3 Ways To Improve Experience For Your Top 20% Customers
While all customers are key, every client base has the 80:20 rule. This is about your top 20% of your customers and how to take care of them.
I had a portfolio of B2B retail banking customers, who were entitled to better service because we signed up with their companies and gave them special offers to bank with us. The reality was within the bank they were tagged as a normal customer relationship, which was obviously a gap but this was the reality. These are the three steps I followed to bridge the gap and what you can take away if you are facing this gap in your everyday.
Identify your 20% list: identify which of your customers you never want to see walk out of the door. It could be your top 10%. Talk to these customers, understand what they appreciate about being with you and what they would like to see changed. Understand what your competition will give to have them as their customer. Finally identify what is within your remit to keep them happy: regular contact, thoughtful gestures, feature upgrades, feedback mechanism etc. actions that will communicate they are special.
For my customers I met with CFOs (usually in-charge of banking relationships) and HR Heads periodically to hear their feedback. It kept the account manager, our service team and myself on our toes. When complaints were raised against a particular touchpoint, for the next meeting we would update what has been addressed and upgraded. Even when the requests were vague (I’m hearing some noise about your service levels), we turned them into measurable actions. We had a service manager call every account holder for a quick 1 minute customer connect, recorded their responses verbatim, closed open service items and shared all this in my next meeting. Customers appreciate the service recovery. Process changes if any were highlighted, so customers knew we had learned from their feedback.
Set up internal service alarms: internally your organisation should know who these key customers are and first customer touchpoints (relationship manager, customer service, digital contacts i.e. mail / complaints channels) should have a mechanism to flag if these customers raise any issue, even subtle ones. Some of your large sophisticated customers may or may not be vociferous about their requests, but they will still vote with their feet. When you see / hear these alarms go off, the team should be able to identify them as your top 20% and give them white glove service. If there is a complaint, make sure messages pass on back to you or your relationship manager so they can keep them updated as the issues are resolved and to smooth things over once they are resolved. Being silent after a customer has raised an area of concern, especially with your key customers is usually not without repercussions.
We shared corporate offers with phone banking, simplified our offers into categories so at the time of account setup the offer category is updated in the system. We made sure we educated the offer information with phone banking and other service channels along with the names of these top 20% client relationships so they can be familiar in their interactions. We also had a weekly service council with all frontline touchpoints to make sure we knew if something new came up and how they are being taken care of. This way we avoided one arm of the organisation not knowing what is happening with another where your customer was concerned.
Today technology has advanced enough to ensure a seamless customer experience across all of their engagements and provide a unified view and more importantly leverage AI to intuitively offer the next most relevant service.
Build a process and ensure follow through: if none exists, bring the need for fresh relook at processes for your top 20%. Be prepared with service level data and customer feedback i.e complaints log, survey and direct customer feedback, any analytics you have on potential churn risk and anything else that shows concern such as drop in activity etc. Create a composite picture of status as they are now and where you would like to be, what needs to change can be a process update, issues with flagging key customers, educating a certain team, offers to beat the market etc. go with a solution, will there be a need for budget and what do you expect with be the realistic ROI. Leadership wants to take care of these customers, so help them with data and a clear set of asks and a plan to build a robust process internally to follow through. Once you have the approvals, keep a working model of getting together to test the process in action. Can you see an improvement in customer experience, reduction in complaints or escalations etc. In your next management leadership meeting, demonstrate the change with the same metrics you previously shared. Shows real improvement and direct ROI for investments. Leaders love an ongoing success story.
We upgraded internal processes and even proactively got ATMs installed in sites where we knew we can have a quick breakeven. We realised many of our customers needed short term loans and credit cards so we worked with the unsecured business to have reduced paperwork. After a year, the team and I sat down to understand the quality of these loans, delinquency rates etc. we were then able to extend special interest rates because we had data backing us.
Once you have the wheel set in motion for your category A customers, move to your next level of customers. The larger the organisation, the more complex the functions, the deeper the need for making systematic change. Starting with your best customers is an easy win within your business and with your customers.
