Best practices for customer collaboration
Important
This article is for the legacy Workplace Analytics app and does not reflect functionality available on the updated Viva Insights platform. Access current documentation for Viva Insights advanced insights here: advanced insights documentation.
It is common knowledge that spending time with customers helps you better anticipate their needs and develop products and services that create value. However, many companies fail to implement effective collaboration practices with their customers.
Why it matters
The following are from The loyalty economy: Are you undervaluing your customers?, Optimizing sales and connecting with customers in the age of big data and machine learning, and What makes great salespeople:
- "...companies at the top of their industries in net promoter scores or satisfaction rankings for three or more years—grow revenues roughly 2.5 times as fast as their industry peers. Yet companies and investors continue to prioritize quarterly earnings over customer relationships..."
- "Given the importance of customer value, leaders should track it as rigorously as they track other key assets, such as inventory."
- “More time spent with customers; larger internal networks; and more time spent with managers and senior leadership. These three behaviors persisted regardless of region, territory, or sales role, suggesting that they are foundational ingredients for success.”
Best practices
- Use your Important people list for key external contacts, which enables immediate notification of email from them, more efficient responses to their requests, and reminders to schedule time to connect with them.
- Create a shared Teams channel with key customers for direct, informal chats and prompt responses to urgent requests.
- Share customer insights broadly within your organization so all employees understand the key customer trends and insights.
- Encourage employees to maintain diversified internal networks. People with healthy internal networks are often better positioned to quickly respond to customer needs and drive customer satisfaction.
- Free up capacity by conducting a quarterly meeting audit to reassess the need for recurring meetings that consume the most time. Try cancelling some, and then if they’re missed, add them back.
Change strategies
Track time with your most important external contacts
Create a list of top external, customer relationships and distribute monthly reports to your team that show how much time was spent with them and how that compares with established goals.
Clearly define internal roles and responsibilities
By clearly defining roles and responsibilities within your organization, people will know who to ask for help with customer issues or questions that can help close a deal.