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TAKING ACTION

A COLLECTION OF BLOGS FOCUSED ON

TAKING ACTION ON CUSTOMER INSIGHTS
 TA K I N G AC T I O N
Taking action tops the list when customer strategists are asked
about their greatest obstacles. To really take action you have to
deal with a lot of people, many departments, and a ton of details
as well as a corporate culture that may not be ready to change
their ways based on input from their customers.

While there may not be a precise formula, we can learn a lot from
each other. Thats why we searched our collection of more than
800 blogs from a variety of Walker consultants, and selected the
top ten on the topic of taking action.

Let us know what you think. Share an idea or suggest a topic at

solutions@walkerinfo.com.

Check out our other blog books below and the rest of our blogs
at blog.walkerinfo.com

COMMUNICATION THE LOYALTY MATRIX

 BLOG BOOK TAKING ACTION

FOUR ELEMENTS TO DRIVE VoC ACTION

Patrick Gibbons

Taking action is the most commonly mentioned obstacle when discussing voice-of-
the-customer strategies. In many organizations, particularly those that are large and
complex, it is incredibly difficult to weave through all the obstacles to turn customer
insights into action and results.

Sometimes it helps to think of the key elements that make action possible. Here are four
key elements that would apply to almost any organization:

ORGANIZATION You need the right team structure to effectively deploy your customer
strategies. This refers to everyone involved in the process of collecting, analyzing,
reporting, delivering, and acting on customer insights. A solid structure needs to be in
place to make sure voice-of-the-customer strategies are actionable.

PROCESS Organizations must have systematic ways to improve customer processes.

Customer advocates must develop procedures, methods, and tools to ensure customer
insights drive improvement, whether it is to correct a problem, discover a new solution,
expedite a procedure, or grow a relationship.

COMMUNICATION Effective communication needs to ignite the right action. In todays

business environment theres an incredible amount of clutter. Any business has a
multitude of initiatives making it difficult to ensure voice-of-the-customer strategies are
seen as important and relevant. Effective communication has become critical to make
sure people are aware of customer initiatives, understand their role, and believe in them
so they will ultimately take action.

MOTIVATION Customer strategists must provide the right motivation for action. In
some cases incentives are involved. Other times its driven by operational metrics.
Whatever the case may be, understanding how to motivate the users of customer
feedback is a key element to any voice-of-the-customer strategy.

Large organizations can quickly get bogged down and distracted. Keeping these four
elements front and center can help customer strategists stay focused on driving action
and results.

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 BLOG BOOK TAKING ACTION

THREE REASONS STRATEGIES FAIL

Mark A. Ratekin

I was recently with a business strategist from a Fortune 500 company who stated there
were ultimately three reasons corporate strategies fail. Even though he was speaking of
overarching corporate strategies, the three reasons align with what I have seen related to
customer strategies:

1. You measure the wrong things Good strategy is the result of careful, intelligent
analysis; however, the old maxim garbage in, garbage out applies here. In customer
strategy consulting, this can be the result of jumping on the bandwagon of the latest
killer metric without a full analysis of whether or not the metric actually applies to
your industry. One way to avoid this shortcoming would be to conduct a pre-program
strategic assessment this step will allow you to learn not only the key customer
touchpoints, but also identify the critical needs of key stakeholders in the process.
It will also help you make certain you are profiling the customers the right way and
focusing on the most critical.

2. You make the wrong decisions E ven if you measure the right data, there is no
guarantee you will make the right decisions. Some of this is related to the data itself
in customer strategy consulting, using statistical methods that allow us to determine
which areas of focus will have the greatest impact on customer loyalty will provide
some insulation against focusing on the wrong areas. There is, however, another source
of potential error and that is the direction of where the market in total is heading.
Every decision is framed not only by the data you observe, but also by your outlook
on the competitive environment in general. To ensure you get it right, there are three
recommendations I would make:

Include competitive assessments in your loyalty measurement program Having an

idea on your position relative to the competition can help fine-tune your analysis. You
can read more about benchmarking options in this series.
Commit to ongoing measurement This does not necessarily mean an ongoing
data collection effort; rather, it is about knowing when to re-assess the customer
landscape to ensure you are accounting for all the relevant issues. Most clients do this
every 18 to 24 months at a minimum.
Build macro and micro-level strategic plans The overall strategy that emerges
from the statistical analysis is best used in the context of focal areas that have the
greatest impact on the greatest number of customers; however, building more micro-
level, customer-based action plans will ensure you are accounting for the individual
differences that exist among customers.

3. You do not take action This is the one we tend to see the most. I once worked with
a person who was prone to saying strategy is cheap; execution is hard. When I first
heard him say this, I thought he was saying that strategy was simple; I now realize what
he meant was that even though strategy can be hard, it is infinitely more difficult to

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 execute on a plan of attack you know is correct. The phenomenon of acting in ways
that are not in your best interest is less about intelligence and more about discipline.
I tend to use diet and exercise as an example I know I should exercise more and eat
less, but it is far easier to do the opposite. We at Walker have designed a framework
to help navigate the key disciplinary elements needed to take action namely,
organization, process, communication, and motivation.

Certainly there are many reasons strategies can fail; however, I suspect that most of
the reasons would fit into this framework. Being mindful of the potential pitfalls that
may exist can help you be more proactive in building a plan that will maximize your
probability of success.

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 BLOG BOOK TAKING ACTION

THREE LEVELS OF VoC ACTION

Patrick Gibbons

Acting on the voice of the customer doesnt (or shouldnt) happen in just one department
or one area of the company. I like to think of it in levels. For simplicity sake, here are three
common levels where VoC action should be taking place:

CORPORATE At the corporate level, action should be very strategic. Based on customer
insights, action plans should address issues such as overall retention, forecasting future
revenues, projecting attrition, and considering customer perceptions on topics such as
brand reputation, ethics, market position, and how you stack up against the competition.

FUNCTIONAL Action at the functional level action becomes more tactical and involves
specific areas such as business units and key departments. This middle level is the most
diverse of the three. It refers to all groups throughout your enterprise that can benefit
from the voice of the customer. These include departments such as service, account
management, sales, and product development, R & D, marketing, and many others. In
each case customer strategists should provide each group the customer information
they need to improve their specific operation. Whats more, they should implement a
prioritization process to ensure the most important issues are escalated to require action.

CUSTOMER-FACING This is when action takes place one customer at a time. This is most
common in business-to-business organizations where action is critical at the account
level. To effectively manage at the account level customers advocates must work closely
with strategic account managers and sales managers so highly customized information
is provided to their people and they are trained on how to use it to drive business
with specific accounts. Action at this level should be focused on improving account
relationships to boost retention and grow revenue.

Too often voice-of-the-customer strategies are focused on one area or one department.
Or, companies may do a good job of acting on customer insights at one level, but they
dont fully leverage insights across the organization. Customer strategists are wise to
occasionally take inventory to determine the areas where customer insights could provide
a well needed boost.

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ACTION TRUMPS EVERYTHING

Kitty Radcliff

Once again, Willow Creek Association put on a tremendous Global Leadership Summit
last week. As soon as Len Schlesinger started his presentation, I knew I was in for a
whirlwind of new ideas and different ways of thinking. As President of Babson College
(ranked #1 business school for entrepreneurship by U.S. News & World Report); former
Harvard Professor; and noted author, he is an entrepreneurial genius.

In the 1990s, he and his co-authors helped us better understand how to build profitability
in a service business via The Service Profit Chain (1997). Per Harvard Business Review, the
service-profit chain established relationships between profitability, customer loyalty, and
employee satisfaction, loyalty, and productivity.

More recently, Len Schlesinger has been focused on using entrepreneurship in all kinds of
settings to create economic and social value. His book Action Trumps Everything (2010)
makes the case that conventional approaches to problem-solving dont work as well in an
uncertain world.

Instead, a very simple framework used by successful entrepreneurs can be more effective:
Act. Learn. Repeat.

1. Act: Take a small step forward.

2. Learn: Pause to see what you have learned by doing so.
3. Repeat: Incorporate that learning into what you do next.

At Walker, we know that taking action can be one of the biggest challenges faced by
customer strategists. I suspect that is due in part to our tendency to set aggressive,
stretch goals that may at times seem unachievable. This can lead to inaction. But, what if
we didnt try to solve world hunger from the onset?

What if we make a decision to just do something that might have a small impact?

1. Act: Take a small step.

2. Learn: After taking that first step, see what customers think and say about it in your
customer feedback program.
3. Repeat: Then, incorporate that learning into your action plan and take another step
forward.

Do we make the idea of taking action more difficult than it needs to be?

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 BLOG BOOK TAKING ACTION

FINDING TIME FOR ACTION

Melissa Meier

I dont know about you, but it sure has been a busy first quarter! While I personally enjoy
a fast-paced environment and like having my days filled with activity, the downside
can be all of the different areas competing for my attention. I find myself constantly
having to make choices about where my time gets spent. This can lead to tough choices
regarding mission-critical vs. secondary priorities, as well as focusing on a good work
/ life balance. I am certainly not alone and I know that this is something that all of us
are faced with on a daily basis. Earlier this week, the White House hosted a Forum on
Workplace Flexibility to address the challenge that Americans face when balancing the
demands of jobs and families. If you are interested in reading more about this, click here.

So, how is this relevant to our roles as customer advocates? One of the most common
challenges we hear from our clients is engaging their organizations to take action
on customer feedback. Functional areas and customer facing teams often view VoC
activities as just one more thing they need to do, on top of an already overwhelming
to do list. We are competing for their time, and this is a competition that we are hard-
pressed to win unless we demonstrate the value of taking action. Here are some ideas
on how to align customer feedback and make it relevant within the organization:

Provide sales teams with opportunities to follow-up with customers who indicate they
are likely to increase wallet share
Tell stories in the organization about success that that teams have had in growing
revenue by taking action on customer feedback
Have an infrastructure in place that makes it easy for people to view customer
feedback and document action plans
Tailor communication messages to make certain information is relevant to the
recipient

The more we integrate VoC into the culture of our organizations, the harder it will be for
people to push it further down their to do list.

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NEED HELP ACTING ON VoC? TRY THESE THREE STEPS

Leslie Pagel

A recent blog post discusses two primary reasons companies do not achieve business
results from their voice of the customer (VoC) program. They are:

Lack of processes for taking action

Lack of accessible, relevant insights

One of the essential elements for achieving world-class VoC outcomes is Action. At
Walker, we define world-class action as:

Having a central repository of intelligence to drive ongoing action and to support the
decision making process at any level of the organization.
Keeping action plans updated regularly and constistently tracked through to
completion; ultimately showing a ROI.
Customers and/or partners acknowledge that they have received follow-up.

In order to become world-class at taking action on VoC, there are three necessary steps.

1. Tailoring: Everyone does not need everything. Tailoring the information to each
audience ensures the information is relevant, aligned with their responsibilities, and
the actions are within their control. In general, we see companies do a great job at
tailoring the information for executives and account teams. For these companies,
wed recommend extending this focus to functional and/or geographical areas.

2. Training and templates: Delivering results is not enough. Several companies leverage
trainings or workshops, and action plan templates to simplify the process and ensure
effective action. Dont forget to include a way to monitor progress on any agreed
upon actions within your training and templates.

3. Tying it all together: The vision for customer focused organizations is a central
repository of all relevant customer metrics. This would include data gathered
from multiple sources (e.g., financial, operational, perception, employee, customer
engagement, etc.) that can be aggregated and filtered for the appropriate audience.
The information would be accessible throughout the enterprise and would be used to
improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the decision making process.

If your company is not receiving the business impact from its VoC program, consider
these three steps. They have helped many leading companies achieve world-class
outcomes.

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 BLOG BOOK TAKING ACTION

PROCEED WITH ACTION, NOT CAUTION

Krista Roseberry

Todays management tip-of-the-day from Harvard Business publishing was titled: Ready
to Use Social Media? Proceed, with Caution, which was distilled from a full article on
the same topic. Naturally, I wondered... what are they cautioning me against? Heres
the synopsis:

In 2006, McDonalds launched its first blog, Open For Discussion, signaling a desire
to engage with customers. Less than a year later, the blog was flooded with customer
complaints about the companys decision to include toy Hummers in Happy Meals
and McDonalds was slow to respond. When your company decides to venture into
social media by starting a group on Facebook, launching a blog, or Twittering be
prepared to truly hear what your customers have to say, and act on it. Providing a
forum for people to share opinions about your products and services is a great way
to build customer relationships, but only if youre ready to engage. If your customers
are Tweeting that your products arent durable, maybe they have a point. Demonstrate
that you hear them and take their feedback to heart.

It turns out that their caution is just like that of any other voice of the customer
program: We need to be ready to listen and ready to take action! Gathering and
distributing customer insights is one part of the job, but truly listening and evolving our
companies based on the good, the bad and the ugly experiences of our customers is
what its really all about no matter what type of forum were using.

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MAKING LOYALTY ACTIONABLE

Patrick Gibbons

Taking action is widely mentioned as the top challenge in a customer listening initiative
or voice-of-the-customer strategy. One method to making customer loyalty more
actionable is to begin with a good framework.

The Loyalty Matrix is a very practical framework that segments customers into four
groups based on their responses to a small battery of questions. The two axes in the
matrix represent the two key aspects of loyalty behavior (what a customer plans to
do) and attitude (how they feel about working with your company). This forms the
following four quadrants:

TRULY LOYAL These customers have every

intention of continuing to do business with you
and they have a positive attitude towards your
company. They like working with you and are more
likely to increase their spending and recommend
your company to others.

ACCESSIBLE These customers have a good

attitude about working with you but do not plan to
continue their relationship. Since this is a rather odd
combination, its not surprising that it is often a very
small percentage of customers. It typically means ACCESSIBLE TRULY LOYAL
something has changed in their business and they
ATTITUDE

do not need your product or services any longer.

TRAPPED These customers show every indication

of continuing business with you, but theyre not
very happy about it. They feel trapped in the HIGH RISK TRAPPED
relationship. This is common among organizations
that are locked into a long-term contract, lack a
suitable substitute, or find it too hard to switch. BEHAVIOR
Eventually, trapped customers will find a better
option.

HIGH RISK As the name implies, these customers

do not intend to return and dont really like working
with you anyway. Typically, theyre halfway out
the door and not only will they no longer be a
customer, but will also talk poorly about your
company in the marketplace.

Many organizations use this framework and find it to be more versatile, more practical,
and much more actionable than satisfaction scores, NPS, or other approaches. Here is a
link to a short paper on the Loyalty Matrix if you would like to learn more.

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 BLOG BOOK TAKING ACTION

TAKING ACTION CAN BE SIMPLE

Brad Harmon

Acting upon the feedback customers provide doesnt have to require a complete overhaul
of a process, product, or communication vehicle. One great example of this came rushing
back to me the other day when having a Reeses Piece (is one just a piece or are they
still pieces?) with my wife. We discovered that we hadnt won their latest sweepstakes in
conjunction with Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, and this reminded me
of one of the weirder things I recall about my high school days.

You see, Mr. Johnson, my sophomore English teacher was fanatical about two things the
power of the English language, and candy. During that time, and based on the Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory premise, Im sure, Hersheys was sponsoring a sweepstakes contest,
giving away $50,000 if you found the lucky game piece stashed in one of their packages.
The intentions were good; get consumers to buy more of our candy for a better chance to
win. However, they failed to realize that they were alienating this one particular consumer,
Mr. Johnson the English teacher.

You see, on every game piece that didnt reveal a prize, the message read simply:

YOU ARE NOT A WINNER.

Read quickly, it communicated that the consumer had not won a prize in this game. But,
read literally, it struck a blow to a persons self confidence. This might have gone on for
some time, had Mr. Johnson not had a weak spot for chocolate. When reading that he was
not a winner, it sent him into outrage, sparking an impromptu project for his sophomore
level English class.

We each were required to write a letter to Hersheys expressing our concern that they
were essentially calling us losers by not having won their little contest. The test was to
see if the company would a) listen to us and apologize, or b) not acknowledge us, thus
forcing us into boycotting the chocolate giant (and settling for an inferior brand of candy)
for the rest of our lives, given our aspirations of being winners in life?

As it turns out, within the span of a few weeks (within that school year), Hersheys did
respond to Mr. Johnson and our class, apologizing for the poor wording on their game
pieces. In fact, they went further, by changing their packaging to address the feedback
that they heard from our class. I believe he also got a coupon for some free candy, which
was also appealing, of course. But most satisfying for Mr. Johnson was that Hersheys
had heard his feedback, and taken immediate, but very simple action on it to address his
concerns. What couldve turned into a lost customer became a loyal one for life (despite
the fact that I never heard of him winning one of their contests).

He, and his class of sophomores learning about the power of the written language, had
indeed become winners by persuading the Hersheys Chocolate Company to change
its way of communicating. So, when checking to see if my wife and I had one a free
nights stay at the Smithsonian, I realized that the feedback that my classmates and I had

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provided nearly twenty years ago was still in play today, which made me realize how
powerful it can be when a company listens and acts on what theyve heard.

It may not have been a change that many people noticed, but today, every time I
participate in a contest, I pay close attention to how theyve worded the message if I
didnt win, and always think back to how we made a difference in how these messages
read today.

Are there simple things that can be done to address your customers feedback that
dont require much effort? What are some simple ways that youve changed that have
paid off in ways greater than you couldve imagined?

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 BLOG BOOK TAKING ACTION

MAKE IT EASY

Melissa Meier

Have you ever had a situation that you were dreading, but turned out to be not so bad?
That happened to me recently when I needed to take my son to a local flu shot clinic.
We werent having any luck with the flu shot supply at our doctors office, so we loaded
up the family and went to a flu shot clinic. I expected it to be a torturous experience. I
imagined a line of people hundreds deep, with a wait time that was measured in hours,
not minutes. Much to my surprise, the event was very well coordinated and staffed, which
resulted in us getting right and out. When leaving, it struck me how easy the whole thing
was.

What lesson is there for us as customer advocates? In order to motivate our organizations
to take action, we must make it easy for them to participate in the process. If we dont,
employees will view it as just one more thing that they need to and will be looking for
ways to avoid it. Think of your company when answering the following questions:

Is there an efficient process in place for sales teams to provide customer contact
names?
Do people know where to go to get feedback that customers provided?
If they do know where to go, is it easy for them to retrieve it?
Is there an easy way for people to document the action they have taken with
customers?

If you are like most organizations, the answer to one or more of the questions above
is no. When designing the customer feedback system, focus on making the process
easy for people to participate in. Think about how the process can be embedded into
existing processes and management systems. Use technology to enable efficiency around
program administration and documentation activities. If successful, I bet you find that the
uphill battle on getting employees to participate wont seem so steep.

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 A B O U T WA L K E R
Walker specializes in customer loyalty and related customer strategies, including
innovative approaches to segmenting, valuing, obtaining, serving, and growing
customers. Walkers diverse team of consultants provides tailored, comprehensive
solutions to help companies achieve their business objectives and, ultimately,
grow shareholder value. Walkers consultants regularly conduct workshops and
assessment programs to help organizations improve their ability to administer
customer listening programs.

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