

I’m meeting with my boss this week to see if we can implement a Net Promoter program and hopefully she’ll say yes!

Face to face

It’s very easy to run a customer reference program sitting at your desk, writing emails and talking on the phone.

When given the opportunity to meet your customers face to face – don’t even hesitate. Just do it – even if it’s a quick hello and not a lunch or dinner meeting. Like with many other things in life, meeting someone face to face changes the relationship. It literally puts a face to the person you’ve been talking to.

I recently had the opportunity to meet a Fortune 500 customer of my company’s for an analyst briefing. In the end, I spent three hours getting to and from the meeting for what took a total of 20 minutes face to face with the customer. Sounds like a huge waste of time but now I am 100% confident that when I call that customer or email him, he’ll get back to me in minutes. In fact, I sent him an email earlier this week asking him for a phone interview so that I could write a press release on his company being a customer of my company. Within 2 minutes (120 seconds – not even enough time for me to walk to the water cooler and fill up my water bottle) he wrote back and said yes. Did I mention that he’s a director at a Fortune 500 company? That is extremely impressive. And, I have to give all the credit to the fact that I met him face to face a few weeks ago. Otherwise, what’s going to separate me from the hundreds of other emails he gets on a daily basis?

So, even if it takes all day to meet a customer which will end up being a 10 minute meeting…DO IT! The pros far outweigh the cons. The three hours I spent traveling will ultimately be made up in time I won’t have to spend chasing him later on for an interview or approvals. He knows my name and my face.

With the risk of sounding cheesy…

Roundtrip train ticket to meet customer = $15.00
Giving up half a day of work at the office = $400
Having direct access to a customer and a personal relationship with them = priceless!