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Customer Learning: Realize ROI Before You Ask the First Question

In your experience, how many marketing investments have generated a direct benefit at the very beginning of the process? After some consideration, most would say none. It takes time to create awareness, drive interest, and eventually convert. All campaigns take time to derive a measurable result, right?

Well, as an agency principal who has developed and executed dozens of customer learning initiatives, I can tell you that the benefit to our customers is in fact immediate. Consider the dynamic. When you ask your customers to voluntarily participate in a process because you are working on the development of your business, you might ask yourself, why should my customers care about our business development efforts? The answer is reflected in an old adage. It’s not what you’re asking, it’s how you ask!

Prequalifying a customer for a learning initiative requires a script, or at least primary talking points about why. When you share with them that they were selected because they are one of the most important customers to your business, the frame begins to change. It may sound something like this: “We are going through a strategic development process to improve our operations and the services we deliver. We greatly value you and the work you provide. We believe the insights you could share will help us preserve what’s working best while helping us improve things that could be better. We know your time is valuable, so we’ve hired a professional agency who works very efficiently. The entire inquiry only requires 5 to 10 minutes of your time. Would you please help us become an even better partner?”

Our experience with this has shown a level of empowerment and appreciation from our client’s most important customers. It’s a wonderful thing to be included in something where your experiences and opinions matter. Our clients have seen 90% or more of their customers agreeing to participate when asked using the sample approach above. By the way, using a third party to interview customers is important. Customers are far more likely to be honest if they have the chance to share their experiences indirectly, even though they know that their vendor will get the feedback. Professional interviewers can also dig a little deeper to expand on responses and yield more nuanced information. It is often in this data that truly unique points of differentiation exist.

 Our clients have reported that their customers experience a high level of enjoyment from the interview process. Many of our clients have reported an uptick in new Requests for Proposals after the interviews. This is only one benefit of many from this investment, but clearly demonstrates that Customer Learning exercises do in fact generate immediate opportunities.

 Small businesses can learn a multitude of information from their customers. Time should be taken to formalize primary learning initiatives that will support the growth objectives in their business plan. A custom inquiry should be created that will generate responses that reinforce or illustrate what is most valued by current customers while identifying required areas for improvement. Perhaps most valuable is the opportunity to reposition or realign based on this learning. This will help with the retention of good customers while attracting new one who value the same qualities.  

 Creative Counsel offers a no obligation call to discuss this with companies who are interested in the topic or ones who have defined growth objectives and want to work with an agency who knows how to achieve them. Call Chris Casarona at Creative Counsel, Inc., 609-575-1415. Thank you for reading my content. I hope you found areas of value that you can apply to your company’s marketing – Matter More.

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