Investigation in your customer relations? (EN)

Customer Relation (Investigation) Management,

or solving business conflicts efficiently.

In times of the ever faster Internet, the storage of name, date of birth and clothing size, in times of trading with our private data, one thing is often forgotten: The data says nothing about actual customer loyalty.

Of course, we’re not talking about Zalando or Amazon, but about the companies that depend on conversations, phone calls and communicating with each other: Mechanical engineering, plant engineering, construction machinery, agricultural machinery and special machinery.

A useful aspect in gaining customer loyalty is mediation when business has come to a stand still.

Rolf Göbel, 2014

But how is CRM actually practiced in companies? Is it the glossy catalog, the dazzling Internet presence, the professional appearance of the sales manager by which a company can measure its own success or failure, or is it even the personal relationship between buyer and seller, between the medium-sized owner-user, i.e. the managing director operating the machine, the owner-operator, and the regional dealer?

It remains to be seen what really counts when buying a machine. However, if a more than technical problem arises, one that seems to develop across departments and hierarchical levels into a company network-wide disaster, no software, no matter how advanced it may be, will be of any use.

The only thing that helps is to talk to each other personally in order to get the cow off the ice.
But how can this be done if you are unsure who is actually responsible for the problem?

Management?
… will pay attention to figures and results. With the company’s further development always in the foreground, there is no other way. The relationship with the customer via the dealer is important as a stopover, but the long-term success of the company is more important. Dealer out, new one in?

Sales?
… will try to pass on all problems to other departments, logically, because the salesperson only sells what there is to sell. He rarely mixes in the crucible of configurations and performance requirements of dealers and especially customers. The sales department configures from the existing.

Accounting?
… has to check the figures, cannot interfere, insists on hard facts, foreign exchange, payments. Indeed already their problem, but only if there is finally a delay in payment due to technical problems – from logistics to functionality.

After Sales?
… have done everything right? They delivered what was requested in terms of spare and repair parts, provided service training, warranty processing and telephone backup, again no fault, no misconduct can be found.

Dealer?
… advised, ordered, delivered, accompanied, collected, invoiced, serviced and after-sales, everything in perfect order.

Customer?
… receives, pays, operates, stumbles, gets annoyed, possibly refuses further payments, wants to return the machine, is more than dissatisfied.

So where is the problem to be found?

It lies in interpersonal communication, in talking, in acknowledging guilt and accepting responsibility. „But,“ you will now say, „surely we accept all responsibility for our fault.“

Right. But not for the fault from communicative grievances, not for the late performance, not because department X, after all, did not fulfill this and that and that. One pushes. In this day and age of email instead of telephone and telephone instead of handshakes, this is only normal, the stress in everyday life.

At some point, the customer buys from the competition, the dealer gives preference to other products, resale stagnates, but the company will survive, and business continues elsewhere.

Nevertheless, one person remains dissatisfied: The customer. And the customer should be king. Always.

• Unfortunately, it’s not quite as easy in mechanical engineering as it is at Zalando or Amazon; you can’t return, you can order again, free of charge and without obligation. In these, our industries, the poker is played differently. Service, i.e. life after the sale, is the be-all and end-all.
• Sending an internal manager, talking, making offers, satisfying the customer often helps, but unfortunately this only covers the surface of the volcano, but does not stop the boiling magma. There is more to it. Much more.
• A negative experience is stored longer than a positive one.
• This is neurologically proven and should give us pause for thought.
• Because the internal manager can and will, indeed must always decide in the interests of his employer, i.e. the manufacturing company, no matter what it costs in the end, but the bitter aftertaste remains with the customer: Will it work better next time? Whether the behavior of the employees will change, whether the delivery will be faster or more error-free in the future?

This is where external mediation comes into play.

In a discussion, we check where the hare is in the hay, look at the manufacturer, sales, dealer, customer, service, after sales on the fingers and analyze the situation in discussions with all parties. Machine personnel, local conditions, basic technical requirements as well as service personnel or support equipment may have contributed to the escalated situation.

So the team at the machine is also involved in resolving the issues:

• You also have to talk to those who have the most to lose, namely those who face downtime due to delivery delays, repairs or misproduction.
• It’s a matter of investigating what really went wrong.
• This is not an easy job, it requires tact as well as perseverance, it requires knowledge of human nature and, in particular, intercultural understanding, insofar as cross-national and cross-cultural situations are involved.
• But it also requires, in particular, the ability to communicate at multiple levels. And that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. After all, you talk to a CEO differently than you do to a machinist.
• Perhaps you yourself have such almost unsolvable cases in your company.

CRM Problem Investigation through Analysis, Encounter, Clarification.