5 Customer Communication missteps How companies get things wrong and how to fix them

1. 5 Customer Communication
missteps
How companies get things wrong and how to fix them
Sandeep Kaujalgi, Founder and CEO of Collabor Inc
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As customers, we are all constantly bombarded with solicitations by a variety of companies —
at work and at home. It’s the credit card offer, the oil change, the pizza, cable tv, chinese
takeout, etc. And at work, it is the relentless email and phone solicitation by companies for all
sorts of products and services.
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“But does this work ? At what cost ? And can we do better ?”
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1) More is not better
A Fortune 50 telecom company that I spoke to recently, said they have atleast 18 different
customer communication tools — website, email, portals, CRM, Marketing Automation, direct
mail, social media, etc — and these result in atleast 10 customer touchpoints/week.
After my “holy crap” initial shock, (and I am one of their customers at home) I took a tally of
what that mean’t and realized that they were talking to and not really communicating with
their customers.
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2) Social media is not an answer, it's just a tool
Most of our clients say — we have a facebook page and a twitter handle. Yes, but how have
you designed their use ? If you are just dumping every piece of info/news into social media
and then measuring engagement based on likes and retweets, you are just deluding yourself.
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3) It's not about Quantity of Engagement, it’s about Quality
We got 537 retweets to our latest post, said a client to us a few years ago. Great! And we got
434 for a post we did in July. Great ! How many of the 434 were among the 537?. These
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2. numbers are out of how many fans/followers?. Were these the people you were trying to
engage ?
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Most comments, likes or retweets are like one-night stands. What you should be trying is a
stronger, longer relationship. So the questions that need to be asked go something like this —
How did John engage with us ? Is there a trending history of engagement? Is it moving in the
desired manner ? What can we do to make it more personalized and contextual for John ?
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4) It’s not about Tools, its about Strategy
We use salesforce.com/Marketo/Hubspot/……So what ? There is a old idiom in Hindi which
goes “Bandar kay hath mein ustra” OR “A razor in the hands of a monkey” — hinting towards
misuse or abuse. Tools are only as good as the person using them and the intent behind the
use.
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5) Work from the customer backwards
I always tell my clients — It’s not about you, its about the customer. You may have the urge to
communicate every little thing that happens in your company, through your 18 different
channels of communication. “Stop ! Please”
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What does the customer want ? When was the last time you asked ? Are you running your
communication against a personalized context map for each customer ? No ? Create one.
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“True customer communication is the right information, at the right time, in the right
amount, through the right medium — constantly measured and corrected.”
Sandeep Kaujalgi is the Founder and CEO of Collabor Inc., a Sales & Marketing Strategy,
Technology & Execution company based in Greater Boston.
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