Comments

...and like any other exceptional conversation, it is built on the promise of a thrilling outcome!

Jay, from Bangalore

Posted by Jayakumar Hariharan at November 2, 2007 6:40 AM

Steve - I would say a customer relationship is an emotional connection.

I have written something about this today called 'Customers decide if you live or die' on my own Blog http://www.simplicityitk.blogspot.com/

Posted by Trevor Gay at November 2, 2007 7:53 AM

An ongoing conversation that identifies and responds to the needs of the customer. No identification; no response: no ongoing.

Posted by Ed Di Gangi at November 2, 2007 8:50 AM

... implemented as a sequence of touchpoints meandering between off- and online/ internal and external/ coincidence and marketing, such as (from the customer's perspective):

- A friend you meet in the gym wearing his new iPod shuffle
- A hardware review you find Web 2.0-like via Google and digg.com on ars technica that same evening
- A promenade to Apple Store, Bellevue Square or a click into Apple Store, Switzerland
- A friendly sales clerk or a usable shopping cart/ check out procedure
- Instantly adding (in both cases) a Griffin Tempo Sport Armband as you consider sky-diving as an alternative to the gym starting next summer
- A thank you email with a support link
- Yourself, posting the question "How can I split my iTunes library across a Windows Vista laptop and an external harddisk?" in Apple Discussions
- With an explanation from an Apple support specialist (in the forum and per email notification) an hour later
- A visit of the Jonathan Ive exhibit in London during a holiday whetting your appetite for more Apple(s)
- A follow-up call/ email six months later: " Would you be interested in switching to the future of TV with an Apple TV?"
- An up-sell to Apple TV offline or online (cp. 4 above) etc.

Who is in involved in the relationship from the organization's point-of-view? Apart from the sales clerk and the call center agent, there are

- The engineers who decided that the shuffle has to have "Clip and Go" to be wearable in the gym right out of the box
- The collective of quality-obsessed Apple employees who made the positive blog review of the product possible
- The interior/ experience designer of the Apple Store, Bellevue
- The user interface/ user experience specialists behind the Apple Online Store and Discussions
- The engineer who programmed the thank-you mechanism and the copywriter of the email
- The person who decided that iPod and iTunes should be two sides of the same coin, hard and soft respectively
- The support specialist scanning the discussions
- The London Design Museum
- Jonathan Ive
- A CEO with a long-term vision.

Posted by Harald Felgner at November 2, 2007 9:36 AM

Simply put, it's seeing your customers from their own eyes and building on that.

Posted by Tobi Ajibawo at November 2, 2007 10:31 AM

A customer relationship is...

... what happens every time you, your staff, your brand, your advertising, your product and your service touch a customer. That relationship may have its ups and downs over time and will always have to be worked at. You will have to avoid complacency and seek to keep the relationship alive and exciting. Sometimes you will have to admit you are wrong and sometimes you will have to have the courage and the tact to tell your customer s/he is wrong. And because relationships are based on people, you will have to recognise that all of us change over time and so will your customer relationship: accept this, work with it and grow together.

Posted by Mark JF at November 2, 2007 10:45 AM

Steve:

I've been posting at Fast Company weekly on customer relationships as conversations. Some of the posts were even picked up by TP Wire ;-)
http://blog.fastcompany.com/experts/vmaltoni/

Posted by Valeria Maltoni at November 2, 2007 11:37 AM

Steve - I sense you may be going for an over simplified version of things here - a bit elitist perhaps - although I follow that lovemark bias. :>]

The "investor class" & "labor class" & "affluent-luxury class" shall all have their day in the free enterprise market - with subsequent ID complexity & richness of needs' determination built in to customer relationship management CRM.

A cost relationship is prime for 100's of millions of emerging "labor" consumers in China & India - cost may be their 1-5/10 determinant in a customer relationship.

The Wiki link on CRM below may be of interest. have a fun weekend. :>]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management

Posted by John at November 2, 2007 12:00 PM

I am with Tobi.

A customer relationship should be what the customer wants it to be. We want that to be a human relationship.

However - One of the challenges of dealing with corporate customers is that the human relationship happens at many different levels with many different people. Some have buying influence but many don't. Parts of the customer population love you, parts actively don't. All sorts of politics, influence and agendas come in - all based on human emotion, finacial and project pressures. Who do you have the relationship with? Clearly everyone - but some are important and some aren't. Some are 3rd party partners etc.

To an extent this is why I am not 100% sold on customer satisfaction surveys - it's not that they are not valuable but they give such a narrow snapshot of the whole relationship and lull people into a false sense of security.

I wanted to raise this because I sense that many of the responses to these types of posts tend to have the customer as a single entity. The corporate world is far more complicated. Having said that if you can get the people right at grass roots level a lot of the other stuff flows well from that. I am with Trevor - rely only on process and you will fall flat on your face

Posted by PaulH at November 2, 2007 12:26 PM

I think that too often, a series of transactions is confused with a relationship. Transactions are an exchange of what two parties have (money for product or service, for instance). A relationship is a commitment to create and evolve what can be exchanged.

Posted by Ron Davison at November 2, 2007 12:26 PM

How about adding the word, "two-way" after the word,"ongoing?" Sending 10 e-mails to a customer who doesn't have the opportunity to reply isn't developing a relationship.

Posted by Glenn Ross at November 2, 2007 6:52 PM

Seems there are two elements missing. What is the output/purpose for using the resources to do it, and what's in it for company and the "customers"?

an on-going conversation with your customer, be they internal producer or external consumer, to continuously "add value" to the quality of the product provided and process of service delivery to retain the "business" of both.

Posted by Dave W at November 2, 2007 10:39 PM

To Glenn's point about "two-way." - Isn't a conversation necessarily two-way? Philosopher Martin Buber made a wonderful distinction between "genuine dialogue" and "monologue disguised as dialogue."

Posted by Steve Yastrow at November 3, 2007 12:12 AM

John - Thanks for posting the wikipedia address on CRM. What amazed me - but really didn't surprise me, was that the entire orientation of the wikipedia entry was about customer relationship management as technology and process. Sure, technology and process are great support, but shouldn't we first talk about customer relationships if we're going to talk about customer relationship management. Then, we can talk about technology ...

Posted by Steve Yastrow at November 3, 2007 12:17 AM

Steve you are so right!

'Customer relationship management as technology and process' - I've been thinking ....That wikipedia entry was probably written by someone who has never experienced love. Customer relationship, as I said before, is about an emotional connection. It is about 'love' SUPPORTED by 'technology and process' not the other way round - ask anyone who has had an unhappy failed marraige - they know the difference :-)

Posted by Trevor Gay at November 3, 2007 2:37 AM

If you don't like people you'll have a hard time doing business.

Back to 'labour class' luxury discussion- if the owner of the used car lot knows in his bones and drills it into his staff that the happy repeat customer makes possible good wages and a successful business, then that lower class customer who can never afford a new car will be wooed into a loving relationship and be willing to pay a bit more than he would across town at Fast Eddy's cheapo lot.

Posted by Lois Gory at November 3, 2007 10:53 AM

A lot of this is down to personality and recruitment rather than training etc. I work in a technical support environment. I see a lot of recruitment based on technical prowes/experience. I recruit mostly on personality (although you really need a mix of people in a team - some geeks and some outgoing) and have been very successful in improving what we do. Get the right people from the start.

Posted by PaulH at November 4, 2007 5:53 AM

I think the idea of relationship as "conversation" is far too limiting. Relationships are more complex. They involve unstated expectations and yearnings.

It's also worth remembering, as others have pointed out, that different customers want different things and can reciprocate with different things. But it's also true that the same customers may want a different form of relationship at different times.

I've had a relationship with my bank for more than a decade. Sometimes I want to wander in to the branch and be greeting by the manager who knows me and exchange pleasantries. Sometimes I want a teller I've never met before to help me wire money to children in another country. Sometimes I want quick explanation from a rep at the call center about a charge I don't recognize. And sometimes I don't want a human involved at all. I want to check my balances online and transfer funds and keep moving.

Posted by Wally Bock at November 4, 2007 11:49 AM

Great comment Paul - 'recruit for attitude, train for skills' is my motto rather than the last 100 years of 'recruit for skills, train for attitude' - that just never works in direct customer contact!

Posted by Trevor Gay at November 4, 2007 4:37 PM

Try this one on for size Steve....

The Customer relationship is: EVERYTHING.

Patrick

Posted by Patrick Stapleton at November 6, 2007 8:57 AM

customer relationship is TRUST period.

Posted by ravi dabbiroo at November 12, 2007 11:15 PM

i just wrote a long post on this, here:
http://www.socialcustomer.com/2007/11/tom-peters-what.html

The key bit: "If we want buyers and sellers to build mutually beneficial relationships, both need to be involved, and both need to be able to contribute their portions of the conversation history to the dialog."

-

christopher carfi
http://www.socialcustomer.com

Posted by christopher carfi at November 15, 2007 6:53 PM

is about user interface. Google and Amazon proved it online. It's time to prove it can go beyond online.

Posted by kenji mori at November 18, 2007 9:41 AM

You people are living in an unreal world. Customer service and "relationship" is dead. It has been destroyed by CEO's with only one motive: get more and more profit at any expense. That includes the health of our nation, its citizens, the health of a corporation...just so long as executives get more money. The customer be damned, any "service" geared toward the customer be damned, and any paid position which, in theory, is oriented toward the customer be damned. It is all a pack of lies!! Everyone is lying to one another...and everyone know it. "Relationship".....HAH!!!!

Posted by robertn at November 21, 2007 4:41 PM

Whilst Robertn seems to be a bit tough oin this line of thinking, I am also reticent to get into the whole relationship thing. Yes it is an ongoing conversation and must be two way, but there are many drivers for budget and cost that limit the impact of relationship and steer companies towards geeting what they can. I say this to counsel people away from lingering in a 'relationship'that may not be going anywhere.

Posted by David at November 27, 2007 2:46 AM

Every relationship requires dialogue and elements of empathy and understanding.

The quality of the relationship is heavily influenced by the level of trust which itself is influenced by how dynamic expectations are met and managed. Expectations are shaped by the value systems of the parties concerned and understanding you customers value system is therefore important.

Posted by stephen hancock at November 29, 2007 12:13 AM