My father supervised electronic and communications applications for a busy Air Traffic Control centre when I was a kid and sometimes I was able to observe him in action (these were days before the current high security on air navigation control centres). I was intrigued with the positive interaction he had with his staff. My father seemed able to use touch as an effective medium with the men and women who served him – often, for example, placing a hand on a shoulder or arm, or patting a back. I never once saw anyone who seemed uncomfortable about such contact and so I asked Dad if there is a secret to avoiding the “used-car-salesman feel” to such interactions with others.
“The secret,” he told me, “is touching rarely and only when you are giving; never when you are taking – people sense your intent.” In today’s world, where we are highly sensitized to aggressive sales pitches and overt cross-selling, that lesson has been a valuable one, even beyond the physical touch – and into the virtual one.
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is often marketed as a digital “touchpoint” (i.e. to enhance the experience) for your clients. A database-driven application that can track customer sales volume, buying preferences, demographic and psychographic profiles, CRM applications can help you to effectively mine the data that comes through your point of sale, and to automate functions that keep you in intimate contact with your client. With modern AI support and machine learning, this kind of technology has become eerily effective – and sometimes intrusive. Like all eBusiness applications it is just a tool and only as effective as the person or organization who wields it. Choosing a soft touch or a high pressure influence is a choice that can reflect your style and affect the appeal of your product or service.
To illustrate, I have a couple of tutorial services providing support to my urban sketching hobby. One has little content value but pushes lots of “essential” products and new courses. The other is chock full of fresh ideas with opportunities to engage at many levels depending on my own need and style. Guess which one I often come back to and spend time re-reading and which one I often delete unread or just skim through?
With increasing sensitivity to spam these days, we get annoyed by the volume of email solicitation, yet we also welcome contact by those organizations that offer value and personal reward. If you are thinking about developing a CRM system to “hug” your clients, you may be wise to be guided by my Dad’s “give-when-you-touch” principle. And if you need a friendly consultant to help you build the relationship with your clients, call me at InnovaIT to discuss your CRM strategy!