The holiday season provides us with an excellent opportunity to take stock of our lives, and to appreciate all of the wonderful gifts we've received. And I'm not just referring to the gifts that you got for Christmas - like a dual-zone heated mattress pad or cool LED neck tie with built-in WiFi detector. No, I am also referring to "gifts" such as loved ones: family, friends, and devoted pets. And let's not forget "gifts" like good health, good jobs, and sure - even good wine (such as the delicious bottle of 2005 Seghesio Prati Zinfandel my family recently had the pleasure of enjoying over Christmas dinner).
While we all probably agree that our lives are rich with blessings, I doubt many of us actually know the actual market value of the blessings in our lives (i.e., how much all those blessings would sell for on the open market like eBay). While it might be relatively straight forward for a company to determine its assets and liabilities, how does a person go about calculating the depreciation of a pet, or accounting for goodwill of intangible assets like an eccentric aunt or uncle? So I decided to give it a try. I made a list of my most-prized assets and possessions and put them up for auction on the Internet to see what the blessings in my life were worth. Here's what I came up with:
- Framed "Perfect Attendance" certificate issued by Maplewood Elementary school, second grade.
- Signed 8 X 10 glossy photograph of the complete cast of the 1980's television series "The Dukes of Hazard."
- 15 inch, "Rambo-style" hunting/survival knife circa 1985, complete with liquid-filled compass (though broken and no longer "liquid-filled"), waterproof matches, fishing line and hook, and snakebite kit (only used once).
- Assorted collection of friends and family members in various conditions and ages. Most still in good shape.
After an intense five-day eBay auction in which three bidders (one of whom I suspected was my mother) battled it out, the winning bidder took home the complete lot of items for $17 USD, plus shipping and handling. Cleary I was devastated, as I had always assumed that the treasures of my childhood were priceless, or would fetch millions of dollars from some private collector â€" perhaps an oil-rich Sheik or Sultan, or a Las Vegas casino looking to attract tourists. Luckily for me, the winning bidder was indeed my mother, and all of my prized possessions were saved.
However, the experience got me thinking. As companies, we often tend over-value our products and services. The offerings that we sell obviously have a price tag â€" sometimes even a very large price tag â€" but, our products are NOT our most valuable assets. Rather, our most valuable assets are the relationships that we have with our customers. Too often, when we take inventory of our successes as companies we look mostly at metrics like sales revenue, stock price growth, and peer-group market-share gain. While these indicators tell us how much money we've made, how much our investors made, and how much money we took from competitors, they don't directly tell us about the health of our relationships with our customers.
If we want to improve our customer relationships, we have to work at them â€" like any relationship. In many cases, the advice that relationship coaches and therapists give for improving personal relationships can be applied equally to customer relationships. Ok, so perhaps "never go to bed angry" is not quite so relevant. But advice like "practice open communication" and "set aside time for working on the relationship" is highly applicable.
This year let's all resolve to spend a little more time communicating with our customers. Listening is the first step of course (though it's only the first step). And "listening" can mean anything from rolling out surveys in our contact centers or Web self-service sites, to building integration with online communities and social networking platforms, to physically meeting with customers - at either our place or theirs, or perhaps in a neutral public place where everyone will feel more relaxed and comfortable, like the local conference or convention center.
But listening is only one aspect (albeit a highly important aspect) of improving communication and building better relationships. As any good marriage counselor or relationship coach would advise, companies also need to be open to changing our attitudes and our ways of communicating, when necessary. If, for example, customers start insisting that we engage with them in online communities rather than via our corporate Web sites, then perhaps its time to start listening - and reacting - by shifting some resources from corporate Marketing who maintain the corporate Web site, over to Customer Service who monitor and respond to customer issues on online communities and social Media.
But even if you decide not to take my advice to work on improving your customer relationships this year, whatever you do - don't auction your customers off on eBay to the highest bidder. It's simply not worth it.
Full disclosure: For this week's post, I recycled something that I originally wrote last years. I hope this is acceptable considering that I've been sick with the flu this past week, and since - quite honestly - things really haven't changed that much in the last 365 days; with a few notable exceptions, companies today still have plenty of room to improve in terms of how we manage our customer relationships. In any case, I hope everyone has a great year in 2010 full of success and happiness!