Customer contact; how do you do it?
Submitted by FF
Dear Jeff,
after a discussion with a colleague, he mentioned to me that your readers might be interested in this Customer Contact Initiative that I use to engage our customers at the dealership.
Basically what I do is contact customers (existing buyers/aftersales or serious prospects) and get in one or two of them each month for a get-together on a one-to-one basis. In practice it’s like a face-to-face in-depth market research interview, but I treat it like an informal chat over some refreshments.
I ask them not only about their experience and view of us, but also general questions on how they live their lives; what they enjoy doing, what worries them, where they go on holiday, where they shop, that sort of thing. It’s different every time because the conversation can appear go in any direction, but from my perspective I’m trying to understand their attitudes and motivations, what interests them, what problems I might be able to help solve.
As well as being a relationship builder I find it very useful for keeping tabs on the local market and keeping in touch with changing customer needs.
I hope you find the info interesting and I welcome any feedback, improvement, advice from you or any of your readers.
I look forward to reading your comments.
Best regards,
FF
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A great article, it is always good to hear the truth from your customers which in turn will create the type of environment they want.Very professional and a good habit to have in any business.
FF hi and well done for the initiative something I recommend to my clients to do. You can always judge how serious a business is about its customers by the amount of time management dedicates to listening to customers in the way you describe.
When you look at your diary be it through Outlook, your nifty PDA or a real hard copy version, what does it say about how much time you spend focusing on your customers?
If you really want to check how customer focused you are, take at look at your diary as it’s a pretty good measure of how serious you are about focusing on your customers. I’ve come across so many managers that say they work for a customer focused organisation and when I ask them how much time they have spent with customers or working on customer issues they give very vague responses.
So for anyone reading these posts, how much time do you spend with your customers? After all you are your diary.
Regards,
Mark