Part I

As discussed in Part I of this article, companies need to support how customers buy. In Part II, we will discuss the customer buying cycle and how to make it customer-centered.

Customer at the Center

How often do you hear this plea from pundits and consultants? If you had a quarter for every time someone recommended you put the customer at the center, you wouldn’t need a third round of venture funding.

Let’s rephrase it then. “All value travels from your customer to you through processes, many of which you can control directly [e.g., phone support], some of which you can influence positively [e.g., rectifying poor service], and a few of which you have no control over [post-relationship word-of-mouth]. So engineer the processes you can control so their value doesn’t leak out on the floor.” Not as elegant as, “Put the customer at the center of your firm.” But it puts the focus on operationalizing your customer centricity, and tells you what’s at stake if you don’t.

If your sales people try to sell something to someone when they don’t want it, are you capturing full customer value? No. You’re irritating the customer, which destroys or tarnishes your hard-earned brand equity. You’ve let value leak onto the e-showroom floor.

So, what do you do? Engineer your customer-facing processes to support how they buy, when they buy, and what they buy. If your customers actually want to buy from you by faxing over a purchase order, why force them to call you up? Or vice versa? And let’s not get started with e-commerce “solutions” — it’s no wonder that shopping carts are where the vast majority of potential transactions die. (Check with your webmaster on abandoned purchase rates.)

The reason is simple: Shopping carts fail to support how people want to buy.

Let me give you a couple of examples. I’ve been on shopping carts that won’t tell me the price of what I’m buying until after I’ve signed in, or filled out a form of some kind. That’s terrible. I want to check prices before I sign on anyone’s dotted line, or into anyone’s web form. I’ve also been to shopping carts (including T-Mobile’s at my local Starbucks) that make the form so long and filled with optional steps that it’s hard to figure out what I’m supposed to do next. I shouldn’t have to practice using the shopping cart before I grok their flow.

Model the buying cycle for each type of customer you’ve got, and make sure each step in the cycle, from creating a short list to exploring options and from interacting to transacting, is as customer-centered as possible.

The buying cycle, as I define it, generally begins with these steps:

1. The prospect starts to get a sense that he or she has a need. That need may be well or poorly defined and it may be associated to a weak or strong degree with an existing class of solutions (products or services).
2. The prospect starts to explore options. If your website, incoming call center or storefront would be places where such pre-purchase exploration is done, you’d be wise to make this an easy interaction. Remember, you’re helping them to buy, you’re not trying to sell to the prospect. He or she is simply not ready.
3. Brands, being short cuts that help consumers quickly assess quality, make step 2 easy for many prospects. If you’re not a big brand, you’ve got to try harder. (Hence Avis’ tag line.) But rest assured, the buying cycle will include creating a short list, which is step 3.
4. Often at this point, the process of creating a short list has led the prospect to better understand their requirements. If these are not set in stone, you have a chance to differentiate yourself — even to change the conversation so that short-listed companies get dropped from the list. You do this by assisting a deeper exploration and the nuanced “internal negotiations” that your prospects may go through. If an IT person is making up a short list, she may want to run the purchase by a colleague. She may need to get it approved by the CFO. And it better have a strategic value that the CEO can grok. How do you support this process? Good question. And it’s one you must answer.

I’d be giving away too much if I told you how the rest of the buying cycle goes — but you get the idea.

As an important spin on the buying cycle, it also is a helpful model for the “buy-in” cycle. If you have an idea you want to promote, or a corporate value, or a non-profit grassroots campaign, the buying cycle works the same. If you support it, your markets will be able to create more value for you.

Keep in mind that different kinds of customers may have different buying cycles, different content needs, different process needs, and so on. All of these play a part in your modeling of the “customer experience”.

Suppose that you model one customer experience with these steps:

Metric Type	Touch Point
Process x Channel	Assistance in Shortlisting (Web site content, direct mail)
Process x Channel	Assistance in Selecting (Signage, Website Content, Direct Mail)
Benchmark x Channel	Sufficient Options for Entry/First Encounter
Milestone	Entry/First Encounter
Benchmark x Channel	Sufficient options for exploring Product Service and Benefit offerings
Process x Channel	Explore Product Service and Benefit offerings
Benchmark x Channel	Speed to Finding What Needed
Benchmark x Channel	Sufficient Options for Finding Help
Process x Channel	Finding Help
Benchmark x Channel	Sufficient Options for Receiving Help
Milestone	Receiving Help
Process x Channel	Purchase Support
Process x Channel	Finding and Receiving Help During Purchase
Benchmark (80% satisfaction or less)	Process Satisfaction
Benchmark (>80% satisfaction)	Product Delight
Benchmark x Channel	Sufficient Options for Providing Feedback/Collaborating on Improvements
Benchmark	Likely to Recommend
Benchmark	Likely to Return
Benchmark	Likely to Keep as Primary Provider

Each of these portions of the customer experience cycle can be measured using customer surveys and interviews. If you took two series of measurements, where the second series is performed after you have initiated process improvements, you might be able to graph the improvements like this:

One dimension not captured in this simplified example: when you offer customers a choice at a given step, simply offering that choice positively influences satisfaction derived from future steps. Bank Technology News (BTN) featured an article in March in which e*trade’s Paul Vienick observed, “It all boils down to customer choice; they want the method that they want to communicate with us.” The hypothesis that choice increases value is an easily testable model for most channels. You can vary your IVR menu or your web site menu, either in controlled tests or in actual production, then determine which choice sets (smaller, larger, and in what order) provide the most satisfaction.

When you have multiple ways of supporting each step in the buying cycle, you give your prospects choice and opportunity. They get to pick how they interact with you to fit their needs.

If you have any doubt about your customer facing processes, call a quick meeting in a room with a white board, and ask your staff to describe key processes intended for prospects and customers. Then ask: Are we providing them with the right choices? The right information? An opportunity for feedback? The right channels? Are we letting them forward relevant information to other people involved in a buying decision? Are we measuring the experience?

Offering choice is just the beginning. You also have to integrate the experience as well as the data you capture and deliver across your channels. Watchfire GomezPro, a firm that ranks banking websites, has noted that poor channel and data integration can damage a bank’s brand equity, which naturally is built on trust. “The institutions on Watchfire GomezPro's ranking-either through interviews or canned statements-all preach consistency and robust integration between electronic and brick-and-mortar channels, even for the simplest transactions,” according to the BTN article.

Given that trust is critical in all businesses, the lesson for your firm is as strong: Create positive experiences across channels that customers choose, and make sure the experiences show consistent, relevant quality.

Company: pkward.com