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Communicating
Three Ways Means Contact Isn't Broken
Let's take a few moments to look at the three most common ways we communicate with our clients and prospects, and see if any of these pillars are shorter than they ought to be. The three are personal contact, printed materials, and an online presence. What I want to emphasize is how the three support and extend each other. Online Depth - It's a natural tendency for us to become product-centric in our thinking, too much so. But our website is one area where it is appropriate to get detailed with product information. The key is to portion out the information in the amount appropriate to the visitor's expectation, and in the context of their visit. We've all had the frustration of visiting websites where we see nothing but a photograph when we're looking for hard data on a product. Likewise, it is off-putting to be confronted with a multi-page roll of facts, when what we are most interested in is the color or style of a product. Speed - Analyze the traffic on websites and you'll see a lot of short visits. Very often the pattern is: Enter at home page, move to contact page, exit. The visitor is almost certainly someone who already knows you, and finds a quick visit to your website the best way to refresh their memory as to your location or contact info. Make it easy. Maybe I'm getting cranky in my old age, but I find myself getting more impatient with websites as time goes on. I suppose I should be more forgiving, because I understand through real life experience just how much purposeful time and effort it takes to build a good one. But just like your prospects, I want to be impressed and assured. When I visit your website, your credibility is on the line.
Printed Materials The Original DB - For many years, print materials were the databases of available products. Farmer Brown ordered household goods, knowing they would arrive in only a matter of weeks. Last year's catalogues made good shin pads for the kids, and were good fire starters, too. You Can Handle It - The positives of a good printed piece are very real - as tactile and immediate as the paper itself. Transient or Permanent? - And having glanced at it, what happens to that printed piece? How many stacks of product brochures does the average manager have in his or her office? Filed away (sort of) for future reference, they can become only a vague memory. The reality is that while the printing process renders some form of permanence, the unwillingness of the prospect to categorize and file it may send it to obscurity quickly anyway.
Personal Contact Something Surprising - One of my clients has begun inviting his customers and prospects to visit his office and warehouse. He finds his operations rather unexciting, and is stunned to find how many people accept the invitation, and how positive they feel about the experience. In one sense, it illustrates how we start to take everything for granted, even our own strengths (the operation is professionally run - I've seen it). Most importantly, it underscores what we keep coming back to time after time - business is always about people. No computer will ever write you a cheque. No contact database will ever develop a relationship of trust. The Human Voice - I am, by most people's definition, a high-tech guy. But I absolutely hate having my calls answered by those automated phone trees. Some are worse than others - but none are good. If people like me who are comfortable with technology hate seeing it used to minimize personal contact, how much more is it despised by those who are less comfortable with tech in the first place? Why would we present a hostile front to the people who are trying to give us business? An irony I find is that sometimes the people who embrace this inherently bad technology have invested the least in using more appropriate technologies like the web.
Bring it Together - I close with an example from a major Canadian retailer. Most of our clients work in the business-to-business field, but there is something in this example for everyone. Database marketing expert Arthur Hughes gives this example to illustrate the appropriate use of different means of contact with a customer base. Sears Canada traditionally had two operations - the retail stores, and the paper catalogue business. They were actually run as competing operations, and the rivalry was pretty intense. It could hardly be said that they worked together. Ever wonder why the catalogue outlet was stuck at the back of the store behind the raw fabrics and granny's sleeper sets? Sears understood that the best 20% of their customers were doing 80% of their business. Naturally the rivalry brought forward the question, which are the better customers, the store customers or the catalogue customers? When they finally integrated and crunched the numbers, they found encountered some startling facts:
The Internet - The age of online catalogues meant a big shift in thinking. While the US branch of Sears figured it was a good idea to scrap the paper catalogue altogether, Sears Canada tried a different approach. They kept the paper catalogue when they launched their website, and it is a good thing they did. Because something like 97% of the people ordering over the web had a paper catalogue open in front of them when they ordered. They understood that the best use of the Internet (for established retail catalogue customers, anyway) was transmitting the order. So the light bulb went on for Sears, they recognized that the customer was right, and they began to act like one company. They identified these important customers, celebrated their relationship and drew these three means of communicating together. And that old-fashioned catalogue business stopped its decline. And the numbers of active, happy and profitable customers increased. And clerks in the store were able to identify these customers and treat them like the royalty they are.
What About You? How do you create relationships with customers? How do you celebrate the best? Do you make it easy for customers to learn and respond by whatever method they choose? Your customers understand that you are one company - do all your employees? Give the people who matter the same quality message in person, in print, and online, and you will create a strong bond, one strand at a time. Tim Anderson is President of Alphabet Communications Ltd., Vancouver-based design and business consultants who help you make sense, make time and make waves. (604) 514-9228 or Toll Free (877) 217-8758
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