Part 2: What is a customer relationship?

The Ongoing Conversation

What happens when you reconnect with a good friend, after not speaking for a month? Do you have to start from scratch and re-introduce yourselves, or are you able to pick up your conversation right where you left off?

Of course, you pick up where you left off. If you couldn't do that, it probably wouldn't be a very strong relationship.

Do you have the same kind of ongoing conversations with your customers? If not, how strong do you think your relationship actually is?

In our last issue, I introduced my definition of a customer relationship, focusing on the second part of the definition:

A relationship is...

... an ongoing conversation with a customer...

... in which the customer never thinks of you without thinking of both of you.

Now, let's look at the first half of the definition, and describe an ongoing conversation.

An ongoing conversation is a seamless dialogue that continues from encounter to encounter in a relationship. This dialogue bridges your encounters, connecting one to the next, creating the ongoing narrative of the relationship.

I have often asked people about the ongoing conversations in their lives. The most typical response is to recognize that many of their personal relationships include ongoing conversations, but that many of their business relationships don't have that kind of continuity, seamlessly flowing from interaction to interaction.

Imagine a conversation with a customer that never stops, smoothly flowing over time, developing and becoming more interesting to both of you as your relationship develops. Wouldn't this make for a better relationship?

Continual vs. continuous conversations

Continual and continuous have different meanings in English. "Continual" refers to a series of repeating events. "Continuous" refers to an uninterrupted, ongoing single event. Your encounters with a customer are, of course, continual -- you are not with each other 24 hours a day! But, your goal is to have an unbroken, continuous conversation with a customer that spans this continual series of encounters.

A lot of this can happen by shifting your mindset. I try, whenever possible, not to think "I discussed topic x with my customer last week, and I when I speak to him next week I want to talk about topic x again." Instead, I like to think, "I am talking about topic x with my customer." I like to imagine this ongoing conversation weaving our different encounters together. Think this: Continual encounters held together by a continuous conversation.

Take Notice

Put your "customer hat" on. Do some companies try to create an ongoing conversation with you? How does it make you feel about them? And, how does it make you feel when a company doesn't try to create any continuity throughout the interactions they have with you?

How do you compare?

How well does your company create ongoing conversations with customers? Do you often make them "start over" and tell you things they already told you?

Try this

As a simple step, try shifting your mindset to think about your conversations with customers as ongoing and continuous. Between your encounters, don't think "We talked about this," think, "We are talking about this."

Why read more about conversations when you can hear me converse about them? Click here to have a look at a short video blog as I muse about a life-long ongoing conversation with a friend.

Enjoy your ongoing conversations!
 

yastrow.com
steve@yastrow.com
P 847-686-0688