{"id":31734,"date":"2018-05-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hyken.com\/guest-blog-5-keys-to-building-sustainable-customer-relationships\/"},"modified":"2024-01-22T09:53:29","modified_gmt":"2024-01-22T09:53:29","slug":"guest-blog-5-keys-building-sustainable-customer-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hyken.com\/customer-relationships\/guest-blog-5-keys-building-sustainable-customer-relationships\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Blog: 5 Keys to Building Sustainable Customer Relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"<em>This week we feature an article by Matt Nolan who shares\u00a0five keys to building more compelling, sustainable customer relationships. &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/hyken.com\/meet-shep\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Shep Hyken<\/a><\/em><!--more-->\r\n\r\nCustomer retention used to be considered just a \u201cservice problem.\u201d That was before the service world went digital, and the old ways of doing business became almost shameful, which happened practically overnight.\r\n\r\nWe all know that we get no sympathy from customers, and one bad experience can ruin a relationship, so waiting for problems to happen <em>before<\/em> we fix them isn\u2019t viable. We have to head issues off before they go nuclear.\r\n\r\nService has become an always-on, everywhere requirement \u2013 in the customer\u2019s eyes, great experiences <em>have<\/em> to be connected and fluid. Our engagements must shift seamlessly between selling, serving, and retaining \u2013 adapting based on the customer context. We need intelligence that we can apply wherever the customer is, to keep their experiences from becoming disjointed and awkward.\r\n\r\nHere are five keys to building more compelling, sustainable relationships \u2013 concepts that help us avoid creating unwanted tension and ensure both parties receive value from each exchange:\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<h4><strong>Get out in front, before things get bad<\/strong><\/h4>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\nModeling churn risk isn\u2019t optional &#8211; it\u2019s become an absolute requirement. When a customer is in pain or trending towards churn, you need to know so you can proactively address it. If you wait, it\u2019s usually too late. Retention-focused companies are constantly monitoring churn risk with propensity models, then triggering service or retention outreach automatically, when it\u2019s needed, with timely solutions, recommendations, offers, and personalized incentives. This not only saves relationships, it reduces call-center FTE costs, churn rates, and retention discounts, while increasing satisfaction and helping earn the right to cross-sell later on.\r\n<ol start=\"2\">\r\n \t<li>\r\n<h4><strong>Focus on the context &#8211; not the function<\/strong><\/h4>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\nMarketing has always been about pushing products, and service has been about solving problems, but that\u2019s an outdated outlook. Today, we have to approach things from a customer perspective. We can only create an excellent experience when we understand what\u2019s going on with each specific individual \u2013 their context &#8211; and align our approach.\r\n\r\nContext-savvy companies often use a next-best action approach to engagement \u2013 which rapidly shifts between selling, serving, retaining, collecting, negotiating, etc., based on what best serves the relationship. For example, if a customer is angry, next-best action ensures you don\u2019t try to sell them something on <em>any<\/em> channel \u2013 they likely won\u2019t respond, and you\u2019ll just seem tone-deaf. But when they\u2019re in the market for a new product, next-best action guarantees you don\u2019t miss a great chance to upsell just because the customer is interacting in a traditional service channel, like the call center. It\u2019s a constant balancing act, wherever and whenever the customer touches your brand.\r\n<ol start=\"3\">\r\n \t<li>\r\n<h4><strong>Select the next-best action for the person, and moment<\/strong><\/h4>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\nPeople tend to understand next-best action at a high level, but not how it works behind the scenes. What happens is an organization builds strategies to control how they interact with customers in certain situations, like retention, sales, service, risk, etc. Each strategy has options you could use in those situations, like when it\u2019s time to sell, there may be 50 offers you could present to a customer. Or when a customer is at risk of churn, there might be 25 types of incentives you might use to keep them from leaving.\r\n\r\nWhen the time comes to interact with that person, each potential option gets scored for propensity (p) and value (v). For propensity, you use predictive models to calculate how <em>likely<\/em> a customer is to accept what you present. For value, you calculate how much that action is <em>worth<\/em> for your company, financially. After those are factored together (p*v), the highest \u201cscore\u201d wins \u2013 that\u2019s what\u2019s best for both parties, and what you present to the customer. That\u2019s your next-best action.\r\n<ol start=\"4\">\r\n \t<li>\r\n<h4><strong>Respect their preferences &#8211; and don\u2019t clutter your channels<\/strong><\/h4>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\nCustomers obviously have preferences and are more likely to do things in certain channels, and those channels cost different amounts to support. We need to respect and embrace that if we want to provide a great experience while still optimizing profit margins. Many organizations will use multiple propensity models for each action (one for each combination of offer and channel) to account for individual preferences. They also leverage value models that factor in channel constraints, like cost-to-serve.\r\n\r\nIf a customer is most likely to accept an offer via direct mail, but not when it\u2019s presented by email, call center, or a website, that\u2019s figured into the next-best action. They\u2019ll only see that offer or action presented in channels where it\u2019s relevant so it won\u2019t clutter their experience when it isn\u2019t.\r\n<ol start=\"5\">\r\n \t<li>\r\n<h4><strong>One channel at a time<\/strong><\/h4>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\nCompanies often try to bite off more than they can chew and make sweeping changes all at once, which is often a recipe for disaster. Instead, I\u2019d recommend building in proactive, personalized next-best actions one channel or use-case at a time. This allows you to iterate through problems at a smaller scale, build momentum, and earn the right to expand your approach by showcasing results.\r\n\r\nFor more information on how organizations are re-shaping their approach to customer engagement, I\u2019d recommend reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pega.com\/reinventing-retention\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Retention Re-Invented<\/a> \u2013 which explains why retention and service matter more than ever and breaks down these five keys in detail.\r\n\r\n<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/nolanmatthew\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Matthew Nolan<\/a>\u00a0is a marketing director at Pegasystems, enabling the vision and go-to-market strategy for Pega\u2019s marketing and advertising technology portfolio.<\/em>\r\n\r\n<em>For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.customerserviceblog.com\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">customerserviceblog.com<\/a>.<\/em>\r\n<p class=\"article-headline ng-binding\"><em>Read Shep\u2019s latest Forbes Articles:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/shephyken\/2018\/05\/24\/change-in-amazons-liberal-return-policy-is-good-for-customers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Change In Amazon&#8217;s Liberal Return Policy Is Good For Customers<\/a><\/em><\/p>\r\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/form\/service-cloud\/customer-service-conversations.jsp?d=7010M000000uPA0QAM&amp;nc=7010M000000uPA5QAM&amp;eid=US_TheShepardLetter&amp;dclid=CO-e6q3tn9sCFdZGXgodGewBmQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/hyken.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/how-to-make-customer-service-conversations-more-intelligent.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1115\" height=\"88\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week we feature an article by Matt Nolan who shares\u00a0five keys to building more compelling, sustainable customer relationships. &#8211; Shep Hyken<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6798,6800],"tags":[4890,4935,6044],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.5 (Yoast SEO v22.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Guest Blog: 5 Keys to Building Sustainable Customer Relationships - Shep Hyken | Customer Service Expert<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hyken.com\/customer-relationships\/guest-blog-5-keys-building-sustainable-customer-relationships\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Guest Blog: 5 Keys to Building Sustainable Customer Relationships - Shep Hyken | Customer Service Expert\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This week we feature an article by Matt Nolan who shares\u00a0five keys to building more compelling, sustainable customer relationships. &#8211; 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