Know Your Customers

It's true, the best technology is being built for consumers.   Like other in the tech world I constantly talk about the consumerism of IT.   All well and good, but what does this mean for the enterprise.

If you are serving large numbers of end user citizens or consumers you need to be able to provide them with a wonderful experience.  You have to know your customers and treat everyone of them as an individual with their own needs, wants and desires.  

There is lots of talk now about leveraging 'multi-channel' communications to improve 'customer experience'.  We are also hearing businesses talk about 'channel shift'.  What is channel shift?

Channel shift is when, as a business or government department, we make a conscious decision to shift our communications away from one channel and onto another.  They might do this for any number of reasons, but they can normally be distilled down to two fundamentals:

1. Improve customer service, and/or
2. Reduce cost of service delivery

But channel shift can also be customer driven.  Your customers just stop calling or interacting because you are not on the same channel as them.

One of the key examples of channel shift is the move from telephony to IVR (interactive voice response - you know, "Press 1 for...") to self service via the web.  I don't call my pay TV provider now, not until I have looked at their website.  And banking... what percentage of interactions do you have with your bank via the branch, telephone or Internet?  I imagine most of us step into the bank for less than 5% of our interactions.

Do you know your customers?

For a long time having a web page has no longer been enough.  Having a good web page is not enough.  Having a brilliant website is considered table stakes.  These days you need to also be in social channels, interactive TV channels, and possibly all the mainstream media channels to communicate effectively with your customers.  And in this day of consumer pull of content through services like Internet movies and music, not to mention TV on demand, they need to be able to transact with you any time from anywhere in anyway they please.

Using technology channels is fast, effective, low cost per transaction and, done well, customer intimate.

Here are some great thoughts to get you started and this promotional video from SalesForce.com is also a useful insight into the thinking of customers.

But the best thinking I have heard on customer intimacy was from the former head of marketing at Harley Davidson.  I heard Ken Schmidt speak at a conference in 2011 - a powerful presentation.  In this short clip he talks about customer intimacy in a language we can all understand.  I hope you enjoy it.

Cheers!