Adding prongs to your customer fork
By Jeff Scherer, associate partner, Callbutton LLC – I just returned from a rather long trip where I attended the Miami Boat Show and the National Automotive Dealers Association (NADA) Conference in Orlando. (To satisfy some common questions, yes, the shows were a bit smaller than in the past, but exhibitors were very upbeat, not shaky and anxiously holding their breath like many expected).
Lead management has been, and still is, my passion, and it was an often-discussed topic among the OEMs and dealers I spoke with at both shows. Unequivocally, the hottest topic by far, however, was that of text messaging.
Anyone who is reading this that has a child or relative (who has a cell phone) who is between 8 and 24 years of age has more than likely experienced this phenomenon in action. Those that don’t have seen kids pounding away on their little keyboards all over the malls, schools, restaurants and anywhere else there is air available. One client recently told me that his daughter said, “Dad, the reason I like texting is that I can decide when the conversation is over!” How true, huh?!
Consumers today all have preferred methods of how they like to communicate and reciprocally how they want to be communicated to. Even my non-technical mother-in-law has added texting to her phone. (That statement right there shows that the heavens have opened up once again for the cellular carriers). The point of this is that even though in many ways texting is still a technology that is looking for an audience, you best get prepared for it as a manufacturer or retailer because it IS coming sooner than later.
As a business that wants to grow and improve the customer experience, you should make sure that you have as many prongs on your consumer fork as possible. Part of your audience wants to talk to you on the phone. Others would rather e-mail you. Others would like to text or chat with you. While corralling these different communication channels may sound intimidating to manage at first blush, it’s really not as complicated as it sounds. Many DMS, lead management and CRM systems today can accommodate customer data from many different sources. Ideally, you would have one system that would allow you to manage all of the communication regardless of the source.
Today’s (and maybe more importantly, tomorrow’s) consumers will continue to define the manner in which THEY want to do business. If a business wants to actually BE consumer-centric, instead of just claiming that in their management meetings, they may need to adapt their practices to suit.
