Archive for December, 2008

Someone asked me this week what makes a great customer culture in sales in b2b. Here’s my thoughts

The fun thing about a culture is that it comprises many elements, not one thing. And it can be designed, the major point being not how great anyone element but how aligned are the elements. People go round great places and come away saying I don’t see why they’re so wonderful – often they are not stunning in one sense – but you will find by careful observation that everything is congruent ie every element of the culture, processes and behaviours, supports every other element.  I can take you thro this in more detail if it helps

My favourite customer culture in direct sales from personal experience has a couple of points to look for:

• The sales guys talk to the engineers all the time so they have a reality, an edge. They discover arguments to make, what not to sell, who to sell to, how to sell easily. They love the support staff and work with them to help customers
• Everything they say is relevant to the customer – they listen and they think before speaking
• They have a huge pride in who they work with and therefore the company. They respect their leaders for doing common sense things that work.
• They ruthlessly kick out any dumb things, however small, and won’t stand for them
• The sales processes drive sales not paperwork
• Sales feels like helping customers get what they want, because you can have faith it’ll get delivered properly and on time 

My favourite sales culture by story was a telco who instigated a very simple strategy. Its based on the “Find X” slide. Sales went up 35%. You can see how the customer is baked into the very simplicity of it

• Every customer who buys, feels great at the point of purchase, feels great about their purchase and tells all their friends. At that point in time they think we’re brilliant – so how do we keep them at that high emotional point?
• By getting them to buy more
• How can we get them to buy more?
• Simply ask them what they want to buy next, when it would be and how they would like us to get in touch
• Just simply doing what they said – they’re blown away that anyone would do remember let alone keep a promise 

Food for thought. Give me a call or email  if you want to share ideas

culture, customer experience | No Comments

I’m on the phone to an agent whilst I’m online. They are trying to help; I cant access any info about my daughter’s phone bills ( in my name) , only a general explanation of how to view a bill. But that’s just part of the story that’s been very familiar with my daughter’s phone over the past few years.

Story so far…Phoned yesterday because the bill is never the £35 that the tariff is supposed to be since we upgraded.

I was told the systems were down and to call back.

Called tonight and got thro options 1 and 4 to billing (not bad by IVR standards!) where I could hardly hear the agent for the background noise, specifically other colleagues talking. (It was Ventura: I asked and she said she’d had complaints today about noise). She couldn’t explain why my daughter’s bill is always higher than the £35 tariff, although identified extras were on the account.

She put me thro to retentions (after a long wait on hold) where he could explain more ie that a free extra granted 2 phones ago had started to be charged for automatically without request or permission. Not happy. A hole in the trust in any company that does that.  They’ve taken the extras off but he can’t backdate the overcharges so I’m now on hold (a very long hold) waiting for customer services so they can backdate the problem.

He’s come back just now and has sorted it with customer services by getting that colleague to fill in the form. Apparently that 3rd colleague will send a text in a day or two to confirm what they’re doing about it. 

He also found why I can’t see my bill online. It is because although it logged me in and accepted me, it hasn’t actually logged me in (useful !). He’s just reset ( changed) the password and username just in case, as it’s a common problem. Now I have to go back in and change it back to what it was, since that’s what I and my daughter have saved in different places.

Now we’re at the point of where I started. What’s the right tariff for my daughter since she’s using a small fraction of what we pay for, despite the fact the bill is higher than the tariff. He’s been able to take us to a lower tariff that meets the need better. Am I confident her bill’s will come through at the tariffed amount? Am I confident that we’ll not get hooked to another 12 months contract?

My other original reason to call was to get home internet changed over as my other daughter has been very pleased with it. I don’t know how long I’d been on the phone (c 30 minutes I think), but I wasn’t going to bother asking another question. And I’m very much less inclined to move our business account to O2 – something I’d asked my PA to look at since our current provider’s network seems to be crumbling (failed calls and connections, “error in connection” being very common; voicemails coming through 24 hours late). It’s such a shame since O2’s word of mouth from my daughter had got them to the top of my list.

Come on O2, you know you want to give your customers the ability to answer the common questions themselves ( I don’t understand my bill, What’s the best tariff for me? ) and staff, outsourced or not, the ability to answer these common queries in one place and take action. I blog this in the hope that it helps you justify some changes because of the business you just lost.

Customer satisfaction, O2 | No Comments