Too close to the Customer?

When Close can become Too Close
By Paul Herbig

By now my readers should know the key word in my vocabulary: customers. Know them. Understand them. Keep close to them. I believe in it and that is why I preach it every week. However, a caveat to that axiom does exist and all businesspersons must be aware of the danger therein. How close is close? How close to your customer do you want to be? Can too much become too close? The answer is yes.

The correct analogy here is a spouse or best friend. As much as you may enjoy each other’s company (and if you are married, it should be often and much), undoubtably severe strains will occur if it is on a 24/7 basis. As much as you enjoy each other, it is a necessity to have some time apart. The same goes for business and customers. The boss may love Nordstrom’s, enjoy getting their catalogs, and going to their stores when she is in a metro area that has one; however, she doesn’t want to eat, sleep, and drink Nordstrom’s nor does she want to think about it all the time. And ditto for all other businesses and all other industries.

The current rage is called CRM (Customer Relationship Management) whereupon the business keeps a database of its customers and from this database information can be gleamed that will help the business better understand a particular business. Amazon does this by examining previous books a customer has ordered and determining a pattern in the ordering behavior. It then will create a pop-up that says you have ordered previous books like this one; if you liked them you will like this one as well. Some like that feature, some thinks it protrudes on one’s privacy and individual choices. If Domino’s did likewise, it would analyze your pattern of ordering and after a while would ring you up on Friday at 5:30 and say, “Do you want your regular large pep and sausage on thin crust with breadsticks for 6:30 as usual?”

Contacting your customers is an essential (remember a previous article where the major cause of customer defection is lack of contact!) but the opposite extreme can also lead to identical result. How many times should you call (mail) (email) a customer to say Hi, How are you doing, Do You need anything, How are we doing? Hourly, Daily. We know not often enough is fatal for the relationship. But too often, too much can do likewise. We’re not talking about Spam here but communications from an established company you deal with, like, may even admire and love. One consumer study indicated 42% of respondents note too frequent e-mails as a concern in 2003. Another study indicated that 45% of consumers surveyed stopped doing business with companies altogether due to poor e-mail practices. Any similarity between the groups is not coincidence.

What happens with too much closeness, too frequent of contact? The customer begins to ignore the messages, deleting them on sight (out of sight, out of mind). Your messages may never be read, deals not seen, sales unsold. If it is too often, a customer begins to feel as if his/her space is being crowded (see you once a day may be fine, see you everywhere I go may make you a stalker) And once the habit begins, it gets easier and easier to delete mail from a particular company and one’s attitude towards that company begins to slide.

Alright. Point made. Too little and you will lose them. Too often and you will lose them. What is the right frequency? First, do not allow the technology to tempt you. Email is so easy and cheap and creating a database of addresses can be done by anyone, the temptation is there to use it more and more often. Beware of the downside. Those that have quit doing business with companies that flood them with email have been found to be the biggest online spenders.

So how often is enough and when does too often become fatal? Some responders prefer weekly; 20% of responders have indicated they wanted special offers on a monthly basis. If you are communicating with your customers, keep track of the frequency and the resulting returns. At some point, increasing frequency will provide diminishing returns. You have just reached saturation level and you need to back off. Too often, and it is not special anymore. If you are just sending messages because it is Monday and that is the day I communicate with my customers, don’t. If you do not have anything special to say, don’t say it. Each communication must have an objective, a purpose, a reason for the customer to read it, to await its arrival.

Frequent is good. Too Frequent can be fatal.