NETTING IT OUT

Why Is This Important to Customers? Customers need direct access to all the information you have about them in order to complete their scenarios and get things done.

Why Is This Important to Your Company? If you provide an environment that lets customers take advantage of the information you have about them to get things done, they are more likely to place increased value on their relationships with you.

Your Next Steps. Understand your customers’ primary scenarios in doing business with you, and find ways to provide them with actionable information that is meaningful to them.

Disney Provides a Travel Guide to Help Manage the End -to-End Event

© 2010 Patricia Seybold Group

Illustration 1. Disney’s travel guide provides 1) a map of the steps in the planning process, including an indication of what step you are on, 2) easy navigation to the former and next step, 3) quick tips to help you complete the guide, and 4) more detailed tips that will further assist you.

WHO NEEDS A 360-DEGREE VIEW? YOUR CUSTOMERS!

Most companies are still struggling to provide a comprehensive picture of each customer to everyone within their organization. Who is this person? How long have they been a customer? Which of our products and services have they used? When did they last have a problem? How well did we resolve it? What do they care about the most? What will they need or want next?

Even if your firm has done a good job of pulling all this information together across product lines and departments, do your customers have access to it?

Having a complete picture of your customer relationship isn’t enough unless you also provide this picture to the customer. Customers own both their relationships with you and their information. They have the right to access the information you have about them.

In fact, the best way to implement a system that provides a 360-degree view of customers’ relationships is to start by providing customers with a 360-degree view of their relationships with your company (and with relevant partners and stakeholders). Once customers have access to all the information they need about the services they are receiving from your organization, then your organization will also have that information. If you want good customer knowledge, you should gather, report, and maintain the information that customers care about, starting from the outside in.

If you make it easy for customers to access, update, organize, and enhance the information you have about them, you are primed to keep customers happy long term. If you provide an environment that lets customers take advantage of the information you have about them to get things done, they are more likely to think of you as their primary provider, and place increased value on their relationships with you.

Keeping track of customers’ contexts is not as simple as letting customers edit their profiles and see their order histories. Depending on what your customers are trying to achieve—their scenarios—providing a 360-degree view of the relationship may include consolidating information you never thought of as part of the customers’ relationships with you in ways you might not have considered.

Start with Three Fundamental Rules

To provide a complete 360-degree view of your customers’ relationship with you, you’ll want to ...