In a year of unprecedented challenges and accelerated digital transformations, we’ve learned that taking customer-centric approach enables growth. While we may be in a pandemic, the pace of work is moving very fast. This post is a reminder to keep your customers front & center.   

The events of 2020 accelerated the need for digital transformation. More than ever, organizations everywhere, across industries and sectors, need assistance leveraging secure and modern technology to adapt and serve their customers, employees, constituents, and other stakeholders.

While virtually everyone was impacted in 2020, how much depends very much on industry, geography, business model, and organizational culture.

A retail business in Alberta, faces different challenges to a fitness center in Halifax. The schoolboards in British Columbia are dealing with different pain points to a global logistics firm. While some or all these organizations may subscribe to your software or purchase your solution, each has a wildly different and, often, non-negotiable set of challenges.

Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes

The solution to unlocking your business potential resides in helping your customers adapt to their unique challenges. Immerse yourself in their needs, their pain points and aspirations. Showcase your unique differentiator in their frame of reference. This will position you as solution to help them pivot, innovate, and thrive.

If you build and market apps, you probably already have a beta user group for testing that you rely on for feedback on new features and releases. But what about other customer engagement tactics? Are you intentional about engaging customers in every stage of their journey with your company or brand? Fortunately, it’s not rocket science, but does require focus and intentionality.   

Here are a few “refreshers” on customer engagement…

Refresher #1: Pulse Check Meetings

Start with a simple tactic, like asking your customers for a “pulse check” meeting. Touchpoints can open conversations about their needs and wants, and about your performance as a solution-provider. Use this approach to invite them to talk about their business. Don’t try to restrict the conversation to your solution or even IT. If appropriate, ask them about:

• How their business/organization is performing
• What their customers want and need from them
• How their employees are making out
• What their competition is doing well or not
• Where technology (yours or not) might assist

Checking in with your customers is time well spent. Some thoughtful discovery questions can quickly uncover pain points and opportunities that lead to brainstorming solutions together.

Refresher #2: Benchmark customer satisfaction

Another economical and effective engagement tactic, the customer survey, can help you start conversations. As an alternative to one-on-one conversations, some customers prefer the objectivity of a survey. A well-crafted questionnaire can provide benchmarks you can use in your marketing and insights you can follow up on in emails and calls.

You probably already use or have heard of at least online survey tool. In Microsoft 365, the Forms app lets you create surveys and polls to collect feedback, measure employee satisfaction, and organize team events. You can even create quizzes. You can design and deploy as many surveys as you want.

Tip: Identify your objectives and craft your questions carefully. If possible, work with market research professionals for best results.

Refresher #3: Analyze your customer data

From their transactional consumption patterns to website metrics, your customers already provide you with all kinds of data that you can use to enable development continuous improvement/continuous delivery (CI/CD) practices. Understanding the most heavily trafficked product features, for example, can help you do things like refine your navigation or identify potentially confusing navigational labels.

Similarly, your marketing might benefit from a more customer data-driven approach. Ingram Micro, the global IT powerhouse that services more than 200,000 customers in 160 countries worldwide, earned two Microsoft Canada IMPACT Awards in 2020—one for Indirect Cloud Solution Provider of the Year and another for Modern Marketing Award Winner—by driving huge sales of their solutions. The key to their success rests in their ability to consistently iterate and improve their campaigns and programs.

Ingram Micro achieves executional excellence in their campaigns and other marketing efforts by embracing an integrated approach and using advanced tracking and reporting to analyze and improve going forward.

Refresher 4:  Make your solution accessible to everyone

In Canada alone, Stats Can reports that 6.2 million individuals over the age of 15 years live with at least one disability. It is almost certain that someone with a vision, hearing, neurodiversity, learning, mental health, or mobility complexity has used your solution. How did they rate their experience with your solution?  These data points can help you unlock your solution’s potential to work for everyone. Putting accessibility up front helps remove unconscious bias when designing software solutions. 

An inclusive design approach can optimize your solution and attract the most users possible. For inspirational and guidance, check out Microsoft’s inclusive design website for developers.

Refresher #5:  Leverage advanced technologies that adapt to customer needs

As you engage with your customers and your colleagues, look for areas where technology can offer competitive advantages (for example to streamline operations, improve product development, engage customers more effectively). Be a champion for technical innovation. The arenas of Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Analytics, and Security offer value add opportunities. Microsoft Practice Development Playbooks offer direction for organizations to pursue a full range of specialties.