ambassadors – Deep-Insight

How Did We Do?

Posted on May 4, 2021 at 9:39 am.

55 | 55 | 5.9 | 81

Every year we follow our own advice. We ask ourselves and our clients: “How did we do?” Just like our own clients, we never quite know what to expect until all the numbers are in and until we have read all the verbatim comments.

It’s always nerve-wracking waiting for those results to come through. We might think we know what clients are going to say but we’re never 100% certain. It was especially true this year given that the last 12-15 months have been unprecedented. We have all moved to new ways of working. Business is conducted differently these days.

This year, we also spread the net for our Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) assessment very wide. We didn’t just limit it to the key decision makers and teams that we work with on a day-to-day basis. This year we canvassed the views of people who use the outputs of our CRQ and ERQ (Employee Relationship Quality) services. For example: account directors and service managers who use our Account Reports and results to build better relationships with customers; divisional heads who use the outputs to inform strategic direction and investments.

We wanted to understand what they think of the tools and consultation we provide and if it really helps them in their roles.

How did we do?

So how did we do?

And what do those numbers 55, 55, 5.9 and 81 at the start of the blog mean?

55
The first number is our response rate. Fifty five percent of the people we asked gave us 10 minutes of their time and completed the assessment. That’s not bad but could have been higher. Some of our clients achieve response rates of 70% or greater.

55
The second number is our Net Promoter Score. It’s the second time we have scored above 50. The actual breakdown is 58% Promoters; 39% Passives; 3% Detractors and the NPS calculation (percentage or Promoters less the percentage of Detractors) gives us our NPS score of +55.

5.9
The third is our CRQ score and that’s the second highest we have ever achieved. It’s on a 1 to 7 scale. An typical CRQ score for a European B2B company is a little above 5. A score of 6 is almost impossible to achieve (at least in Europe!)

81
The final number is the percentage of Ambassadors we have. In many ways, this is the most important number of all. It means that four out of every five clients believes that Deep-Insight offers something truly unique. You trust us and you think our service is second-to-none. This bodes well for long-term relationships with each of these clients.

Our New Approach – Workshops and Support

These are some of the best scores we have ever achieved and when we read through the verbatims, it’s clear to me that one of the key reasons for the high scores is the fact that over the past 12 months we have changed the way we work with clients.

In the past, you told us you needed more consulting support to get the maximum benefit from the customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) programmes we run for you. In particular, you asked us to provide more consultancy support in turning insights into action. We now do that by:

Running workshops to ‘onboard’ the leadership teams to the CX or EX programmes
Holding CX workshops with customer-facing teams before we ever think about contacting your clients and staff
Spending more time with account directors/ service managers to get commitments from customers to provide feedback
Doing the same after that feedback has been given and collated – to ‘close the loop’ with those customers

It was a new process for us last year and you are now telling us that it works. We thought it might, given that we have 20 years of experience in helping companies build and run CX and EX programmes. But we honestly didn’t know until we asked you.

“Are we there yet?”

While we’re really proud of these scores and the comments that accompanied them, no, we’re not there yet. Here are three things we need to do to get there over the next year:

Engage with clients/ individuals who did not provide feedback. While 55% is a decent response rate, a few of our clients gave us a limited amount of feedback. I’m pretty sure that, had they completed the survey last month, our scores would be lower. I believe we still have some work to do to improve the relationship quality with these clients so I will personally be reaching out in the coming days to talk to them about where we may be falling short.

Consider even more CX and EX support. You have asked for even more help to turn insights into action with your customers. We are committed to helping you achieve that, and will pick up the subject with you when we meet with you to ‘close the loop’ on this year’s client assessment.

‘Closing the Loop’ with our own clients. The final thing we need to do with all of our clients is to discuss their own specific feedback on our performance with them. We will be in touch shortly with each one of our clients. We will be asking for time to discuss each client’s specific results and feedback. Our objective is to agree a set of actions with each client that will improve the value we deliver in the coming 12 months. I’m personally looking forward to those conversations.

Thank you again – and expect a call from us

Finally, I genuinely appreciate the time you have taken to give us your feedback.

I must also say a big thank you to our own team in Deep-Insight who have managed to weather the stormy waters of the last 12-15 months. They continue to deliver an excellent service to our clients (your words, not just mine). In particular, I need to thank James Kind for planning, organising and running this year’s “Deep-Insighting Ourselves” assessment.

James joined us in March last year and no sooner had he stepped inside our offices, we shut them down due to COVID. Like many other people out there, James knows his colleagues primarily through Teams and Zoom meetings. I’ve been impressed at how he – and everybody else in Deep-Insight and our clients – has adapted to working from a laptop in an attic, shed, kitchen or bedroom.

In the coming months, all that will change as vaccines get rolled out globally. I don’t believe we’ll ever go back to our old ways of working but that might not be a bad thing.

So, well done James, and thank you to all of our clients. We’ll be in touch with you shortly to discuss your results and agree some follow-up actions.

John O’Connor
CEO, Deep-Insight

What Do I do with my Ambassadors?

Posted on July 3, 2020 at 3:08 pm.

Written by Alexandra Calugarici

Some time ago, we posted a blog called Help! What do I do with my Stalkers and Opponents? It was about the actions that account teams need to take with clients where there are very poor relationships. This blog is about the accounts with the best, strongest and deepest relationships. We call these clients Ambassadors.

Let’s start with a quick recap of the five B2B client categories that we use at Deep-Insight:

Customer Relationship Quality – the Strongest Relationships

The most loyal clients are Ambassadors. They are your most valuable customers. Ambassadors have a unique relationship with you and will recommend you to others. They are also prepared to pay a premium for your products or services. Price is not an important consideration for them because of the quality of the relationship. Typically, a third of most company’s B2B clients are Ambassadors.

The next segment of clients are known as Rationals. They rate you positively but do not see anything unique in the relationship. Rationals will assess alternative sources of supply and the relationship can become unstable if good alternative offers exist. Typically, half of your B2B accounts fit into this category. Generally they are good clients albeit not as loyal as Ambassadors.

The Weakest Relationships

But wait! That doesn’t add up to 100%. What’s the story with the others? Well, the answer is that in all B2B client portfolios, there are accounts and individuals that don’t love you. We typically find that 10-20% of accounts have poorer relationships with you and fit into one of the following three categories:

Ambivalents often have a “love/hate” relationship with you. In some instances, they love the way you solve their problems but hate the way you treat them. More often, you are killing them with kindness but failing to solve their business issues.

Stalkers are often only interested in price. Sometimes they can be large corporate accounts looking for discounts. Other times, they are smaller accounts with high service requirements and view your offering as poor value for money.

Opponents have the poorest relationships with you. They are deeply dissatisfied and often highly frustrated by what they see as consistently poor service.

Are ‘Ambassadors’ the same thing as ‘Promoters’?

If you use Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a performance metric, you’ll recognise the terms Promoters, Passives and Detractors.

Promoters are people who score you 9/10 or 10/10 when asked the question “Would you recommend [Company X] to a friend or colleague?” Passives score you 7 or 8. Detractors score you anywhere between 0 and 6.

Ambassadors are similar but here are the two crucial differences: First, an Ambassador is a company rather than an individual. Second, to become an Ambassador you have to get a good Net Promoter Score AND a good Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) score. CRQ is our methodology for assessing the quality of B2B relationships and it is based on Trust and Commitment as well as some other factors, rather than Advocacy which is what the NPS metric is based on.

Think of it this way. Suppose you ask 20 people in a Key Account what they think of their relationship with you and would they be prepared to recommend you and your product or service. If the client is an Ambassador, 12 of the 20 individuals might be Promoters, six might be Passives and two might be Detractors. The overall relationship is great but there are still a couple of individuals who will not recommend you.

What do I do with my Ambassadors

For starters, sales and account teams should remember the following three things when they have an Ambassador client:

1. Recognise their importance and don’t take them for granted

The very first thing is to recognise that Ambassadors are generally your most profitable clients, for a number of reasons:

– They are typically less price-sensitive because they see what you offer as being unique.
– Ambassadors are generally willing to pay a premium for such uniqueness.
– Sales costs are lower. Less effort is required to extend existing contracts or negotiate new ones.
– There is less firefighting. Putting out fires can be expensive. Even when things go wrong, it’s generally easier to resolve operational issues with Ambassadors.

Don’t rest on your laurels. Don’t treat Ambassadors as cash cows. Invest time into the relationship to keep it fresh and exciting. It’s easy to get diverted to more problematic accounts where the shouting is the loudest. In our previous blog we talked about poor client relationships that are unprofitable. Unless there is a clear path to recovery, it is often better to re-allocate those resources to Ambassador clients where there is greater potential.

2. Ask them to recommend you

Remember that a high proportion of individuals in an Ambassador client are Promoters so they have already told you that they will recommend you. So take them up on the offer. Ask them for referrals. Those referrals could be the MDs of other divisions in the same company. This is important – it’s easier to expand your footprint in an existing client than to gain ‘new logo’ clients. Referrals could also be senior executives in other companies. Ask for testimonials or for case studies.

Trustmary is a Finnish company that helps clients do exactly that, by using Net Promoter Score as the key metric for identifying Ambassadors for their clients. Once the Ambassadors have been identified, Trustmary acquires testimonials in written or video format from those individuals.

Don’t be afraid to ask Ambassadors to talk at your next industry event or to be a guest speaker at your next conference. They want to help you. So just do it.

3. Start innovating and co-creating

As the account manager for an Ambassador client, you are probably in the enviable position of being a Trusted Advisor. You have the ear of the key decision makers in that account and the opportunity to bring new ideas and propositions to the table. Use that opportunity. Think of possible joint developments that you can do in partnership with the client. As well as adding more value and revenues, your next product line or service could result from such innovation or co-creation.

How many Ambassadors do you have?

The starting point for these decisions is an accurate and objective view of which category each of your major accounts fits into. Once you know that, you can start asking the right questions and taking the appropriate action.

Contact us if you want to find out how many Ambassadors you have!

John O’Connor interviewed on “Down To Business” with Bobby Kerr

Posted on September 16, 2019 at 5:40 pm.

Written by Rose Murphy

Last Saturday, our CEO John O’Connor was interviewed on Newstalk’s Down To Business weekend radio programme about his new book Customer At The Heart. If you missed the show, here’s that conversation between Bobby and John again.

Quite a few topics were covered in the short interview with Bobby Kerr. The one that I enjoyed most was the concept of “sacking the customer” – being honest about when you can’t service particular clients and choosing instead to concentrate on customers where you know you can excel.

Feel free to get in touch with us if you want to hear more about Deep-Insight’s work in helping CEOs create customer-centric organisations. And if you want to find out more about dealing with clients that are Opponents and Stalkers, just click here for another blog on the topic.

Craig Johnson
Customer Relationship Advisor, Deep-Insight

Customer At The Heart

Bobby Kerr: A lot of words have been said and written about putting the customer first but many businesses and business leaders struggle to move away from product and technology-based models to ones that are truly customer-centric. So how hard can it actually be? John O’Connor is the CEO of Cork-based company Deep-Insight and he is the co-author of Customer At The Heart: how B2B leaders build successful customer-centric organisations. John, you’re very welcome to the programme. Tell me a little about your background and what inspired you to write this customer-centric book.

John O’Connor: First of all, you need to be a big mad to write a business book. I was saying earlier that we’re not going to knock Margaret Atwood off the top of the Amazon charts even though the book is available on Amazon. So why did we write the book? One question has been rattling around in my mind for the last 15 years that I’ve been running Deep-Insight. At Deep-Insight, we gather feedback for Business-to-Business (B2B) customers with the objective of getting our clients to use that feedback to build deeper client relationships. Sometimes we tell our clients “You’ve got a fantastic set of customers who love you to death.” Other times it’s a case of: “They hate your service and want to move away from you”. In that second case, it seems phenomenally difficult for our clients to move the dial and really improve their customer scores. Or if they can improve, it takes them a long, long time. So the question we had in our minds was: “Why does it take so long, and what is it that you have to do to transform an organisation to be truly customer-centric?”

Bobby: I once worked with a guy who used to tell me that a customer was somebody that allows you to make a profit. That was his definition of a customer. If you have a customer that doesn’t allow you to make a profit – because they are high-maintenance, they take up time, you have to manage them and you find that you can’t make a profit – how do you deal with that situation?

How to ‘Sack A Customer’

John: So here’s a little trick. You’ll find that in any portfolio of customers, probably a third are ‘Ambassadors’ for you and another 40 or 50 percent are good ‘Rational’ customers. Then a small percentage are what we call ‘Ambivalents’, ‘Stalkers’ or ‘Opponents’. What you should do is take your Opponents by the hand and walk them down to your competitor’s office and say “There you go…”

Bobby: “…here’s the guy you’ve been looking for…”

John: Yes. Basically you should not be afraid of sacking customers that you can’t service properly.

Bobby: So it’s almost like putting your hands up and saying “You know what, you’d be better off going elsewhere” and hoping that they will go elsewhere and cost your competitor money?

John: It is. But if you have those hard conversations… honest conversations… with the customer, either you will turn that relationship around or they’ll move off and allow you to spend time with the clients that you can really do some good for.

Getting your clients to design your products

Bobby: It’s interesting what you say, John. You know, we look at customers almost on a product basis. In other words: I make this product, I sell it to the customer, I’m finished with him now I want to find the next customer. Once the sale is made, that’s the end of the journey. But it’s only really the beginning. Is that right?

John: Yes, but but it’s also the wrong starting point for the journey. If you have a product-centric mindset, you are basically building something that you hope somebody is going to buy. A much better way is working with your customers to try to craft the next generation of products or the next set of widgets that you’re going to manufacture. Because once they are manufactured, the client has already bought them. After all, they’ve actually help you to design them in the first place. And very few companies have figured out how to do that properly.

Customer-Centred Leaders

Bobby: And when you talk about leadership, what are the customer-centred leadership traits that you would see in an organisation.

John: First of all I would say but if you haven’t got good leadership in an organisation, you’re never going to transform the company to being customer centric. The companies that have done very well are ones where you have a really, really passionate leader who does put the customer at the heart of everything. The second thing is that they intuitively understand that by doing the right thing for the customer, the profits will follow. The third thing is they are also very good at executing a plan or a strategy to put the customer at the heart of everything. Now they can be ‘Big Picture’ people but they know how to put together a team that will get things done, and will be relentless about making sure that it happens.

Bobby: When you look at the challenges of big organisations like utility companies, banks… you know: those organisations that everybody loves to hate where they provide a service based automated telephone answering machines… How can those organisations become customer-centric in a real way?

John: Well the focus of our book was business-to-business organisations. We were very lucky and got to talk to people like Gavin Patterson, the CEO of BT but it was very much on the B2B side of things. We talked to David Thodey in Australia who was CEO of Telstra, their biggest telecommunications company. We talked to people in eBay, HP and Atos but the focus was really more on B2B. Regardless of the industry, you can be either very customer-centric or not at all. And if you’re not at all customer-centric, that’s a pretty difficult place to be.

Culture change

Bobby: When you talk about culture in a company, the culture can sometimes turn sour. How can you use the customer to enact change in the company’s culture?

John: Well, one of the other traits of being a good customer-centric leader is that you never let a good crisis go to waste. A lot of good leaders will use the customer as a platform to try to change the culture of the organisation. They’re constantly talk about the last customer visit that they had, the last product that they developed in conjunction with that customer. By continually doing that and by getting the customer into every discussion, people in organisations will start to follow the direction of their leaders.

Bobby: And finally, John, is it true that if you can get the customer to be your ambassador – in other words, the customer is talking about your business being the best business known to man – that’s the most powerful advocate that you can have? It trumps any advertising or any marketing that any company could do?

John: Absolutely. We called those ‘Ambassadors’ and as I said, about a third of your customers should be ‘Ambassadors.’ Even if another 40% are ‘Rationals’ who don’t believe you are truly “unique” but they are good customers all the same, those Ambassadors and Rationals are the clients that will deliver your sales for the rest of this year and into the following years.

Bobby: Well it’s a fascinating subject. John O’Connor is the CEO of Cork-based company Deep-Insight and the co-author of that new book on customer centric organisations. Thanks very much for joining us, John.

5 Actions to Improve your Net Promoter Score

Posted on September 14, 2017 at 1:18 pm.

Written by John O'Connor

Some years ago, the focus of NPS discussions changed. At least, in the USA they did. It used to be: “How do I measure NPS?” and now it’s: “How do I improve my Net Promoter Score?”

Remember that Net Promoter Score is an American metric for customer advocacy. Europe is still a few years behind the USA. The topic of how to improve NPS results will dominate executive leadership discussions in Europe for the next few years. If you’re a leader in a European B2B company that is already measuring NPS, this blog is for you. It’s about the 5 actions to improve your Net Promoter Score.

Insight from a Decade’s Worth of B2B NPS Data

Deep-Insight has been gathering NPS data since 2006. We gathered this data from B2B firms operating across a variety of different industries in over 80 countries. A few years ago, we integrated NPS into our Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) methodology. We now have tens of thousands of data points – exclusively from B2B companies – showing which items are strongly correlated with NPS and which are not.

A quick word on our terminology:

We call accounts where you have the strongest and deepest relationships Ambassadors. An Ambassador typically has many ‘Promoters’ and few ‘Detractors’. We call companies at the other end of the relationship spectrum Stalkers and Opponents. These accounts typically have few ‘Promoters’ and large numbers of ‘Detractors’.

The pie chart on the right shows a client portfolio for a typical European B2B organisation. Most accounts have good relationships, and a third have excellent relationships.

As the graphic on the left shows, the key elements of any business relationship are Trust, Commitment and Satisfaction. Each of these elements is highly correlated with a customer’s willingness to recommend. In other words, their willingness to give you a good Net Promoter Score.

Trust, Commitment and Satisfaction are only the outcomes of other elements of performance so we need to delve deeper. By doing so, we’ll find out which areas to concentrate on in order to improve a company’s Net Promoter Score.

5 Actions to Improve your Net Promoter Score

Based on more than a decade’s worth of data, we know the five key actions to improve your Net Promoter Score.

First things first. Any large account is likely to have a combination of Promoters, Passives and Detractors. Different strategies are required for dealing with each category. The actions required to turn Detractors into Passives are not the same as the actions required to turn Passives into Promoters.

Here’s a quick summary of those 5 actions.

Turn Detractors into Passives

1. MAKE YOUR CUSTOMERS FEEL VALUED. The one thing you should do, above everything else, to turn Detractors into Passives is to have empathy with them. Show a willingness to engage. Listen to them and make them feel valued. People give extremely low advocacy scores (0 – 3 out of 10) when they feel unloved and frustrated. Unloved because they are ignored. Frustrated because they believe you are not interested in solving their problems. Even if there is little you can do immediately to fix their problems, tell them that you understand how they feel. Let them know you will do your utmost to address their issues. But be honest. If it’s going to take six months, don’t say six weeks.

Convert Passives into Promoters

2. DIFFERENTIATE YOURSELF FROM YOUR COMPETITORS. The more you differentiate yourself from the competition, the more you will be seen as ‘Leading Edge’. Our analysis tells us that if you are perceived as a leading-edge company, your NPS score will be higher. By the way, there’s no point in trying to discuss innovation with Detractors. They’re not in listening mode. What they want is for you to address their immediate problems. Do that and you will earn the right to chat about innovation. Not before.
3. PROVIDE VALUE FOR MONEY. This is linked to the previous point. The more differentiated you are and the more unique your offering is, the greater the value you deliver to your clients. Passives think you provide good value for money. Promoters think you provide excellent value for money. Price is rarely the issue. Focus of what you can do to increase the value of what you deliver rather than on the price at which you deliver it.

Actions – All Customers

4. MAKE IT EASY FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS TO DO BUSINESS WITH YOU. Regardless of whether you are a Promoter, Passive or Detractor, there is a high correlation between ‘Ease of Doing Business’ and NPS. Become less bureaucratic. Break down the silos between departments. Build cross-functional teams. Look at your processes and simplify them. Get your clients involved. Just ask them – they want to be included.
5. BE PROACTIVE. Customers want you to respond quickly and effectively to their needs. That means not just reacting to problems as they occur. It means anticipating problems BEFORE they occur. That’s what good account management is all about.

If you’re interested in turning NPS data into a full-fledged Customer Experience (CX) programme that improves retention rates and revenues, get in touch with us. We’d love to hear from you.

Help! What Do I do with my Stalkers and Opponents?

Posted on February 16, 2015 at 2:49 pm.

Written by John O'Connor

If you’re a typical B2B company, the chances are that you have good or excellent relationships with the majority of your clients. But you will also have clients where your relationship is not as strong. At Deep-Insight we help you understand these client relationships by segmenting them based on the strength of their relationship with you.

Here are the five categories we use:

Customer Relationship Quality – the Strongest Relationships

The most loyal client category is the Ambassador segment. Ambassadors are your most valuable customers. They have a unique relationship with you and will recommend you to others. They are also prepared to pay a premium for your products or services – price is not an important consideration for them because of the quality of the relationship. Typically, a third of your clients are Ambassadors.

The next segment of clients are known as Rationals. They rate you positively but do not see anything unique in the relationship. Rationals will take their time to assess alternative sources of supply and the relationship can become unstable if good alternative offers exist. Typically, half of your key B2B accounts fit into this category. Generally they are good clients albeit not as loyal as Ambassadors.

The Weakest Relationships

But wait! That doesn’t add up to 100%. What’s the story with the others?

Well, the answer is that in all B2B account portfolios, there are clients that don’t love you that much. We typically find that 10-20% of accounts have poorer relationships with you and fit into one of the following three categories:

Ambivalents often have a “love/hate” relationship with you. In some instances, they love the way you solve their problems but hate the way you treat them. More often, you are killing them with kindness but failing to solve their business issues. You may think the relationship is strong but you don’t really understand their issues and can’t propose business solutions to move their business forward.

Stalkers are often only interested in price. Sometimes they can be large corporate accounts looking for special offers and discounts. Other times, they are smaller accounts that view your services as poor value for money. Stalkers see nothing unique in the relationship and often have very high service requirements. They play different competitors against each other and do not generate a positive value for your portfolio.

Opponents have the poorest relationships with you. They are deeply dissatisfied and often highly frustrated by what they see as consistently poor service. Opponents have a negative relationship with the company and generate negative value. They can sometimes be won back if the reason for their dissatisfaction is identified and addressed but, in many cases, the relationship has broken down irretrievably and they can not be won back.

Managing Ambassadors

Before we look at how to manage Stalkers and Opponents – the main point of this blog – one quick point about how to manage Ambassadors. Ambassadors are willing to recommend you. So ask them for testimonials. Trustmary is a Finnish company that helps clients do exactly that using Net Promoter Score as the key metric for identifying Ambassadors.

Don’t be afraid to ask Ambassadors for testimonials or for introductions into other businesses. They want to help you. So just do it.

Managing Stalkers and Opponents

So what to do with these poorer-value relationships, particularly Stalkers and Opponents?

Three things:

1. Decide if you want to keep them or fire them

It may sound strange to talk about ‘firing’ clients but sometimes there are clients that can not be serviced effectively or profitably. Sometimes their expectations are too high, or the fit between their needs and your products or services is limited. In such cases, it’s valid to ask the question “Would we both be better off if we ended the relationship?” The big advantage about firing customers is that it frees up sales and account management time. This time can be used for more profitable activities such as cross-selling and upselling to Ambassadors, or for converting Rationals into Ambassadors.

2. If the answer is FIRE THEM, find a ‘beautiful exit’

Stalkers and Opponents have a corrosive influence on your company. They sap energy and consume resources that can be better used elsewhere. They also have a corrosive influence on other clients as they spread a negative message about your capabilities and services. Have that tough conversation with the client before the situation deteriorates, and help them move to a competitor. Do it cleanly and professionally. Find what Finnish Business Professor Kimmo Alajoutsijarvi refers to as a Beautiful Exit to the relationship – a disengagement that “minimises damage to the disengager, the other party, and the connected business network.”

3. If the answer is KEEP THEM, put a proper recovery plan in place

Many of Deep-Insight’s clients will put a Service Improvement Plan (SIP) in place for poor-scoring accounts, typically Opponents or Stalkers. These SIPs involve a significant increase in service support to that client. They also require an open and honest conversation between the Account Director and the most senior people in the client organisation. In large complex B2B client relationships, changes in behaviour are typically required on both sides to bring the relationship back on an even keel again. Don’t be afraid of saying to your client: “We’re committed to making improvements on our side, but we need you to do X and Y for this relationship to work.” (more…)