Post by Professor Merlin Stone

Does the web stimulate customer hypochondria?

If you ask a doctor what they fear most, commonly they will say a patient who has browsed their condition intensively (and often endlessly) and come up with a false self-diagnosis.

From two of my recent research projects looking at the influence of the web on relationships between companies and customers, a similar phenomenon seems to be present. Customers now feel more empowered to research what they need before approaching a company, ‘self-diagnosing’ and sometimes coming to the wrong conclusion.

If you are a supplier facing the dilemma of increasing customer self-advice or self-diagnosis, try following these ten rules:

1. Keep Calm: Don’t react with anger or frustration, but find out what your customers are doing. Ask them how they have reached their conclusions.
2. Gently prod: If you think they have gone the wrong way about it, tell them, and tell them why, but allow them to come back with a counter-argument.
3. Advise: Make sure that where the customer goes, you go too. Make your advice prominent.
4. Tackle Objections: Ensure that the advice you give also handles the objections that might be posed by other advice givers.
5. Equip the Customer: Give customers the tools to reach the right diagnosis or conclusion, tools that take into account the great variety of customer situations and needs. Where possible, help them simulate how life will be after they have made their choice.
6. ‘Bad’ Customers: Take account of the possibility that the customers most likely to exploit the ability of the web to put them in the position to “beat you up” may be “bad customers”, ones you want to get rid of (if you can).
7. Planning: Build this “bad customer” possibility into your diagnostic approach and your and processes for advising, selling and servicing.
8. Good Customers: If possible, help your customers get advice from “good customers”, which in this situation means ones who give good advice. Monitor the dialogue where you can.
9. Learn: Learn from your successes and failures.
10. Train to Gain: Train your staff in how to handle customers who use the web in this way – and make it fun, because some of the things customers – and companies – do in this situation are quire funny (even if they are also sad).

And…Good luck, you’ll need it.

Professor Stone Mini-Bio

This guest post was kindly written by expert in customer management, Professor Merlin Stone. Professor Stone has a mammoth practical and academic background, authoring over 30 books and numerous articles and frequently is a main speaker at international conferences. Merlin has also been recognised for his expertise in marketing on several occasions, including in 2002 when he was listed as one of the world’s top 50 marketing thinkers.

Tradeshow Lead Capture has taken a leap forward this week as our Tradeshow System was rolled out to 7 shows across 4 countries in just 7 days. Marketpoint’s Tradeshow App has been in action on iPads for clients in the US (Orlando and Las Vegas), Finland, the Republic of Ireland and the UK (Manchester, Norwich) capturing hundreds of qualified sales leads.

World of Concrete – Busy on the Tradeshow Floor!

Shows where our Tradeshow System has been in action within the last week:

Killybegs school winning a hi-tech Promethean whiteboard at IPPN (in R.O.I) as part of a Today FM Inter-schools competition.

New Tradeshow System Features

On top of great features already in the system such as eLiterature, customisable questionnaires and offline functionality, our clients were able to take advantage of the latest features to be added to the Tradeshow System, such as:

Find out more

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New Wizard’s Wisdom Blog Series:
Identifying and Managing ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Customers

This is the first of a new series of guest blog posts from Marketing Wizard Professor Merlin Stone. Professor Stone is putting his vast marketing knowledge into helping you determine who your best and worst customers are, and then how to handle situations based on what type of customer you’re dealing with.

Post by Professor Merlin Stone

    

 

Part 1: How to Identify ‘Good Customers’

In the private sector, good individuals are broadly defined as a mixture of the characteristics below. These aren’t all necessarily business traits either, personal traits can also be indicative of how reliable and profitable a company might be.

1. Good net value

They yield value to the supplier which is more than it costs the supplier to service them, taking into account all costs.

Consider the bank customer who keeps a reasonable current account balance, never going into overdraft without permission, and rarely going to the branch, preferring instead to use cash machines.

This customer is of higher net value than a customer with the same average balance who constantly moves into a small overdraft and uses branch services. Even though this customer would pay higher bank charges, these are unlikely to compensate for the extra administrative costs triggered by staff constantly checking to see whether the overdraft will be paid off. Although the bank might try to optimise charges to the latter to make the account profitable, it will not always succeed.

2. Moral (i.e. unfraudulent)

They stay on the right side of the law in all their dealings with the company.

This might seem common sense, but there are grey areas where you need to exercise your discretion. For instance, some companies do quite well out of meeting the needs of customers who in other respects are immoral, but stick to the law while interacting with the company e.g. casinos or betting shops used for money laundering.

3. Prudent

They live their lives within the resources available to them.

This is always a good indicator of how a customer will be to work with, however some companies make a very good living out of imprudent customers, even if it does necessitate charging usurious interest rates!

4. Punctual

They are (nearly) always on time.

This includes, for example, paying off bills on time and arriving at transport locations on time.

5. Responsive in a relevant way to communication

They respond to marketing communications that are relevant to them, but don’t respond to ones that are not.

When receiving relevant communication, a good customer is likely to lead these customers to evaluate seriously the possibility of buying the product or service. Responding to communications that aren’t relevant is known as the “schoolboy brochure” phenomenon at the Motor Show, but is experienced by many companies with strong brands; however the World-wide Web has proved to be a very cost-effective way of handling these.

One of the major problems faced by companies is to manage communications cost-effectively (whether or not they are solicited in the first place) when they have a low probability of leading to retention or development of revenue. Of course, if the communication is solicited, this does not necessarily imply poor targeting, as the customer may respond in other ways than anticipated by the company.

6. Responsive to other initiatives

They are willing to try new products.

7. Accurate and Honest

They are happy to give relevant and truthful information to the organisation and to update information previously given.

This means you can determine appropriate ‘treatment’ for the individual, while avoiding wasting resources offering inappropriate treatment. This also applies to complaints (see below).

8. “Justified” Complaints

They only complain when they truly have a grievance.

Not all complaints are unwelcome, and companies who complain shouldn’t be written off as a bad job. Constructive complaints can help you improve your company’s service, and actually in the long term reduce the number and likelihood of future complaints.

9. Brand Ambassador

They are prepared to recommend a product or service to other individuals if it is good.

It really goes without saying that having a customer who sings your praises to others is invaluable, whether that be online or in person. If you have come across examples of your customer writing testimonials complimenting other companies, this will of course be promising sign for you.

10. Stable or predictable

Their actions are unsurprising, timely and fit to type.

It might be less exciting this way, but it makes for a far less time consuming relationship between you and that customer because you don’t need to chase around trying to find what they need all of the time.

Let us know your own tips for identifying and managing ‘types’ of customer by commenting below or by sending us a tweet to @mktpoint.

Professor Stone Mini-Biography

This guest post was kindly written by expert in customer management, Professor Merlin Stone. Professor Stone has a mammoth practical and academic background, authoring over 30 books and numerous articles and frequently is a main speaker at international conferences. Merlin has also been recognised for his expertise in marketing on several occasions, including in 2002 when he was listed as one of the world’s top 50 marketing thinkers.

Professor Stone is a Research Director at The Customer Framework.

Thank you to Throttle Media, psd, CarbonNYC and stevedepolo for use of their photos, (c) 2012.

Having raised record amounts already this year, Macmillan Cancer Support needs your help to reach the £10 million milestone for its World’s Biggest Coffee Morning campaign.

Have you got involved in a World's Biggest Coffee Morning event yet?

Macmillan does an amazing job helping to improve the lives of those affected by cancer and their families, if you want to support their efforts there is plenty you can do:

Marketpoint has helped Macmillan organise the administration of its events and fundraising for 13 years running now, they are one of a group of British charities we work with in our Charity Division. Others include Breast Cancer Care, NSPCC and Sense, the Deafblind Charity.