Account Management | Page 4 of 5

Welcoming our New Team Members

Posted on July 25, 2019 at 2:49 pm.

WELCOMING OUR NEW TEAM MEMBERS

We have some new faces in Deep-Insight. They bring an exciting mix of talents and interests and are already adding value to the company and what we can do for our customers.

Here in Deep-Insight, we take our time with recruitment. We understand that getting the right fit for our company and for the roles is so much more important than filling a position quickly. This approach has paid off more than we hoped for and we are delighted and privileged to have these individuals join our team.

Fabienne Falvay – Project Coordinator

Fabienne is originally from the Netherlands but has been studying and working abroad for the past number of years. After spending time in New Zealand and Denmark she moved to Ireland in 2016. She has been working at Deep-Insight since March 2019 as one of our Project Coordinators.

Fabienne comes from an analytical background and has a passion for working with people and large sets of data. In her spare time, she likes to cook and work on design projects with her sewing machine.

Meghan Clune – Project Coordinator

Meghan Clune originates from Cork, enjoys travelling and exploring new and different cultures. Meghan has completed a BA in Business Studies in Cork Institute of Technology and has worked for companies in varying different industries with a background in fraud analytics, crisis management and onboarding.

Meghan gets excited about innovative thinking and creative problem solving, she has previously managed strategic projects that focus on improving employee engagement within organisations.

Shane O’Regan – Project Coordinator

Shane O’Regan is a project management professional who is driven to understand, enable and enhance the human aspect of organisational transformation. Shane hails from Cork, Ireland and has lived in Chicago and Seattle while working in radio and completing a BA in Communication and an MA in Digital Anthropology.

Shane is interested in design, urbanism, psychology, digital ethics and the relationship between people and technology.

Craig Johnson – CRQ Advisor

Craig Johnson was born in New Zealand and has been living in Ireland for the last five years with his Irish wife and two children.

Craig’s professional background is in key client relationship management, having worked in the financial and outsourcing sectors internationally for the last fifteen years.

How to Use Trust DNA™ for Business Development

Posted on August 16, 2018 at 1:11 pm.

Written by Mark Hollyoake

Mark Hollyoake is a co-founder and director of Customer Attuned – a UK partner of Deep-Insight – and is the author of this guest blog. Mark is currently studying for his Doctorate at Southampton University, focused on Trust as a dynamic within business-to-business customer relationships. He is an expert in B2B Customer Experience (CX) and Customer Management (CM). This includes CM strategy development; execution of improvement plans including organisational modelling for customer management); programme design; and partnership & alliance development.

Like our personal world, business to business can also be surrounded by fake news, false claims, unethical behaviours and self interest. Never has there been a time when trust has been so important. It has been proven to have a positive impact on relationship development and performance. It is a fundamental element to the development of a long lasting B2B relationship. With the need for trust being at an all time high, how can I ensure my B2B relationship is trustworthy and how can I use trust to build and develop it?

During my Doctoral research, I have investigated many models and frameworks devoted to systematically growing trust within B2B. The majority of these focus on the interface between customer management and customer experience with varying degrees of competence and rigour. No doubt, your existing customer plans will be built on some of these findings.

What none of them have done to date is to analyse the available data on trust and synthesize the research to develop a cohesive framework that systematically enables B2B organisations to develop and apply Trust to a real life business to business relationship – or ‘in short’ create a whole organisation systematic approach. Doing this, gives organisations the advantage of being able to quickly identify areas where you have strong applications of Trust (interdependence) or less bonded relationships (transactional).

We have been working with B2B customer relationships for over 30 years and studying trust as an integral element of B2B relationship development for the last 20 years. Building on our practical, pragmatic and applied academic research / thinking we developed a B2B model for trust. The Trust DNA™ model has emerged from my doctoral research and a recent re-defining of trust within a B2B context (Hollyoake, Ashleigh & Higgs 2017) that develops the elements of the definition into the Truscould apply to a real live business to business relationship.

We unpack the model and explore each element, allowing you to see how it applies to one of your customer relationships

-Intentions (I), the expectations you hold for the relationship, how much you plan to get involved and strategic focus? In, essence, what’s your appetite for risk with this customer?

-Ability (A) How good are you at what you do? This relates to your competence and capability in your sector, category and/or market? This covers not only your products, solutions, services, but the people that interface within the relationship.

-Credibility (C) This is often glossed over as reputation. In this context it’s a lot more encompassing, how commitments are met – do you do what you say? How does the organization act within the relationship and the level of integrity?

Within B2B relationships, it can be the partner’s credibility within a sector and/or category, market to realise value from the relationship, for example Airbus approaching an engineering company to make plane parts, exploring development of a plane and their part in the process would come with a lot of credibility.

Mutual Value (Mv) Within the relationship, does the level of mutual commercial benefit appear fair? Do you see a level of benevolence in the relationship and the dealings between both sides.

Interdependence (In) What level of interdependence do you see within the relationship. The level of joint working, co-creation, co-location and joint business planning.

Time/Repeatability (T) How long has the relationship been in existence? How often do both sides transact or formally review the relationship?

With the Trust DNA™ established, it is possible to evaluate your relationship and the level of trust that exists. This then leads to the possibility of predicting the mutual value potential you could achieve from a customer relationship by developing different elements of this.

The output from your TRUST DNA™ assessment allows you to identify what you could do to develop and build the relationship and how you could pro-actively use trust building. i.e. you could find the scoring is down around interdependence, this may be as simple as working in their office once a week. It might come out at a more advanced level, which may require the development of a co-created joint business plan. This is just one of numerous example of how the TRUST DNA™ can be pro-actively applied to develop your business.

How do I know this works?

It’s been proven through academic research.
It’s been proven through practical application.

Would you like to know more?

Contact Mark Hollyoake here.

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.

It’s Good to Talk

Posted on October 11, 2016 at 1:34 pm.

Written by John O'Connor

It’s Good to Talk. If you’re as old as I am, you’ll remember the British Telecom (as BT was then known) TV adverts with this tagline. It was an incredibly effective advertising campaign which helped change consumers’ perceptions of the organisation.

As it so happens, the same tagline is relevant to the sales and account management communities too. Let me explain by using an example from the corporate banking world.

Relationship Managers

Corporate banks don’t employ account managers to manage their major accounts. They employ Relationship Managers or RMs. Words are important. Banks tend to take business relationships more seriously than other industries. This is partly because an intimate knowledge of the customer is critical when making lending decisions.

One of our clients is a large European bank. The MD of the Corporate and Business Banking division prides himself on the level of service provided to his customers. For him, service begins with regular contact. The vast majority of corporate and business clients see their RM every three months or more frequently.

The MD asked us to test this, so we did. We asked his clients how frequently they saw their RM. A small percentage (4%) of the bank’s clients claim they never saw their RM and a similar number said they met the RM annually. 9% saw their RM every six months; 22% every 3 months and the majority (56%) said that their RM was in contact with them on a more frequent basis.

What we hadn’t predicted was that frequency of contact has a huge impact on the quality of the banking relationship. We call this Customer Relationship Quality. It also has a huge impact on the bank’s Net Promoter Score (NPS).

It really is good to talk

A quick analysis of Net Promoter Scores by frequency of contact is telling.

The bank’s overall Net Promoter Score is 28% which, for European B2B companies is good (see another blog here).

When RM visits are conducted only on an annual basis, or not at all, the Net Promoter Score is deeply negative – minus 70% for the 4% of clients who claim they never see their RM.

However, for the majority of clients who are in contact with their Relationship Manager every 1-2 months, the Net Promoter Score is a whopping +51%.

There is a very simple message here. If you want to have better relationships with your clients, go and talk to them more frequently than you currently do.

Get in touch with us today if you want to find out a little more about customer centricity.

Why Sample Sizes are Nonsense (in the B2B World)

Posted on January 26, 2016 at 1:37 pm.

Written by John O'Connor

Most of Deep-Insight’s work is based on helping large international B2B organisations run effective Customer Experience (CX) programmes.

The key to running a good CX programme is understanding how to change the culture of an organisation to make it truly customer-centric, and that has to be based on regular high-quality conversations – both formal and informal – with your B2B clients.

Without regular client feedback, sales directors and account teams will not be in a position to address small issues before they escalate to a point where they damage or destroy the client relationship.

When we plan Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ™) assessments for our clients, one of the questions I regularly get asked is “How many of our clients should we sample?” The stock answer that I’ve been using for the past decade is “Think Census, Not Sample”. In other words, get feedback from your entire client base – every single one – and it’s the answer I still use.

It’s not meant to be a glib response but there are a few subtleties underpinning the answer that are worth exploring.

TRADITIONAL APPROACH TO SAMPLING

Many market research and customer insight people – even in B2B organisations – tend to approach the subject of customer feedback from a consumer perspective, where there are tried and trusted approaches for surveying large customer bases, or “populations” to use the technical term. If you’re not that familiar with these approaches or terminology like random sampling, margins of error and confidence levels, have a look at the Box below.

MARGINS OF ERROR, CONFIDENCE LEVELS AND SAMPLE SIZES – TRADITIONAL APPROACH

If you’re not a market researcher or statistician, don’t worry – there are plenty of good primers on the Internet explaining the basics of sampling techniques and associated terms – here’s one from YouGov.

You’ll also find several handy little calculators on the Internet (here’s a link to one) which let you know how many respondents are required for a particular population (customer base) in order to give a confidence level and margin of error. From this, it’s easy to calculate the number of individuals you need to invite to participate in a survey in order to get a robust answer.

Most opinion polls are conducted with a random sample of at least 1,000 people and here’s the reason why: pollsters like to be confident that their results are within a margin of error of 3% or less. Supposing the voting population in a country is 10 million people. Plug that number into our online calculator and we see that a 3% margin of error and a confidence level of 95% requires a sample of 1,067.

All that is fine if you’re working in a consumer environment or if you have tens (or hundreds) of thousands of SME customers. However, the traditional sampling techniques have less value when you are a B2B organisation and the vast proportion of revenues is generated by a handful of large clients. There may be a “long tail” of smaller customers but in most cases the Pareto Principle applies, whereby 80% of revenues are generated by 20% of clients. In some cases, the ratio can be 90/10 rather than 80/20. In such cases, the old traditional sampling approach needs to be chucked out of the nearest window and a different set of principles applied.

THE DEEP-INSIGHT APPROACH – FOLLOW THE MONEY

Our approach is to be pragmatic and follow the money – concentrate on those clients that generate the majority of the revenues, and do a ‘deep dive’ into those relationships.

It’s probably easier to explain using an example.

Case Study – Large UK Services Company
Revenues: Over £1 billion
Key Clients: 100
One of Deep-Insight’s UK clients has over 10,000 employees and generates annual revenues in excess of £1 billion. However, its customer base is actually quite small and the contracts it has with these key clients are extremely large. The company has several hundred clients in total but the vast majority of its revenues come from the ‘Top 100’ and even among the ‘Top 100’ the revenues are skewed heavily towards the 10 largest clients.

So how do you run a CX programme when your client base looks like this? In that particular case, the company has chosen to focus exclusively on its ‘Top 100′ clients. Purists might argue that this is not representative of the full customer base. This may well be true but it definitely is representative of the full revenue base, and that’s the commercial perspective of “following the money.”

From a pragmatic perspective, it makes little sense to take a sample of the Top 100 clients. You should attempt to get feedback from every single one and ideally you want to get a wide representation of views from across each of those 100 clients.

Even from a statistical perspective, it makes little sense to sample – if you need convincing, have a look at the second Box below.

APPLYING THE DEEP-INSIGHT APPROACH

Suppose there are 10 key individuals (at most) in each ‘Top 100’ client whose feedback is really “important” (in other words, the decision-makers who will renew the current contract when it’s up for renewal) that’s still only a population of 1,000 individuals across your Top 100 clients – run the numbers and you’ll see that you need to include all, in order to get a statistically significant sample.

Let’s plug those figures from our Case Study into the online calculator and see what happens.

For a population of 1,000 decision-makers, we need 278 responses to get a robust score (robust being a margin of error of 5% and a confidence level of 95%). Deep-Insight will typically achieve completion rates of 35-40% from its online B2B assessments so that means we need to invite 700-800 of those 1,000 key individuals to participate.

If you think a margin of error of 5% is too high, then plug in 3% into the online calculator. Now the number of responses jumps to 517 out of 1,000. This means you DEFINITELY need to invite all 1,000 to participate to get anywhere near your target margin of error.

Successful CX programmes in B2B companies are not built around statistics. They are built around empowering staff and providing account managers with all the customer feedback they need to manage client relationships more effectively. That means getting feedback from ALL individuals in those key clients and working really hard with the account teams to get participation and completion rates as high as possible.

So when you’re planning your next Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ™) assessment, remember to get the account managers involved and “Think Census, Not Sample”.