9-Step Plan for CEO's to Talk with Your Customers

And now, you CEOs are pressed harder these days than ever before to reach out and connect with your customers. Why? That connection, that bond, that knowledge gleaned from your customers is the source of recurring  revenues, testimonials, word-of-mouth, referrals, upselling, lower advertising costs, greater efficiency in your operations as you target accurately your customers’ needs. That connection is the source, the destination, of your competitive edge.

Few actions flatter a customer more than the CEO of one of their service providers asking to speak with them. Nothing is as effective as YOU, the CEO, hearing in their words, what your customer thinks about your company.

So, how does a CEO begin to reach out and talk with their customers?

Here’s a plan I followed to talk to up 50 customers per month. I needed 30 minutes per day. 



1. Block out 30 minutes daily. I recommend the first hour of every day. Remember: it’s your most important task. Take a list with you when you travel. It’s a good way to spend time between flights.
2. Prepare a list of 5 customers to call the following day. Why 5? Your goal is 2-3. You’ll find phone numbers have changed, contacts have left, extensions changed. Your job is to speak to customers, not update your records. Some days, you’ll speak with 4, other days 0.
3. Search your database. Target a specific customer category: Big billers, newest, oldest, most referrals (You track the source of your referrals, right? ).
4. Review their records. Know their services; understand their relationship with your company before you call. Touch on them during your call. It communicates they are important and you are prepared.
5. Follow-up after each call with an email. Cover the points you discussed. Include your personal contact information. I included my cell phone.
6. Note on the customer record the call and any outstanding issues discussed.
 Note the call even if you reached voice mail.
7. Follow-up with Customer Service or Sales as needed.

Teaser: 30% those customers I spoke with generated interest in other services. Sales happened with 50% of these follow-up calls. Bottomline: It’s worth your time.

Script:

• I introduce myself.
• I apologize for interrupting.
• I assure them I am not calling to sell them something.
• Then, I explain to them the purpose of my call. I want to make sure you are happy with our service or if you’re unhappy, help me understand what we have done and how we can change that.

 I followed up with the Ultimate Question Survey:

• Would you recommend us to a friend or colleague? That is, on a scale of 0-10, how likely is it that you would you recommend us to a friend or colleague?

Based on their response:

• With a customer response of 8-10... I'd ask: What would you say when you recommended us?
• With a customer response of 0 - 6... I'd ask: What do we need to do change your answer to 8 or higher?

Their scores here create their Net Promoter Score. Collectively, they create our corporate Net Promoter Score. Find out more at the Net Promoter Score blog and the book The Ultimate Question Survey.

Note: Our company’s size precluded a full-scale, expensive, third-party survey firm. Regardless, the results from this step with our other customer data far outweighed any possible data distortion.

The results for our company then were:

• A regular source of inspiration and celebration I could share with everyone for their results with our customers
• Regular feedback on steps we could take to improve our service
• Improved upselling, cross-selling
• More referrals
• Greater understanding of the story told in our regular accounting reports including those I discussed at this guest post on SmallBizTrends,

That was worth 30 minutes of my day, regularly.

Disclaimer: there were days or even weeks when I would fail to invest this time. Urgent-Urgent activities pre-empted this. And, honestly, I’d forget. I always regretted it. I always benefited from this investment when it was resumed.