By Bevin Maguire & Jane Hiscock
Customers expect the companies they do business with to understand them as individuals and connect with them in ways that are valuable.
Here are four elements of lasting customer engagement:
Ask yourself the right questions
These include:
- How well do we know our customers as individuals?
- How do our customers want to interact with us?
- What are their challenges and priorities?
- How can we make customer interactions more valuable to them?
- Are our customers committed to us, or could they easily move to our competitors?
You’ll find the basic answers to these questions in your data, but more insight will come from the conversations you have with customers. With our clients, we’ve found that a 30-minute call—clearly defined as a strategy discussion rather than a sales call—is a good place to begin. The discussion should focus on the client’s strategic areas, whether or not they’re related to your business.
Understand customers as people
Look for opportunities to learn more about the client’s professional interests and goals. If we know that our clients are trying to advance their efforts with analytics, we can connect them to our analytics work to help them build their expertise.
Align the entire organization around client engagement
At IBM, the focus on the customer and client engagement comes from all levels in the organization. We build cross-functional teams focused on customer needs and maintain a client-engagement model, led by a senior leader, to ensure that all parts of the organization are aligned around the customer’s goals.=
Create customer advisory boards
We use customer advisory boards to hear from executives at our client companies who can advise us about their business. We’ve gained perspective on our own business strategy and strengthened our relationships with the advisory board members in the process. Also, the board members help us figure out where our clients are going and how we can help them get there.
Bevin Maguire is vice president of marketing and communications, IBM Global Technology Services. Jane Hiscock is president and founder of Farland Group.