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Are you in a rela­tion­ship with your customers?

August 18, 2009 | 3 Comments

Writ­ten by: Lee on August 18, 2009.

RelationshipTo answer ‘YES!’ to this ques­tion is prob­a­bly desir­able for most organ­i­sa­tions. When­ever I make a state­ment I start think­ing okay whom does this not apply? At first I think don’t be ridicu­lous every­one wants a rela­tion­ship with their customers…but they say actions speak louder than words.
Then I think about organ­i­sa­tions and com­pa­nies that I am a cus­tomer of and realise – maybe not!

I do not con­sider cus­tomer ser­vice as a way of engag­ing me in a rela­tion­ship. I expect it as part of the ser­vice for me spend­ing my hard-earned money with them. I guess our expec­ta­tions have changed over time. So how do I mea­sure whether I have a rela­tion­ship with an organisation?

For this I con­sid­ered what I think are the fun­da­men­tal ele­ments of a rela­tion­ship and came up with this list.

1. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion
2. Trust
3. Hon­esty
4. Respect
5. Car­ing
6. Mutual Inter­est
7. Loyalty

Wow what a list to ful­fil! So how can an organ­i­sa­tion develop rela­tion­ships? This is espe­cially chal­leng­ing if you have a cou­ple of thou­sand to mil­lions of cus­tomers. I am going to share my thoughts on each ele­ment here

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Collins defines com­mu­ni­ca­tion as the exchange of infor­ma­tion, ideas, or feel­ings. Exchange is two way. This does not nec­es­sar­ily mean that both par­ties need to talk to each other. It can mean that when one talks the other lis­tens. Under­stand­ing is a require­ment of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The next level is talk­ing to each other, which leads to con­vers­ing. So are you lis­ten­ing to your cus­tomers and are they lis­ten­ing to you. Are you lucky enough to be engag­ing in con­ver­sa­tion with your customers?

Trust

One of my favourite words! I ques­tion what trust is in my arti­cle do we really trust brands. Trust is some­thing that is very human and often eludes organ­i­sa­tions that try to mimic rela­tion­ships and do not live their promises and state­ments. Peo­ple are often per­cep­tive to fak­e­ness. Are you depend­able and reli­able? Do you deliver on your promises?

Hon­esty

Are you trans­par­ent with your cus­tomers? Do you admit to mis­takes and fix them at no cost to the cus­tomer. Are you hon­est when you sell a prod­uct?
I have seen organ­i­sa­tions who bam­boo­zle with BS. They make what­ever they are offer­ing seem com­pli­cated and appear as experts when in fact it is just fancy talk with no substance.

Respect

Are you respect­ing your customer’s wishes? Are you bom­bard­ing them with com­mu­ni­ca­tions they don’t want? It is impor­tant to respect your customer’s rights to pri­vacy and choice. It is also impor­tant to respect your customer’s feel­ings. If they are angry about a deal­ing with your organ­i­sa­tion, respect their feel­ings and then work towards a solu­tion to resolve their source of anger. Yes, some­times cus­tomers are unrea­son­able and you can only go so far and yes, not all cus­tomers are worth keep­ing – that is a dif­fer­ent topic altogether.

Car­ing

How do you care about your cus­tomers? This could be achieved through your social respon­si­bil­ity dri­ves or through reward­ing loy­alty with a no con­di­tions gift or ges­ture. I am dis­trust­ful of con­di­tional rewards. I per­son­ally feel it is just a manip­u­la­tive way to get me to buy more…I will prob­a­bly get a lot of ‘flak’ for that view. I am not say­ing con­di­tional cam­paigns don’t work, just I don’t like them and will only use one if I was going to buy anyway.

Mutual Inter­est

Both par­ties need to be gain­ing from a rela­tion­ship. They need to share at least one com­mon inter­est. If that is not there the rela­tion­ship is prob­a­bly doomed. There is no point engag­ing with peo­ple who have no need or desire for your prod­ucts or ser­vices. This is where tar­get­ing is an impor­tant ele­ment to hav­ing cus­tomers where you both can ben­e­fit through you mak­ing a profit and them ful­fill­ing a need. It is also impor­tant from a spend point of view. Don’t waste money on one-sided, casual rela­tion­ships that won’t last long anyway.

Loy­alty

Another ele­ment that many brands work hard to achieve, mea­sure and grow. Today’s cus­tomers are fickle and loy­alty is hard earned. Loy­alty is not some­thing that a casual rela­tion­ship enjoys but rather earned through actions result­ing from the other ele­ments of a relationship.

We can see that all the ele­ments of a rela­tion­ship are inter­de­pen­dent. So con­sid­er­ing this list, I once again ask whether you are in a rela­tion­ship with your customers.

I would like to hear views on how you define a rela­tion­ship, whether you believe you have a rela­tion­ship with your cus­tomers and how you achieve this.

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For more infor­ma­tion to hire Lee-Ann as a mar­ket­ing coach, for work­shops, talks, writ­ing or any of her other ser­vices visit the ser­vices page.

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3 Comments so far

  1.    Lee on October 29, 2009 2:21 pm      Reply

    Thanks for the com­pli­ment Mark. :D

  2.    Mark Harris on October 24, 2009 1:57 pm      Reply

    A great arti­cle and really very use­ful to look at cus­tomer rela­tion­ships this way. It makes it real! thank you for your blog also, every arti­cle is very insight­ful and pow­er­ful. Keep up the great work!

  3.    Jeremy on August 26, 2009 11:10 am      Reply

    I agree with much of this. There are so few “sell­ing” busi­nesses out there that gen­uinely do this, yet most will claim that it is their pri­mary cus­tomer propo­si­tion and a key dif­fer­en­tia­tor from their com­peti­tors. Per­haps the only one of your fun­da­men­tal ele­ments I would change (or rede­fine) is car­ing. The real art of cre­at­ing a rela­tion­ship with your cus­tomers (or any­one else!) is through empa­thy. Hav­ing a gen­uine under­stand­ing of what it is like to be your cus­tomer, to see the world through their eyes. This is the foun­da­tion of trust. When some­one sees the world from your per­spec­tive, you’re more likely to take their advice because you believe it is good for you. A nice place to be for any one; Let alone a seller and their customer.

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