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Book
Summary/Review: Customer.com
This
article is based on the following book:
Customer.com
by Patricia B. Seybold
Printed
with permission from: 
I recently reviewed the book "Unleashing the Killer
App" by Larry Downes and Chunka Mui. My hope was that
CUSTOMERS.COM would give me further insight into the internet
marketing process. It's author, Patricia B. Seybold, is
a self-proclaimed internet marketing guru and has attracted
quite a following. Overall, I believe the book provides
a good checklist approach to internet-based marketing. It
did not however, cause me to "think" as much as
Unleashing The Killer App did.
INTRODUCTION
To
her credit, Ms. Seybold begins with a review of what works
well in the non-internet world. As with traditional business,
internet marketing success depends on:
1.
Identifying the customer;
2. Addressing their specific needs in an informative and
friendly manner; and
3. Making it easy for them to do business with you.
This
means that the marketing has to be designed from the customer's
perspective and gravitate towards a "1 to 1" relationship.
Perhaps what I found most valuable is her 8-step process
or grid that she used to describe the critical success factors
in creating an internet presence. These steps, which I will
discuss further are as follows:
1.
Target the right customers
2. Own the customers total experience
3. Streamline business processes that impact the customer
4. Provide a 360° view of the customer relationship
5. Let customers help themselves
6. Help customers do their jobs
7. Deliver personalized service
8. Foster community
There's
no doubt the internet will allow us to do a better job of
finding out who our customers are, and what it is they want.
However, this is not as simple as it sounds. In fact, I
know of few companies that actually made this effort. I
have been a customer of Union Bank of California, Quest,
Vons, Lands End, The Wall Street Journal, Pacific Bell,
MasterCard and many other institutions over the years. Never
once have they personally thanked me for being one of their
customers or truly inquired about my needs. Certainly, sometimes
they will send me surveys that are generally far too lengthy
for me to want to spend time on. Since they don't value
my time by offering some form of quid pro-quo, other than
the possibility of "improved future
service," I have very little incentive to respond to
their inquires. How many customer surveys have you ever
filled out - and what changes have you ever seen as a result
of them?
Ms.
Seybold provides an interesting strategy - when building
a customer database, making information in that database
available to the client on your web site and then ask them
to update anything that wasn't correct. By doing so, you
can create community databases. For example, a human resource
executive examining performance appraisal systems may be
able to communicate with another similarly interested human
resource executive, and so on.
Ms.
Seybold states it is those companies who "recognize
customers' increased desire to help themselves and who focus
on making it as easy as possible for the customer to transact
business" that will prosper. Quite frankly, this is
no different than the approach taken by Nordstrom's. When
looking through their clothing racks, a salesperson will
not hound you, but simply let you know that if you need
any assistance they will be near by to help. Then they leave
you alone. I believe most people are like I am - "don't
bug me - just make it easy for me to get what I want."
When
designing a profile of customer needs, a take into consideration
the stream of "business events". What are all
the aspects of the transaction that need to be integrated
and need to run smoothly?
"They want to know everything we know about our products."
- Phil Gibson - International Director for National Semi-Conductor
This
is a valuable insight and one of the best ways to make the
internet work for you. One of the biggest issues surrounding
internet economy is technical support or handholding. By
giving your customers access to all of the information that
you have, you can significantly reduce their reliance on
you. There will of course be a sliding scale depending on
that person's knowledge. For example, I have very little
interest in the technical support specifications of the
Dell computer I am using. So they can post information all
day long and I won't read it. I just tell Dell my needs
and ask them to figure it out from there.
Similarly,
"hotlines" which are becoming very popular for
legal compliance and other concerns, should take advantage
of this thinking. They should supply customers with the
same database that their analysts use. For example, an experienced
human resource officer may only need access to a good legal
database in order to answer a relatively simple question.
Conversely, the CEO of an internet startup, with little
or no background in this area, may not want to spend time
on the learning curve necessary to use the database but
rather just call you up instead.
FOCUS ON THE 80/20 OF YOUR CUSTOMERS
There
is nothing new about this concept. Most of us have identified
our A, B, and C list customers. The idea is to eliminate
the C-List customers and get more of the A-List type. Ms.
Seybold points out that the internet will allow us to do
a better job of analyzing the true costs and benefits of
customer retention. As a corollary to this, we should make
an effort to maintain and actively monitor key information
about customer defections. The insights that we gain will
not only reduce defections, but increase customer loyalty.
TARGET THE RIGHT CUSTOMERS
"Never
send customers offers or reminders that they haven't asked
for."
and…
"Don't do anything that might violate their trust."
I
think these are perhaps the greatest challenges for internet
marketing. How do people know if they want something if
they don't know it exists? How do you capture their attention
in the first place, second place and the third place? I
don't know about you but I really dislike unsolicited e-mails,
faxes, telephone calls, mail, etc. I simply don't have time
for them. The newsletters, etc. that I do subscribe to over
the internet I have learned about from trusted sources.
That is one reason why the power of referral is so great
on the internet. What trusted sources can you work with
to help find and market to your customers? For me the obvious
answers are attorneys, insurance companies, risk managers,
professional publications, business owners and executives.
Perhaps the best way to drive a potential customer to your
web site is by publishing a valuable article in a professional
publication. Another thought - when you find somebody that
does give you referrals, reward them lavishly!
Throughout
most of the book, Ms. Seybold goes through a series of case
studies with various corporations explaining what succeeded
and what failed and what she would do to further improve
the situation. She uses her grid of the 8 critical success
factors (CSFs) as her approach. My one problem with this
approach is that most of her examples and perhaps clients,
are Fortune 500 type companies. I have to ask to what degree
their strategies and tools translate for the entrepreneur
running a startup, a mid-size growth firm, or even a home-based
business? It is my belief system that the smaller the entity,
the greater chance they have at building a 1 to 1 customer
relationship. Smaller companies can do a better job of focusing
on niche markets which tend to generate more loyal customers.
For example, I read in The Standard (thestandard.com), in
an article regarding internet pornography, that the sites
with the most loyal customers are those dealing with particular
fetishes. While this may not be your personal cup of tea,
it points out that the more somebody accommodates one of
our special interests, the longer we are going to want to
keep them around.
Ms.
Seybold points out that one of the greatest challenges for
larger corporations is integrating their various customer
databases. For example, a sales office in New York may have
a different customer profile than one in Los Angeles for
the same customer. This is true for both the business-to-consumer
and business-to-business markets. One of the greatest advantages
of the internet economy is our ability to link up all of
these databases into one "open architecture."
As stated earlier, these national or global profiles can
be changed or upgraded by the customer or client themselves.
One
suggestion that I thought was interesting was to give customers
access to their entire transaction history. Imagine a law
firm allowing its client to download its account information
for the past three years. That alone may provide a competitive
advantage for a law firm. Federal Express of course allows
the client to do a very good job of knowing everything that
Federal Express knows about the shipping of your package.
UPS and other shippers were quick to respond by offering
similar systems. What information do you have at your company
that your customers or clients could and should have access
to? What are the most frequently asked questions of your
sales team, technical support department or even receptionist?
Where do they go to get those answers?
"Today's customers value their time above all."
Or,
as I have heard recently, we are "drowning in a sea
of information - thirsting for knowledge." Ms. Seybold
points out how the direct relationship with the customer
has enabled Dell computers to become a $13.6 billion company
in 12 years. The nature of their relationship is such that
despite its wild success it has remained a very lean organization.
With 17,800 employees, Dell's revenues per employee are
a whopping $764,045! Michael Dell stated in a 1998 Harvard
Business Review interview "you actually have to get
a relationship with the customer. And that creates valuable
information, which, in turn, allows us to leverage our relationships
with both suppliers and customers. Couple that information
with technology, and you have infrastructure to revolutionize
the fundamental business models of major global corporations."
This is the power of vertical integration. I just bought
over $3,000 worth of Dell computer equipment and found the
experience to be very rewarding. Everything was delivered
as promised and earlier than scheduled. All three of my
phone calls were responded to as well as could be.
While
I am on the subject - let me give you an example of just
the opposite. I recently called Pacific Bell and asked them
to register my telephone number under both personal and
business listings. They explained to me that they could
not do both. I had to choose one or the other. That is an
insane approach in a day and time when more and more people
"are their work." Their fastest growing client
base has to be the entrepreneurial and home based business
owner - many of whom draw no distinction between their personal
and work lives. This is not an issue about having technology
at their figure tips or a strong internet presence. It's
about being able to deliver to customers what it is they
want, and how it is they want it - now. It seems as if yesterday's
monopolies are today's worst companies in terms of customer
relations.
"Design
your web sites so that customers can bring portions of it
into their own intranets, integrated into their own internal
processes, and tailor it for their own employees to use."
"Let
the customer explicitly tell you what kind of interaction
he's about to perform, and make it really easy for him to
do so."
"I
like to receive e-mail summarized in content of the top
three items in each of my personal folders each day."
These three quotes taken in context, reveal that one of
the greatest challenges we will face is how to get deeper
into our customers life. I like the idea of sending summarized
information that can then be expanded. I particularly like
this approach when receiving newsletters or logging on "front-pages".
How can you create a personalized front-page for your client
that gives them summarized information of the three most
important things on their mind everyday?
"Customers
will pay for information services on the web as long as
they get what they are paying for: a branded, consistent,
high-quality set of information, judgment, insights, and
analysis."
Ms.
Seybold explains that one way to build trust is by ridiculous
commitment to customer service. This means that customer's
e-mails, voicemails, etc. should be responded to within
24 hours. If you cannot, you should let them know when you
will respond to it. This is a particularly challenging issue
for today's leaner organization. I predict handsome rewards
will go to companies that develop third-party technical
support systems.
Ms.
Seybold suggests that you tap into a very important reality
of internet culture. "People come to the web not just
to find things, but to show off, to strut their stuff, and
to interact with other interesting and bright people."
How can you allow your customers to show off? (Maybe by
putting pictures of them on your web site!)
Ms.
Seybold suggests building community on your web site. One
way to do this is by creating "chat rooms". Many
companies find that well organized chat rooms reduce the
number of support calls, etc. Members help each other solve
their problems, so that you don't have to.
CONCLUSION
Quite
frankly, I was somewhat disappointed by the book. Having
already read a great deal about internet marketing, I gained
no real new insights. The book seems to follow a formula
I have seen repeated with greater frequency.
1.
Define yourself as a guru,
2. Analyze a whole bunch of work done by some very good
people at other companies,
3. Synthesize a success stories around a simple theme, and
4. Convince the reader that it would be in their best interest
to hire your firm or agency.
It's
not that I am knocking this book or the others of its kind,
they certainly have their place. Heck, I write books too.
My gripe is that they are thin on any real insight. They
tend to be more of a reporting function. You will note that
I had the same complaint in my review of Working with Emotional
Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. Quite the opposite was true
when it came to Unleashing the Killer App by Downes and
Mui.
While
we are on the subject of internet marketing let me share
with you a couple of the insights that I have been able
to glean from much of the other material I have reviewed.
The following list comes in no specific order:
1.
Get permission to capture the visitor's name. This is certainly
tricky in light of the statistic that 50% of people who
are asked to provide information about themselves pass and
25% of them who do purposely provide erroneous information.
Quite frankly this may be a great weeding out process. Let
them know that they can trust you with their information
and you will not redistribute it without their permission.
Make sure to offer them something of value for leaving their
name (i.e. newsletter, etc.). Set up an auto-responder that
sends a message thanking them for visiting your web site.
2.
Make it easy for the user to bookmark your web site and
in fact remind them to do so.
3.
Suggest that they refer your web site to someone they know
and make it easy for them to do so.
4.
Always ask, what is the next logical move? Is it to obtain
more information? Make a purchase? Make a second purchase,
etc.? Make navigating your web site easy to do. Do not limit
the user's ability to move backwards or forwards. Let them
know where they are at all times.
5.
If you are going to use testimonials about your products
or services don't limit them to a single page. Scatter them
throughout your web site.
6.
Find out what search words users put into which search engine
to find your web site.
7.
One of the web's better thinkers about web design can be
found at www.nathan.com/thoughts - I particularly like his
"recipe for a successful web site".
8.
I also suggest you visit the web site of my friend Ed Taylor
www.internetmarketinggroup.com who has a great deal of information
regarding internet marketing that he shares with CEOs across
the country.
9.
As with any other marketing, think in terms of the lifetime
value of the customer. What irresistible offer can you make
them to start a relationship with you that will last for
years?
10.
When people come to your web site make sure that they can
do something more than just read. Invite them to interact.
Give them special reports, quizzes, free samples and other
goodies. Let them build our web site for you.
11.
Some graphics take a long time and mean nothing. Give them
option to go graphic-less.
12.
Check out how your web site downloads and prints out of
10 different computers. How fast does it move at 28.8, 56,
DSL and cable? What does it look like on a small monitor
vs. large monitor? How do reports, product, service descriptions,
and other data print out on a wide range of printers. (When
is somebody going to start a business that will answer all
of these questions for me?).
(c)
Copyright Donald A. Phin
http://www.donphin.com
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