A customer love affair isn’t an invitation to engage in dubious behavior. I trust I didn’t get your hopes up….
Rather, when customers fall in love with you they become more engaged and collaborative. Then, that engagement influences customer loyalty and drives customer retention. Especially in rigorous industrial Internet of Things business environments.
Trust me, identifying the key components that create a customer love affair is not all about reactive client service. However, incorporating these elements into pre- and post-sale customer lifecycle management strategy focuses you on customer success for customer retention.
Within competitive industrial Internet of Things business environments, the goal is to become embedded in your client’s organization. That environment is where technical colleagues engage with non-technical colleagues, both on the vendor and the customer side of the table.
If that scenario does not provide a fertile proofing ground for a customer love affair, what does? Let’s explore.
First, a customer love affair starts when you determine whether you are in love with your own organization.
How easy is it to answer that loaded question?
Many of us articulate our organization’s mission and vision statements and value propositions. However, how passionate, sincere and committed are we to the words we speak?
When acquiring, engaging and retaining customers, we continuously are under their microscope. As a result, our actions may speak louder than our words. In addition, our actions may contradict our words.
When we work for organizations that we do not have a vested belief in, our customers find it difficult to fall in love with our organization and us, as well.
On the other hand, when we are in love with our employer, we continuously showcase our own commitment, engagement and productivity to customers. That interface drives customer engagement and fuels customer acquisition.
Next, the customer love affair grows when your colleagues also are in love with your organization.
How well does your organization treat its internal customers, its own employees and your colleagues? Transitioning the customer from pre-sale to post-sale processes represents one of the most vulnerable areas influencing customer engagement, success and retention.
The pre-sale and customer acquisition processes tend to involve one set of business professionals. However, the care and feeding of that new customer, post-sale, often falls into the domain of a completely different set of business professionals.
Do these post-sale colleagues have a vested belief in, or commitment to, the organization they work for? If not, how can we expect our customers to remain actively engaged in sustaining their love for us?
When these professionals also are in love with their employer, everyone continues to showcase the values, ethics and professional commitment to customer success for customer retention. That interface is where customers experience how well your organization walks the post-sale walk.
Finally, at the end of the day, a customer love affair can never be one-sided, can it?
Consider the complexity of placing solutions within smart industrial and manufacturing environments. Return on investment (ROI) is achieved over time. To measure ROI, clients benefit from placing better-and-better customer experience and solutions via software, product and service upgrades over time.
When customer retention strategy involves embedding teams in your client’s organization, a customer love affair truly is a long-term, two-way street. It’s an industrial marriage, for better and for worse.
Ponder how successfully your organization keeps its fingers on the pulse of customers throughout that lifecycle. Sustaining the quality and nature of this love affair changes over time.
Inevitably, clients either feel comfortable or uncomfortable continuing to do business with you and your internal team of colleagues. The real test of an enduring customer love affair measures customer success in spite of workforce and software churn. Over the lifecycle of capital equipment in industrial IoT environments, those variables exert the greatest impact customer retention.
Does your industrial Internet of Things (IoT) customer acquisition process include customer retention strategy? Isn’t it time to get everyone involved in preserving the customer love affair over time? Learn how to leverage customer success for customer retention.
Babette Ten Haken writes, speaks, coaches and consults about collaborative value creation for customer retention. She humanizes the Voice of the industrial Internet of Things by creating customer retention strategies leveraging workforce collaboration. Contact her to discuss how she can bring these programs to life for your organization.
Image author: gitusik. Image source: Fotolia
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