Scene: My living room. After a long day, nothing sounds better than an evening spent enjoying a beverage and scanning my favorite news magazine while nestled in a deep-backed chair. A few pages in, I notice oddly-specific advertisements with somewhat personal messages. Since when did news magazines start advertising wedding invitations? And why would they assume I’d want to see these ads in a news magazine?
Let’s be real, your personal data is out there and it is not really a question of whether you can control it or get it back. And the subsequent fact is that we don’t get to choose the degree of intimacy we have with a company. As a vendor, you may want customer-vendor intimacy, but if I as a consumer don’t willingly share my data, you probably shouldn’t flaunt that you have it—not without a supporting purpose or process .
What else can you do? Here are three tips. You need at least one of the two to manage your customer relationships.
- (Re)Define relationship criteria
It seems natural to classify and categorize customer-vendor relationships according to what we think we know about our customers. What we can’t assume is that we classified this relationship based on the right criteria. Jill Avery of Harvard Business School, Susan Fournier of Boston University and John Wittenbraker of the market-research firm GfK,co-authored, “Unlock the Mysteries of Your Customer Relationships” in which they found most companies lack relational intelligence. They felt companies didn’t understand the multi-faceted nature of their customers’ relationships based on the finding of 29 distinct types of relationships (both positive and negative) ranging from strangers to friends.
The key is figuring out what kind of relationship your customer wants to have with you.
- Determine the necessary depth of the relationship
Based on the relationship demands, you have to decide whether to focus on individual or collective relationships. For example, my Netflix suggestion queue is based not only on my likes, it includes likes of individuals they consider to be just like me. They do this to keep me interested with relevant selections. On the flipside, one of my favorite tech stores in New York City, B & H Photo Video, focuses on its extensive knowledge of products and uses this knowledge to offer amazing customer service.
Both approaches work, but for different reasons, and based on the specific needs of the customer.
- Establish rules and guidelines for level of intimacy
The opening of this post is about my experience seeing wedding invitation advertisements in a news magazine. While I hadn’t shared the news of my upcoming nuptials with the world, there it was staring back at me as I scanned the pages. There are countless examples of companies who have crossed a line. In fairness, sometimes they don’t even know where that line is and possibly haven’t clearly defined the boundaries their customer relationships (see point 1).
If you have the right requirements in place it is easier to determine where to draw the line. It will help you develop standards and policies for how you use the data and inform your customer interactions.
Bottom line, protect those who wish to be protected. Transparency is critical. Help your customers understand how and why their data is used, and show them you will respect their relationship preferences. Respecting the boundaries of a relationship is a key to its success, even if that relationship is temporary.
So, I gave you three tips on developing successful relationships with your customers, do you have a few to add that have worked for you?
