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It seemed natural to share this perspective with our own readers!

 

What role does CRM play in your customer approach?

Dominique Seguin: CRM is an essential tool for customer relations. Today, you wouldn't imagine working without a smartphone, email, or other tools that save us all time! CRM, an application for managing customer relationships, offers much more than the technical and daunting image that salespeople have of it: you can manage your follow-ups, analyze your figures, send emails, store your customer data for other company departments, and evaluate your sales performance.

 

Sales representatives don't like CRMs because they feel they have to re-enter their workdays to fill out tables that no one really reads. Like any tool, it has its constraints, let's be realistic, but we observe among our clients that no experienced sales representative still risks managing their opportunities on Excel, their follow-ups on a notepad, their forecast on a blank sheet. The challenge of ownership by the teams is therefore particularly strong, and this requires a genuine perception of the associated benefits!

 

The topic isn't new (we even conducted and published a study in 2012 entitled: "Salespeople and CRM, why so much hate?"), but it remains relevant.

 

Our advice: seize this tool as an opportunity and make the most of its features!

 

In this digital age, how do you interest a prospect on the phone without appearing intrusive?

Dominique Seguin: The rules don't change! If we are interesting, people will be interested! Otherwise, they tell us in a very simple way: "I'm not interested."

How to interest our prospects? By talking to them about THEIR concerns. Either we have found material available on the web and it will serve as a hook, or we bring up one or two topics specific to the targeted market and we see if it bites.

Don't set incredible expectations regarding the rates of calls converted into appointments: the average is less than 10%. But if you prepare well with an adapted pitch, you can double your performance.

 

What importance do you give to social media today to increase sales? 

Dominique Seguin: Let's just say that the sales function is on the verge of uberization!

 

50% of the purchasing process is completed without the involvement of a salesperson. Digital presence has become the primary competitor in this field.

 

How can you expect to be more relevant and demonstrative than a 2-minute 3D YouTube video that highlights all the product's features with pleasant music, precisely when you need it? You need to create value elsewhere!

 

Be even more distinctive in understanding the client's challenges (stop asking them what they want, ask them why they want it!), emphasize the cost of the current situation and the observed dysfunction, and finally, remain present in their mind after leaving their office.

Social media is a fabulous opportunity to stay in touch with the customer after the appointment stage.

 

Previously, the brochure served this role, but now you can showcase your journey, expertise, and current news with modern and interactive tools.

In other words, you can influence and highlight your recommendations. In short, if the brochure is ending, the salesperson 2.0 is just beginning, making the job even more sharp and exciting!

 

Beyond the tools, what enables a salesperson to become a top performer? 

Dominique Seguin: Method, method, and method! Beyond the commercial “talent”, often considered innate, it is method that truly makes the difference. In sales, as in any profession, method is key.

Do you think a baker wonders every night how to make good bread? No, every night he follows a proven recipe. It's less tiring, and he's sure to be able to serve his customers in the morning!

Good salespeople don't reinvent the wheel every day, hoping to have the right smile at the right moment, or the right formula, or the right product…

The bait matters less than the trap itself! It's a bit harsh as a mantra, but it's so true. The trap is the sales techniques repeated every day to constantly improve the gesture.

 

Very good salespeople, well-versed in these principles, sometimes fail during the negotiation phases... Why is this and how can it be avoided? 

Dominique Seguin: The main pitfall comes from the lack of preparation. Difficult training, easy war! Most salespeople prepare by applying the handbrake. This is guaranteed failure and the good old recourse to the weakness of the salesperson, the price reduction begged from their manager.

You see the good salespeople in the turns, not in the straight lines. Negotiation has nothing to do with selling. Great negotiators are not salespeople. And the reverse can be true.

 

A good negotiator will be able to create a new territory for both parties that does not exist at the beginning of the negotiation, each initially focused on protecting their own.

 

The challenge is to move away from this perspective and focus on finding a new configuration. Otherwise, we're just keeping score, and the customer often wins that game!

Let's shift the established frame of reference. The real issue that matters to a client is not winning the negotiation, but benefiting as quickly as possible from the advantages provided by the desired solution that justified the purchase approach, to resolve the identified problem (expensive machine, slow service, inefficient process, etc.).

 

You have been a Sales Performance consultant at KESTIO for almost three years, what is your assessment of these years?

Dominique Seguin: After 18 years of operational experience in sales, from the field to managing a P&L of 180 million euros, I thought the transition would be easy.

I can say that my best decision after 6 months was to start from scratch to learn a new profession, a profession where you start by thinking before acting, where you study before deciding.

 

A profession that consists of helping our clients approach their challenges differently because our time is not theirs, and that is the value we bring to them.

An operational person does not need a consultant to ensure daily execution; they know very well how to do it and are experts in their field. We will never know as much as our clients, their teams, their culture, their history, their own clients...

 

The consultant provides the ability to simplify complexity, to be a witness to best practices across all sectors, to identify what causes failure, dysfunction, to find the balance to calmly address blockages, to change employee practices through genuine long-term support without the pressure of figures.

 

We help our clients free up space in their daily lives, to better prepare for the future and enable their teams to overcome challenges and continue to lead the way in their markets.

My operational background is very useful because I understand my clients' lives. I know their doubts, their desire to succeed, the incredible energy they put in every day to achieve their goals with their teams. Often, we provide the small trigger that makes everything move...

 

Maybe it's also because at KESTIO, we don't take ourselves too seriously, and that makes all the difference when an Executive Committee entrusts us with a serious subject. They don't need more complications than their subject already gives them!

 

What is your favorite mobile app?

Dominique Seguin: I love Pocket because as an infovore, I like to consume content constantly. Between newsletters, monitoring, blogs, news sites, how to find an application that easily and intuitively groups all my reading lists? Pocket does it very well, I can't live without it anymore.

 

KESTIO supports companies (from SMEs to large corporations) in acquiring and retaining their customers through a dual expertise in Commercial Performance and Customer Experience.

Discover our different solutions

A recent study published by the American firm Forrester predicts the imminent demise of field sales representatives in the face of e-commerce. However, a different outcome is possible for B2B field sales representatives, provided they revise their positioning to adopt a consulting stance, particularly through the quality of their questioning and a more "customer-centric" approach.

What are the other components of the consultative salesperson's approach, and how can you adopt them? That's what we'll see in this second part.

 

Position yourself as an expert

While listening is key to creating the conditions for a trusting relationship, it is also important to demonstrate your added value.

In companies, formalizing a project is very often delicate and complex. Even if they are increasingly informed and autonomous, customers therefore expect their sales representatives to have in-depth expertise that will enable them to refine the outlines of their project.

 

Buyers want salespeople who can challenge them: analyze a situation, conduct a diagnosis, and model the data collected. This will allow them to formalize and synthesize the guiding ideas of their project, and thus help them to "sell" it internally.

 

The sales consultant should be seen as an expert whose opinion the client values. However, be careful not to confuse "opinion" with "solution proposal"… That would again be trying to sell something!

The expert salesperson must express and stand by their convictions on a given subject, and encourage their counterpart to react in turn. They must be able to deliver a point of view and develop it, not to convince but to provide factual insight into their client's concerns.

 

The value provided by the salesperson is also measured by an approach oriented towards "profitability."

 

All companies operate with a focus on return on investment. The consulting salesperson is there to help their client realize their idea, so they must provide indicators to measure the effectiveness and profitability of their solution, the famous ROI.

Consequently, the client is no longer focused on the cost of the solution but on the financial gain or savings it will enable them to achieve.

 

Leverage the restatement of the client's challenges.

Finally, the consulting salesperson demonstrates their value by their ability to integrate and restate the issues and concerns of their interlocutor.

Reformulation helps avoid misunderstandings: if something important has escaped the salesperson, their interlocutor will have the opportunity to clarify it without feeling attacked. On the other hand, a well-mastered reformulation demonstrates professionalism and leads the interlocutor in the desired direction. Finally, reformulating the stakes will give rise to new questions that will allow the introduction of new ideas, suggestions, or proposals.

 

By bringing together all the mentioned components (quality of questioning, provision of expertise, demonstration of the value of the solution, rephrasing of the client's challenges, etc.), the sales consultant creates the conditions for a collaborative and partnership mindset.

 

Register as a partner

The advisory approach requires acting like a consultant, and adopting a caring attitude towards your client to help them define their need, advance their project, and make it a reality.

Within a company, the project leader has every interest in being supported by an external consultant to help them "sell" their idea internally and convince the forces involved and concerned.

Therefore, you need to associate yourself with their project's success, and offer to act as a conductor with the various teams, making them understand – tactfully – that the sales team and the client share the same interest: the progress of the project.

 

Identify decision-makers.

During this pre-sales / sales phase, the challenge for the sales representative is also to identify the decision-makers and then gather their vision on the ongoing discussion. This step will allow them to remove any potential obstacles, give meaning to the approach, generate buy-in, and begin to engage all individuals towards a decision. Of course, they will keep their primary contact informed of the progress of their interactions to strengthen the relationship of trust.

 

The sales consultant may suggest "working sessions," "co-creation workshops," or a "summary meeting to understand the issues."

These meeting formats demonstrate much more effectiveness and impact than the classic "presentation meetings", "discovery meetings" and other "proposal submissions", which remain the panacea of all-terrain sales representatives.

However, clients sometimes reject this approach. It's important to analyze the real reasons for such a refusal. Often, this type of resistance indicates a lack of desire to collaborate. This raises the question of whether or not to continue discussions with the client. In other words: Go / No Go?

 

A 'No Go' will avoid wasting time and commercial energy on a deal that has little chance of succeeding, allowing you to focus on more promising projects.

 

In summary…!

The advisory approach is based above all on the salesperson's ability to disregard their need to sell in order to focus solely on listening and advising.

 

Thus approached, the act of selling becomes an act of non-selling.

 

And this paradigm shift is not insignificant! Positioning oneself as an expert cannot be improvised or decreed. Salespeople wishing to adopt a consulting approach must cultivate and develop additional relational skills, which have now become essential to gain a client's trust, including mastering their discourse, behavior, rhetoric, and the art of questioning and responding.

With that said, we wish you Very good sales Apologies, excellent advice… ; )

 

Knowing how to reposition your company's activity can be vital in a difficult situation. Discover the different stages of this process in this webinar:

 

1 External resources:

 

Our exclusive methods and training modules on this topic:

– The Chessboard Method© – Key account sales and complex sales
– The KESTIO System© sales training modules – Sales effectiveness and dialogue tools
– The DISC Method© – Behavioral analysis for sales representatives and managers

" Is the « species » of the field salesperson irrevocably destined for extinction? Or does it have a chance to adapt to survive? KESTIO provides you here with some keys to emerge victorious from the natural selection process! "

 

Buyer Power!

According to the Forrester report1, the change in customer purchasing practices and behaviors largely explains this disruption.

These individuals now have very powerful tools at their disposal that eliminate the need for a sales representative to deliver a presentation brochure: websites, social networks, comparison sites, e-commerce platforms. This is much less expensive and more effective than a meeting.

The generalization of these tools has accentuated the autonomy of customers and buyers. As a result, the perception of the value of the sales profession seems to have never been so undermined.

 

However, meeting with a salesperson remains necessary, but for different reasons and at different stages of the purchasing and decision-making process: to be supported in their thinking and helped in defining a need or a project, to understand this or that specificity of a solution, to negotiate, and finally, to benefit from advice.

 

The consulting approach therefore appears to be the best possible solution for the sales profession, because it is through the provision of advice and expertise that the salesperson demonstrates their added value. So, how can a salesperson move from a Push approach to a Pull approach, in other words, from a "Sales" approach to a "Consulting" posture?

How to transform (or mutate?) into the 'BtoB salesperson of the future'? This is what we are going to explain in this 2-episode saga...

 

The salesperson, an inveterate egocentric?

The mountaineer who, at the foot of a mountain, focuses only on the summit and the time it will take to reach it, loses sight of the essential: their technique, the precision of their movements, and thus their safety.

The salesperson encounters the same obstacle. By focusing too much on their product and sale, they miss their real objective: gaining the client's trust. To achieve this, they must concentrate on one area: the quality of the interaction with their contact.

However, many factors affect a salesperson's state of mind when starting a relationship: anxiety about not meeting targets on time, the conscious or unconscious obsession with making a sale.

These factors lead him to focus on his own objectives and to distance himself from the client's interests.

 

The salesperson must mentally forget about closing and focus solely on initiating a quality relationship based primarily on trust. The Consulting approach involves adopting a mindset resolutely focused on the client's interests.

Let's stop thinking egocentrically, let's be "customer centric"!

 

The advisory approach: the science of listening and the art of questioning

Most of the time, people are inclined to talk about themselves and like to discuss their profession. Customers and buyers have the same desire. So, we must take an interest in them. Showing interest in the person, focusing on the quality of the relationship, showing empathy... all this leads your interlocutor to open up.

But is simply listening to a client enough to uncover all their secrets, meaning their needs and projects? Does one suddenly become a client's confidant overnight?

The answer is no, at least if we remain focused on searching for "needs" or "problems."

 

By definition, a client doesn't have a problem. On the other hand, a client – a company – may have an ambition, wish to develop a program, want to optimize its resources, strengthen its growth, or launch a new product…

 

And in the face of such objectives, the client does not necessarily have fixed ideas about the levers at their disposal.

 

The primary objective is to gather information to understand and analyze the client's environment. Data collection is key.

The essence of the advisory posture lies in the quality of questioning and the ability to build on the information gathered to broaden the scope and deepen the subjects. The consulting salesperson must be focused solely on researching and understanding their client's challenges. The art of questioning is to make their interlocutor aware of their need, often expressed implicitly, and to formalize it into an explicit need.

 

Therefore, the salesperson focuses on finding the causes (the "why") and not on solving the problems (the "how").

 

The advisory approach also involves putting oneself in the customer's shoes. The salesperson must immerse themselves in the discussion as with a friend, in a disinterested manner. They must assume that they have nothing to sell, they are simply there to listen and understand.

 

For the client, these questions of understanding are all signs of interest that strengthen their confidence and position the salesperson as an ally, not an adversary.

 

Listening and the art of questioning are very powerful psychological levers that allow you to discover client issues that are much broader than just the immediate need.

However, these are not the only components of a 'consultative approach'. To achieve the 'status' of a consultative salesperson and prove your value to your clients, you will need to develop and accumulate other skills (providing specialized expertise, a ROI-oriented approach, rephrasing client issues, and identifying decision-makers). We will reveal them in the article: the selling salesperson is dead, long live the consulting salesperson, episode 2!

 

 

Knowing how to reposition your company's activity can be vital in a difficult situation. Discover the different stages of this process in this webinar:

1 External resources:

 

 

Our exclusive methods and training modules on this topic:

– The Chessboard Method© – Key account sales and complex sales
– The KESTIO System© sales training modules – Sales effectiveness and dialogue tools
– The DISC Method© – Behavioral analysis for sales representatives and managers

1- What qualities should your sales representatives develop to improve their results?

Sales is a profession in which there is no medal for second place. That's why, beyond the sales techniques themselves, it is essential to apply a sales method in order to limit the risk of failure and optimize results. Several recent studies have proven that applying a sales method – whatever it may be – improves the results of sales efforts by 20%!

Without a clear roadmap, you end up constantly reinventing your approach for each deal, focusing on short-term tactics and reactions. This is exhausting and inefficient.

 

Beyond methodology, certain personal qualities are essential for this highly relational and demanding role. You need to be tenacious, organized, and mentally strong, possess a strong work ethic, and be people-oriented. Today, successful selling requires listening more than talking!

 

Finally, a good salesperson who wants to multiply their performance must be able to make good use of the tools and technologies at their disposal: first and foremost, CRM tools, but also the various means and media of communication (PowerPoint presentations, remote exchange platforms such as Skype, etc.) and, above all, the essential social networks!

 

2- How can salespeople take advantage of these new tools?

New means of communication, especially professional social networks (e.g., LinkedIn), have profoundly changed the landscape of sales prospecting.

Firstly, they facilitate research on three essential topics: the company, its latest news, and its executive committee (COMEX). But above all, they provide access to valuable information that was previously difficult to obtain: now, your contacts' network is publicly displayed, allowing you to systematically check the connections between your respective networks!

Sales representatives absolutely must activate this lever of networking and recommendation, the impact of which can be decisive!


Discover KESTIO webinars, where we discuss

All topics related to sales performance with our experts: 

Fabien Comtet, CEO

Dominique Seguin, CEO

Nicolas Boissard, Marketing Director


Access our webinars

3- How to stand out and make a difference during a sales meeting?

As everyone knows, the first 20 seconds are crucial!

The primary goal of the sales meeting is to discover your contact, their personality, and their "territory." It should also allow you to establish a relationship of trust and demonstrate your expertise.

A challenge, given how much buyers are over-solicited and have very little availability: the challenge is therefore to quickly convince them of the value of this exchange for them.

First, you need to establish a climate of trust. To do this, analyze your interlocutor's non-verbal language (eye contact, posture, tone of voice...) to synchronize with them and gradually take control of the interview.

 

Next, the effectiveness of your pitch (regarding your company, and then your own role/experience) will be crucial! It must establish the legitimacy of the meeting for your contact and immediately dispel their main concern: is this salesperson going to waste my time?

Beyond the key moment of opening, what will really make the difference during the interview is your ability to focus on your client's objectives, not your own! Today, there are a huge number of tools that enable a client to know what a supplier is doing without having to receive their salesperson!

 

It is now known that 70% of buyers do most of their information gathering online before contacting a potential supplier.

 

The salesperson's role is no longer to present their company's offerings but to provide advice and expertise to build a solution with the client that will solve their problem or meet their objectives.

From the salesperson's perspective, this requires a significant mental effort: to forget about closing and the desire to "land an order." To do this, you have to stop classifying the information transmitted by the customer between "favorable" and "unfavorable" signals.

Your sole objective should be to understand the client's environment and their reality and to build a quality relationship. This is a sine qua non condition for initiating a co-construction approach with them.

 

4- What does this co-construction approach consist of and how does it materialize for the sales representative?

The interview should evolve interactively towards achieving the client's objectives or resolving their problems (much like the client is experiencing a coaching session!).

Gradually, your contact must become involved, and therefore make an effort (provide information, connect you with a key contact within the company, etc.) which will commit them to collaborating with you.

 

The best salespeople, therefore, do not look for the purchase order; they focus on the next step that allows the customer to advance in the realization of their objectives.

 

The level of effort provided by the client in this process is the best indicator of their level of commitment to you.

 

You should never leave your contact without first building a shared action plan with them. This action plan will be the subject of a report from you, the completion of which will lead to the organization of a new exchange (for feedback), ideally in the presence of other key contacts on this account.

The next step will depend on the quality of your follow-up process, which can sometimes take up to several months... 

 

The advent of new technologies has enabled the evolution of business in many areas, especially in communication and prospecting. To optimize business activity, it is essential to integrate these new prospecting methods into your strategy. Find out how with this webinar:

But where to begin? What actions should be implemented and what objectives should be set? Discover here (in macro view) the five key steps that will allow you to design and then deploy an effective action plan to improve the multi-channel customer journey.

 

1. Define the scope

To begin, there is no improvement plan without a prior assessment of the starting situation!
To improve the quality of the experience delivered to your customers, you must first measure the current level of quality and define the expected target level.

 

The first task therefore consists of defining the scope of the project, that is to say:

    • Target customer segments,
    • the stages of the multi-channel customer journey that you want to qualify as a priority,
    • the channels involved.

 

2. Formalize the Journey

Once all this information is gathered, formalize the different customer journeys (one for each segment) with all their stages and contact points. You need to identify the key stages and be able to immediately and clearly visualize on each of them:

    • the customer's actions and the channel used for each of them
    • the different levels of customer needs (explicit and implicit)
    • The choices the customer faces and their selection criteria

To learn everything about defining your customer journeys, (re)read our article: Define and optimize your customer journey.

 

3. Define the Optimal Experience framework

For each stage of the customer journey, the possible actions for the customer and the level of response provided
by the brand must then be detailed very precisely and evaluated according to a scoring system.

You will then build:

    • your Optimal Experience repository which describes all the actions that can be taken to best meet the needs of customers,
    • an observation guide that will allow you to observe and note the quality of the Customer Experience

 

4. Measure the quality of the delivered Experience

Measuring the quality of the experience lived by customers can be done according to different methods of observation, analysis, and scoring. For more details on this topic, we refer you to the article: Do you know how to measure the Customer Experience delivered by your brand?

 

Depending on the context, available resources, customer segments studied, and channels analyzed, we will favor all or part of these different methods: on-site observation of the customer journey carried out by store teams, mystery shopping, analysis of website visit and navigation statistics, analysis of verbatim and customer reviews on the internet (social networks, forums, etc.), or even eye-tracking.

In all cases, the various studies carried out will ultimately be consolidated and analyzed to extract the average scores awarded to each stage of the journey.

 

We can then create a model of the brand's typical customer journey and determine for each step whether the experience lived by the customer corresponds to:

    • A disappointing moment
    • A neutral moment
    • An enchanting moment

 

Key moments identified during the definition of the customer journey will be studied with particular attention.
The average scores thus established make it possible to identify the gap between the typical customer experience offered by the brand and the target customer experience that it has set for itself.

 

5. Prioritize optimizing key moments!

The identified gaps ultimately allow us to target priority areas for improvement. For each of these, recommendations should be made and an action plan established.
The teams, involved from the client journey definition phase and then during the observation phase, can and should also be involved in building action plans in workshop mode.

 

The deployment and implementation of the action plan across the different stages of the journey, for each customer segment and on each channel, requires full and complete involvement of the various teams at each stage of the project. Prior awareness of the importance of the issues and the positive impact of these actions is therefore of crucial importance.

Discover all the levers to improve sales performance : How to activate sales performance levers

And to go further, download our White Paper on Customer Experience:

Download the white paper

(If you haven't already, we invite you to rediscover the reasons why customer experience is a strategic topic and how customer delight impacts your profitability!). You likely already have an idea of the target customer experience you're aiming for, a vision and ambition in this area... But do you know where to start to achieve it? The starting point of this process invariably involves defining and optimizing your customer journey. Let's revisit the "fundamentals" of designing and evaluating customer journeys, the essential foundation for any customer experience improvement project.

 

1. By the way, what is the Customer Journey?

The customer journey encompasses all the stages and interaction points between a customer and a company, from the beginning of the purchasing process to the complete consumption of the product.

To simplify, this journey is characterized by 3 major phases: 

  • BEFORE : all the preliminary stages, from active or passive awareness of the offer to the purchasing process, including the purchase decision phase.
  • DURING: the « delivery » process, encompassing all stages of making the service or product available, its consumption, or its utilization.
  • AFTER: The after-sales processes, integrating customer service, measuring customer satisfaction, and the entire relational process allowing to keep in touch and build customer loyalty.

The goal is to streamline the transition from AFTER to BEFORE.

In this sense, and even if they partially overlap, the customer journey differs from the customer lifecycle. The lifecycle is a much more macroscopic observation of the successive transition from the state of prospect to the state of active customer and finally to the state of lost customer. It can therefore contain several iterations of the customer journey, or even several journeys depending on the change in the customer's status.

 

2. What is the Purpose of Customer Journey Mapping?

In a customer experience improvement approach, modeling the customer journey is the first necessary step.

This enables:

    • Identify all the stages of the journey and all the points of contact between the customer and the company,
    • Determine the importance of each touchpoint in the customer experience.
    • to assess the company's level of response across these touchpoints,
    • to define and implement the necessary improvements in relation to the level of response desired by the company.

 

While this approach was initially deployed for companies in the BtoC sector, it is increasingly being replicated and adapted to companies in BtoB.

 

3. Define the customer journey.

There isn't necessarily just one customer journey. Depending on its customer types, the company can offer different customer journeys: this is the case, for example, for companies that have an intermediary clientele with distributors, prescribers, installers, and end consumers, or those that want to offer a very different journey to their best customers.

A point of contact is defined as an interaction between the customer and the company, via a specific channel, whether physical or digital. The interaction can be informative or transactional and triggered either by the company (push) or by the customer (pull).

This includes reading an online or magazine advertisement, receiving a promotional email, visiting the company's website, entering a store, calling customer service, receiving a package, receiving an order confirmation email, receiving an invoice, etc.

A step in the customer journey is not always linked to a point of contact. It can be experienced in the customer's journey without direct interaction with the company. For example, a recommendation by a third party on a social network, travel and transportation to the company.

 

4. Evaluate the level of importance of the stage in the journey

Not all steps are equal in the customer experience. It is often said that the first and last points of contact in the journey are the ones that most shape the customer's feeling, whether positive or negative. There are also other steps, often the most delicate, which, together with the first and last impressions, represent the key stages.

We call these key stages 'moments of truth,' which, depending on how the company handles them, can turn a customer into a loyal one... or a lost one.

The challenge is to meet expectations, or even exceed them, during a critical moment for the customer.

Examples: receiving a package or the return process for an e-commerce company, presenting the bill for a garage, check-in upon arrival for a hotel, product availability for a store, defending a proposal for a service company, customer service accessibility for a transport company, etc.

Satisfactorily meeting the client's expectations at these stages is a cornerstone of building loyalty. Failure to do so encourages clients to leave.

 

5. Evaluate the level of responsiveness to customer expectations.

It is important to assess the level of satisfaction delivered, taking into account the expectations and needs of different types of customers. Because not all customers are the same, it is necessary to identify and create customer segments according to their expectations, and even, for certain sectors of activity, to personalize the journey.

 

A family does not have the same needs as a couple in a ski resort, an amateur handyman does not have the same expectations as a professional in a tool shop, and an SME does not have the same expectations for its car fleet management from a rental company.

It is also essential to consider a multi-channel approach to the customer journey, respecting customers' channel preferences, and an « omnichannel » approach, enabling customers to continue their experience seamlessly across all relationship channels and with all company contacts.

Throughout all stages of the customer journey, especially during critical moments, we assist companies in measuring how well they meet customer expectations. This helps them effectively define the actions needed to improve and streamline the journey, creating customer delight.

The WelcomeExperience® method offered by KESTIO allows you to

– define multi-channel customer journeys
– assess the criticality of interaction points
– evaluate the level of satisfaction delivered

in order to develop an effective plan to improve the customer experience.

Born from the experience and research of KESTIO consultants, this White Paper aims to present the concept of Customer Experience and its components, and to provide you with a methodological framework enabling you to implement effective Customer Experience improvement projects that generate loyalty and recommendations.

    • Why Customer Experience Should Become Your Primary Concern 
    • How to Integrate Customer Experience into Your Customer Relationship Strategy
    • Keys to effectively deploying your multi-channel customer strategy

 

Benefit from viewpoints, study results, key figures, and feedback from our assignments with APRR and CASTORAMA. Discover concrete examples of implementation and excerpts from deliverables produced during our assignments.

1- La consommation collaborative : un phénomène qui bouleverse l’ordre établi

Le CtoC (Consumer to Consumer) ou consommation collaborative, au sens où on l’entend aujourd’hui, consiste à prêter, louer, donner, ou échanger des biens ou des services via les technologies et les communautés de pairs.1

La consommation collaborative n’est pas un phénomène nouveau en soi, mais elle a pris un essor considérable avec internet et la possibilité de se connecter à des milliards d’individus que l’on ne connait pas : le troc jadis pratiqué dans les villages devient désormais à portée de clic à une échelle mondiale, avec des moyens qui n’avaient jamais été techniquement imaginables auparavant.

Près d’un français sur deux est adepte de la consommation “collaborative” : 48% d’entre eux la pratiquent régulièrement, à travers la revente d’objets, le covoiturage, l’auto-partage, le troc ou encore la colocation, [selon un sondage TNS Sofres pour le groupe La Poste].

 

De nombreux secteurs de l’économie sont concernés : on pense immédiatement aux Taxis avec Uber, mais d’autres secteurs en ont fait l’expérience, comme le souligne Marc-Arthur Gauthey (entrepreneur et animateur du think tank OuiShare en France) dans un article publié dans les Echos :

«l’industrie culturelle [s’est] fait « naspteriser »,  « youtubiser » et finalement « netflixiser » il y a bien longtemps. Le monde de l’édition, puis à peu près toute la distribution, [s’est]  fait « amazoniser » […]. La presse [s’est] fait « googliser » […], l’industrie de la connaissance [a] été « wikipédiée ». La SNCF, [se fait] « BlaBlaCariser » […]. Quant à l’hôtellerie, disons-le, [elle se fait] « airbnbiser » !

 

Ce phénomène à la fois culturel et économique est en train de transformer profondément les relations commerciales classiques et même les modes de vie : 8 Français sur 10 pratiquent ou ont l’intention de pratiquer cette façon de consommer.

 

Nous sommes passés d’un 20ème siècle d’hyperconsommation placé sous le double signe du crédit et de la publicité, à un 21ème siècle de connexions entre individus au sein d’une communauté élargie aux dimensions d’Internet et d’accès gratuit (ou à bas coût) à de nombreux services et produits.

 

Les nouvelles plateformes de mise à disposition des produits et services modifient à la fois ce que nous consommons, et la façon dont nous consommons : la consommation collaborative supprime dans bien des cas l’intermédiation (disparition du distributeur traditionnel) et provoque un déplacement de valeur de la possession vers l’usage, et du distributeur vers le producteur.

Une évolution majoritairement considérée comme favorable aux consommateurs, qui plébiscitent ce nouveau mode d’accès aux biens et services pour différentes raisons.

 

2- Les raisons du succès de ces nouveaux modèles

Pour les entreprises qui observent ce phénomène avec beaucoup d’intérêt, et parfois aussi avec une certaine appréhension (en témoigne la vague de panique au sein du CAC 40 après l’intervention de Maurice Lévy, PDG de Publicis, en décembre dernier au sujet de la « peur de se faire uberiser »), il est utile de se pencher sur les raisons du succès de la consommation collaborative. Au nombre desquelles on peut compter :

    • La maturité des consommateurs, tout d’abord : conscients de la part importante liée au distributeur, à la marque et à leurs dispositifs commerciaux et marketing dans le prix des produits, ils ne souhaitent plus avoir à payer pour ce qui leur semble superflu.
    • Une motivation économique : payer moins cher (en réservant une chambre chez l’habitant plutôt qu’une chambre d’hôtel, par exemple) ou générer de nouveaux revenus (en revendant des objets d’occasion sur le Bon Coin) est devenu central.
    • Une motivation d’ordre éthique : la conscience de l’impact environnemental et social de nos modes de consommation entre en jeu. Donner une seconde vie aux objets ou consommer local, c’est limiter son empreinte écologique et maintenir l’emploi près de chez soi.

 

Dans le cas d’Uber, on pourrait penser que seule la motivation économique entre en ligne de compte (et que le souci de “l’impact social” de nos modes de consommation plaide quant à lui plutôt en sa défaveur), mais il ne faut pas éluder un autre élément essentiel, qui « gêne » souvent les entreprises (ou les chauffeurs de taxis) aux entournures :

 

L’essor de la consommation collaborative traduit aussi une forme de déception et de lassitude des consommateurs vis-à-vis des acteurs “historiquement en place” et de l’expérience que ces derniers leur font vivre.

 

Trop occupées à produire toujours plus et toujours moins cher, à « pousser » leurs nouveaux produits à grand coup d’opérations marketing et de changement de packaging, les marques de référence ont (parfois) peut-être oublié l’essentiel : le sens du client !

 

Lassés de l’ « idéal standard » asséné depuis plusieurs décennies par les chaînes de restauration rapide, d’hôtellerie ou d’ameublement, certains segments de consommateurs  menacent de délaisser les marques « historiques » au profit d’expériences plus humaines, plus individualisées et, disons-le aussi, tout simplement nouvelles et plus fun !

Mais les marques « historiques » ont-elles pour autant perdu d’avance face aux nouveaux entrants.

Téléchargez et découvrez notre livre blanc sur l’expérience client 

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3- L’Expérience client, le meilleur remède à l’ « uberisation » des entreprises !

Beaucoup de grandes entreprises sont aujourd’hui tentées de s’ « auto-uberiser » pour garder la main : lancement de plateformes de location/vente entre particuliers, ouverture de  rayons « occasion » au sein de leurs magasins… Une stratégie essentiellement destinée à barrer la route, à court terme, à de nouveaux concurrents potentiels, mais dont le modèle économique doit encore faire ses preuves.

A long terme, la stratégie payante pour les entreprises sera de bien identifier où se situe leur proposition de valeur aux yeux de leurs clients :

expérience-client-réussie

 
  • proposer des produits et services utiles, pratiques et facilement accessibles,
  • simplifier la vie des clients, leur faire gagner du temps ou économiser de l’argent,
  • résoudre leurs problèmes, répondre à leurs besoins
  • leur procurer des émotions positives ou du bien-être
  • … et les traiter de façon humaine et individualisée !

 

 

Il s’agit en fait pour les entreprises concernées, sur leur secteur et en fonction des spécificités de leur offre, d’identifier à chaque étape de leurs parcours client les points sur lesquels elles doivent améliorer l’expérience vécue par leurs clients.

 

Une fois les moments clés des parcours client identifiés sur l’ensemble des canaux utilisés, leur travail consistera à éliminer systématiquement tous les facteurs provoquant une expérience « déceptive » et à identifier tous les moyens à leur disposition pour générer de l’enchantement afin de les mettre en œuvre de façon systématique.

 

Nul doute que parmi ces moyens figureront des ingrédients largement présents chez Uber, Air BnB et Netflix, et qu’ils s’inspireront notamment des valeurs de l’économie collaborative !

Quelques exemples d’améliorations concrètes mises en place avec succès par des acteurs « traditionnels » sur leur secteur, et la tendance/valeur collaborative à laquelle elle se rattache :

    • proposer la location (parfois, longue durée) pour les produits coûteux à l’achat et d’un usage non quotidien   -> valoriser l’usage plutôt que la possession
    • développer une application mobile performante et disruptive qui simplifie concrètement le parcours des clients -> innover et s’appuyer sur la technologie pour réduire l’effort client
    • mettre en place une plateforme collaborative d’échange d’avis, notes et conseils autour de l’utilisation de leurs produits -> avoir recours à la communauté de pairs pour trouver entre-aide et information
    • inventer une relation client qui dépasse les attentes conscientes ou les habitudes des clients -> vivre des expériences plus riches, plus humaines, plus personnelles

 

En un mot, les entreprises vont devoir « s’uberiser » dans le bon sens du terme, c’est-à-dire mettre en œuvre l’ingrédient ultime qui explique réellement le succès d’Uber et de ses congénères : une expérience client au top !

 

Ne nous voilons pas la face, et comparons simplement 2 expériences vécues :

 

Expérience Client #1 : J’appelle une société de taxis depuis mon téléphone, après avoir cherché son numéro dans les pages jaunes. Après un temps d’attente plus ou moins long, une hôtesse m’indique qu’un taxi sera disponible sur mon secteur d’ici 10 à 15 minutes. Je patiente. Le taxi me prend en charge. Je dois régler le montant de la course en monnaie car il ne prend pas la carte. Il me délivre à la hâte un justificatif griffonné peu lisible sur un feuillet que je risque d’égarer.

 

Expérience Client #2 : J’identifie en quelques clics un véhicule proche de moi depuis mon smartphone, je visualise sur un plan sa progression vers moi en sachant exactement dans combien de minutes il sera à ma hauteur. Dans le véhicule, je dispose d’un chargeur pour mon portable, et on me propose un magazine. Le règlement s’effectue automatiquement par prélèvement sur mon compte à ma descente du véhicule et je reçois automatiquement une facture par e-mail. J’ai payé moins cher que pour un taxi.

Au-delà du prix (et des débats sociaux légitimement soulevés par le modèle économique adopté), ce qu’Uber propose avant tout, c’est une expérience « sans couture », simple, fluide, agréable et intuitive. Avec l’aide d’une technologie intelligente et fiable, et en s’appuyant sur la force de la communauté. C’est bien vu, et c’est aussi à votre portée, si vous le décidez !  Pour cela, il faut se glisser dans la peau du client, se projeter dans son parcours et « ouvrir le champs des possibles » pour lui proposer des solutions innovantes qui vont le surprendre et l’enchanter !

1 : voir la définition donnée par Rachel Botsman et Roo Rogers dans What’s mine is yours, the rise of collaborative consumption).

Measuring the quality of the customer experience via a satisfaction survey may seem like the simplest and most effective way... But how can you be sure that the customer is truly satisfied, that they are telling the truth? The proliferation of satisfaction surveys represents an additional effort in their journey and generates a certain weariness among customers. Furthermore, as we saw in a previous article (Are you sure you have mastered the 3 key approaches to customer loyalty?), the very notion of « satisfaction » is quite relative and in any case very far from that of delight.

 

When it comes to customer experience, there's nothing like an "on-the-ground observation" approach to guarantee the quality of the measures taken!

 

1- Observe your customers to better understand them

Direct observation makes it possible to see exactly what the customer is experiencing in a given context and at each stage of the journey, without generating any effort on their part, and without activating the subjective "personal filters" that could potentially alter their responses when asked. The lesson is thus much richer and more nuanced than in a satisfaction survey.

 

Several methods exist today for observing the customer:

    • Camera glasses allowing to make studies « eye tracking in real life »: we see exactly what the customer sees and we can measure what he retained from his experience compared to what he saw.
    • visiting the client to understand their needs or how they use the brand's products.
    • Listening to telephone conversations in call centers or in a BtoB context.
    • video recording of consumers' lives for a week,
    • Following up with a customer during a trip or a store visit.
    • reading email exchanges,
    • Listening to conversations on social networks and forums

 

However, these observation techniques raise 2 questions:

How to evaluate the Customer Experience as observed? 
How to assess if it's qualitative? Determine if the customer is experiencing moments of delight?
How to process this information quantitatively to model a global Customer Experience at the level of the brand's customers (or segments), and not just individuals?

2 – Measure and analyze the quality of the Customer Experience: the WEX Score© method

The CX Score© method developed by KESTIO helps answer these questions.

To achieve this, we work with our clients on the Optimal Customer Experience framework: we determine all the interactions that impact the experience a customer may have throughout their journey, and then we assign a score (positive or negative, on a graduated scale) to each of them.

 

When we observe the customer's experience throughout their journey, the sum of positive or negative interactions allows us to model the quality of their Experience, at each stage and overall.

 

Finally, the accumulation of scores from all the customers observed allows us to qualify each stage of the journey in terms of the quality of the Experience. We thus identify the "neutral" stages, those generating "customer delight" or, on the contrary, disappointing moments. We model the results in a clear and readable way to allow for effective analysis and to quickly identify concrete action plans.

 

The method thus makes it possible to quickly identify the steps on which the brand must focus its efforts to positively differentiate itself from its competitors by creating moments of delight, and the points on which it must primarily catch up to eliminate disappointing moments.  

Discover all the levers to improve sales performance : How to activate sales performance levers

 

And to go further, download our White Paper on Customer Experience:

Download the white paper

Customer Experience, a cross-functional topic

Customer Experience being the trace left in the customer's mind, it is the result of the various responses, interactions and experiences lived with the company throughout the customer journey: before, during and after the transactional phase itself. (To learn all about the notion of Customer Experience and how it differs from customer satisfaction or CRM, read our article “Are you sure you have mastered the 3 key approaches to customer loyalty?“)

 

It is therefore necessary to set the same level of requirement on all possible points of interaction: the information disseminated on the website, the content of an email from a marketing campaign, the use of the product, the exchange with the customer service person by telephone, the passage to the checkout of a store, etc... must generate a coherent and qualitative feeling.

Experience (both rational and emotional), as well as brand attachment, are therefore not the sole preserve of the 'Customer Service' department but of all relevant departments (whether directly or indirectly related to the customer).

This is a cross-functional subject that can be complex to address.

…Which the executive committee must address!

Customer Experience improvement projects can only be born and successfully deployed if they are led by the Management Committee itself.

 

This is for three reasons:

1. They require real decision-making power

Unlike managing a project confined to a single department within the company, led by a project manager, all operational departments must take ownership of the subject to size investments appropriately and make the right decisions.

Projects focused on improving the quality of the Customer Experience are strategically important, directly impacting sales performance and closely aligning with the company's overall strategy. Entrusting these projects to project leaders who are removed from the decision-making level, no matter how brilliant they may be, risks failure because they will lack the status, decision-making power, and strategic vision necessary to drive such a transformation.

2. Their operational deployment involves profound changes.

We realize that these projects, in addition to being cross-functional, most of the time generate needs for changes in the organization, processes, tools and/or skills. Their operational monitoring is therefore complex and concerns a large number of people and parameters. Ensuring their coherence and dynamism therefore implies both having a global vision and being able to drive such sometimes profound changes.

 

3. The monitoring and management of these projects are at a strategic level

Defining the very indicators for monitoring the quality of the customer experience is a strategic issue, as they must reflect the vision and ambition that the company sets for itself. Depending on the company's objectives and maturity on this subject, one will opt for the Net Promoter Score, or one will work to define the Customer Effort Score, for example (see our upcoming article on customer experience measurement and management indicators). One can also track the retention rate, the average basket or the speed of recruiting new customers.

 

In all cases, it is indeed the company's revenue and margin that are at stake, but these more precise intermediate indicators can be very useful.

The Management Committee will then have to adjust its management method to the available data and tools.

That's why, in this type of project, KESTIO consultants join the Management Committee from the upstream phase of defining the approach and sizing the ambition.

 

We also note (with pleasure!) that, while some directors are sometimes not very convinced of their usefulness at the beginning of the process, they become more and more involved during the project and sometimes even enthusiastic... they see in a pragmatic way how much their team finds meaning in improving the customer experience, thus "humanizing" the objective of company performance!

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