Putting the customer back in focus

For decades, organisations have hailed building a relationship with the customer as the holy grail in the land of satisfied customers.

It was wrong then and it is wrong now. 

Customers don’t give two hoots for building a supplier relationship.

Well, maybe just one small hoot. A ‘mini-relationship’, a bit like writing down someone’s phone number in a night club and shouting ‘I’ll call you’.  So in case they need something or want to place an order, they know where to turn.

But a relationship? Nah. Customers are only really interested in buying great products and services they need (or think they need) at the best quality/value/price combination they can.

Let me give you an example. You could spend 2 years building on the relationship with your customer, sending postcards, taking  them to lunch and such, but if the competition consistently outperforms you, your customer will ‘break up with you’ sooner or later, probably trying to let you down easy by stating the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ line. Your customer will have found a better deal which was simply impossible to resist .

Ever heard the saying: “you are only as good as  your most recent performance”? It’s very true here. The relationship may only buy you some extra time, that’s all.  It will never compensate you in any way for not delivering on your business promise with a sustained competitive advantage.

Now don’t get me wrong. Demonstrating complete control over your ongoing business with your customer is still a must. You will still have to maintain a state of the art 360 degree customer perspective.

But that’s not relationship management. That’s just good business and factual housekeeping.

In addition, Old school CRM used to believe that the supplier ‘owns’ the relationship.  New school CRM understands that instead, it’s the customer who owns the relationship, and that relationship is based on facts and sustainable competitive advantage.

The customer is calling the shots.

And unless your customer has too much time and/or money, time will be better spent updating on market movements to achieve the ultimate commercial deal.

Creating exactly that, the ’ultimate commercial deal’ is what businesses should be spending time on instead.

Continue to deliver this to your customer , ahead of the competition, combined with a complete 360 degree overview of your customer’s interactions and ongoing business, and you can let the facts speak for themselves.

In such reassuring conditions, you will be able to ‘relationskip’  instead.