By Nicola Brown |
| Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash |
Recently, I wrote about the importance of collaborating with customers, and I asked what I think is an important question, “Customers or contracts - what's your focus?”.
Even weeks after publishing that blog, I felt like still, there was much more to be said. I believe this was spurred by the thought that, shockingly, there are still businesses which do not engage with their customers. In some way, they still wait to have “all the details hammered out, documented and agreed upon”, only reliant on their internal experts and shunning the idea of experimenting and learning; never truly knowing if they are satisfying the needs of their customers. To any such business, let's just say, you're not set up for success.
I love that Agile underscores the importance of continuous customer collaboration. The truth is though, even if your business is not yet Agile, that doesn't hamper you from finding simple and creative means to talk to your customers.
✔ Use social media to 'test the waters', listen and engage with your customers.
✔ If you have customer data, perhaps send out short surveys via email or SMS.
✔ A simple phone call to express thanks and ask about the customer's experience still works.
✔ Integrate tools on your website, to capture customer sentiments, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort score (CES). These will give you a good sense if your solutions are on-point, easy to use and delight your customers.
✔ If you have the budget to invest, try tools such as HotJar and Fullstory on your website. They allow you to see, real time, how customers engage with your content, allowing you to know early on if adjustments are needed. For some of these tools, feel free to utilise the free trial periods so that you can assess if they are meeting your requirements.
✔ And when (or if🤭) we are free to roam the streets in the future, why not try some guerrilla feedback sessions.
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| HotJar's Homepage |
The point is that there are lots of ways to engage with your customers. But, bear in mind that these are just ways to collect the feedback. What you do with the insights determine your success. And here’s where you’ll need to continuously experiment.
Check out my original post on customer collaboration here.
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