Scaling Customer Obsession In Your Organization, Part 3: Engagement
When a company is first starting out, one of its main goals is to find the right product-market fit. That goal is so important that the founders are actively involved with it at the beginning — and actively engaging their customers to find that fit.
But what happens once the fit is achieved? That’s when the organization starts to scale. Pretty soon, it becomes apparent that the founders cannot keep up with the customer engagement activities they once did. Their role has effectively changed, and they now have other challenges ahead.
This is most likely the point where others will come on board to handle several functions, customer engagement being among them. It’s also the right time to add a dedicated customer research leader.
The issue is that the customer research leader has some pretty big shoes to fill. Engagement used to be something that the company founders did — and probably managed through sheer charisma and force of will alone. The person in this new role has to formalize those processes and ensure that the right information, in the right quantity, comes in to drive product development.
In my last piece, I discussed many of the tools that product leaders have for building a customer-obsessed culture. (Part 1 of this series also discussed the foundation you need for these tools to work, which is the right leadership.) Here, I want to look not just at the tools needed, but the various channels that a new customer “champion” can leverage to begin scaling that customer-obsessed organization.
Are You Actively Engaging Your Customers?
It’s a fair question. Many brands think they are engaging their customers, but what they are really doing is flooding their customers’ inboxes and social media with pre-canned marketing messages.
Engagement is a two-way street, and so it needs to be facilitated in ways that open 2-way communication. Doing so, however, is well worth it; some 63% of marketers say that customer engagement manifests in customer renewals, retention, and repeat purchases for their product.
You can start upping your engagement game with:
A Customer Advisory Board
A customer advisory board is an especially good idea for B2B product companies. Here, the company identifies its top 10–20 highest paying customers critical to the business. These customers are then consulted, with the intent to validate the product strategy and long-term roadmap. It’s also a great vehicle for gathering feedback in a more intimate setting, which companies should do at least once every 6 months.
Companies that have robust customer advisory boards enjoy a 9% surge in new business starting after one year of advisory programs.
A User Research Council
On the other hand, if you have a larger consumer base, or are an SMB product company, a User Research Council might make sense. The idea is to randomly select users from your customer base or target market so that you have a more diverse group of customers. This can help you discover and validate new concepts.
Power Users
All products have power users. Power users tend to be the most vocal customers, and the most motivated to give you feedback. It’s a good idea to stay engaged with them regularly to validate new customer experiences, roadmaps, and release plan activities.
Beta Testers
For a new product or a startup, beta testers play a vital role in the product’s success. Be sure to recruit beta testers who have a real need, who are willing to share feedback, and who are typically early technology adopters.
Online Communities
Once you have multiple products, thousands of users, and hundreds of paid customers, you will need a dedicated online community. These communities are super helpful for answering customer questions, conducting training, sharing product updates, and much more. The online community infrastructure itself can facilitate deeper customer, user engagement.
Online communities have been shown to help organizations improve engagement by up to 21%, and have a strong influence on customer retention.
A Final Word About Customer-obsessed Cultures
In this series, I’ve tried to provide some advice for organizations wanting to create a customer-obsessed culture, as well as a catalog of some of the tools that can get them there.
Honestly, there is no silver bullet to create a customer-obsessed culture. It takes a top-down approach with maniacal focus, great leadership, sustained investment, highly effective tools, and active customer engagement for multiple years to create the desired culture.
It’s no wonder customer-obsessed cultures are so hard to create. But the upside is that they are extremely hard to copy, too. Once established, they present a keen competitive advantage for some time to come.
