Customer Engagement
Insights and Best Practice

Learn how Key Account Managers are making positive impacts, solving real problems for their customers, and building best practices inside their organizations.

The Best Offense is a Good Defense: Why Key Account Management is Your Best Strategy Right Now

Let’s face it: Now is a hard time to win new business. Across…

July 6, 2020/by Alex Raymond

Why Customer Engagement is Everything Right Now

Customer engagement is always important, which is why we write…

June 29, 2020/by Alex Raymond

How Key Account Management Software Can Make You a More Effective Client Services Director

By the time you’re the Director of Client Services for an organization,…

June 22, 2020/by Kelly Sharp

Key Account Management and Account Based Engagement: A Seamless Customer Journey

Customers are demanding more and more personalization. This is…

June 15, 2020/by Alex Raymond

Your Key Account Management Tech Stack (and Tech Hacks)

There are 3 pillars to building a truly customer-centric Key…

June 8, 2020/by Ben Blasko

Key Account Management for Cross-Functional Teams: Building Engagement with Internal Teams

Key Account Managers are the quarterback of their team—and…

June 1, 2020/by Kelly Sharp

What Your Clients Really Want – and How Key Account Management Delivers

In 2018, CSO Insights, the research division of the Miller Heiman…

May 25, 2020/by Alex Raymond

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How to Respond to Negative Customer Feedback

December 14, 2020/in Key Account Management /by Margot Howard

We all want positive feedback, but sometimes we don’t get it. Receiving negative feedback isn’t necessarily a bad thing since only 1 out of 26 unhappy customers complain and the rest churn. So, it’s certainly better to receive negative feedback than have an unhappy customer go to a competitor without telling you there’s a problem. Knowing about the problem or issue provides the opportunity to rectify the situation and retain the customer.

Don’t Avoid Negative Feedback

Ask for all sorts of feedback—it’s the only way you can improve. Plus, it’s what your customers want–to form a partnership with you that creates value for them. The best way to stay on top of continuously changing customer requirements is to communicate and request feedback during each interaction. Conducting Voice of Customer (VOC) surveys on a routine basis is critical as well to ensure you’re receiving feedback from all stakeholders, providing a more complete picture of the overall health of your accounts.

Make sure you Understand

When presented with feedback, especially negative feedback, pay close attention to word choices, tone of voice, and body language. Read between the lines to discern what’s being said and not said. Rephrase what you heard to confirm understanding. Then dig deeper by asking open-ended clarifying questions to get details and a better grasp on the situation. Find out what’s behind the negative feedback such as changes within your client’s business or their goals. The more you know, the better equipped you’ll be to address the issue and continue providing value to the customer.

Identify with your Customer

Once you have a greater understanding of the feedback and its background, put yourself in your customer’s shoes and show empathy. Be sensitive to how they must feel and how their negative experience may have impacted them. Feeling that you not only understand what they have told you, but how they feel, will be reassuring to them while making them feel valued.

Take Responsibility and Take Action

Don’t pass the buck by playing the blame game. Take responsibility for the issue and commit to resolving it by making a plan. Once you have a strategy in place, communicate it across your entire team to ensure you’re all on the same page. This allows all team members to adjust accordingly and provide a consistent customer experience during future interactions while preventing a recurrence of the problem.

Follow up

Once you have a plan in place, be sure to share your corrective action plan with the customer. Then, follow up routinely to keep them abreast of your progress and to gather updated feedback. Make any necessary adjustments to your plan based on continuous feedback from the customer until they confirm the problem has been resolved to their satisfaction.

Document Changes

Always update your account plan in Kapta, capturing changes you’re making based on feedback received from your key accounts. This is essential so you can continue to track your progress within each account while making sure nobody drops the ball. This also facilitates input from and communication with your entire team making it possible to provide the best customer experience and results.

Repeat Frequently

Request feedback from your customers on a routine basis during every interaction and through VOC surveys. All feedback is a gift enabling you to continually strengthen your partnership with your key accounts and provide the value they desire.

Need help gathering and addressing feedback from your key accounts? Kapta includes tools like VOC surveys and facilitates internal communication with your team, simplifying the process. Schedule a demo today.

Key Account Managers: How To Set Yourself up for Success in 2021

December 7, 2020/in Key Account Management /by Melissa Rogers

2020 has been a wild ride, to put it mildly. And the only thing that’s certain, unfortunately, is that there’s more uncertainty to come. 2021 has become somewhat of a north star for life returning to “normal” (whatever that will mean), but the truth is that the closer we get to the start of the new year, the less likely it seems we’ll see any major changes to our day-to-day anytime soon.

Along with every other part of life being turned upside down, work and business is an area of huge unease for many right now. If you’re fortunate enough to have kept a steady job and paying clients this year, you know that demonstrating value is more important than ever. As a Key Account Manager, there are a few strategic boxes you should check as the door closes on one strange year, and opens up to what may be another strange one to come. Here’s Kapta’s checklist to set Key Account Managers up as indispensable partners for 2021 success.

Follow the Kapta KAM Process™

Call us biased, but we believe that the best course for advancement—especially through seasons of doubt—always goes back to Our KAM Process™ of Know, Act, Measure. The KAM Process™ helps you minimize busywork and put your customers first, aligning your success with theirs so that everyone wins. But it’s not just a clever acronym or a one-time action; followed closely, the KAM Process™ requires ongoing personal attention, strategic thinking and human connection. You’re likely already doing these things in various ways; here are our steps for removing the noise and staying on-track.

Step 1: Know Your Customer

To be human is to want to be understood. Your customers are no different, and if you view them through this primitive lens, you’ll always have a leg up. Getting beyond names and titles to understand your customer’s needs and goals is the best thing you can do to ensure you’ll be the partner the customer wants to take into the future. Consider the following tactical exercises to help build a 360-degree view of your client and their priorities for the coming year.

Engage in Updated Voice of Customer Interviews: Now is the time to get back in front of your clients—especially if it’s been a while—to position yourself as a hero by asking great questions and diving deeper into your customer’s needs. Are you clear on your customer’s goals for 2021? How can those goals align with your business goals? Kapta’s Voice of Customer tools provide pre-populated surveys and questions to kick-start this interview process, but it shouldn’t be a matter of just an emailed survey. Use this valuable time of transition to engage with your clients face-to-face, to get a sense of their specific needs. Ask yourself how you can remove risk for your clients. What can you to do service your client, that also allows you to minimize risk for your business?
Refresh Org. Charts and Client Profiles: Make sure your client org. charts are up to date. Do you have detailed profiles for all of your key contacts? Do you know who’s running the day-to-day versus who’s making the big decisions? Everyone on your team should share this knowledge, so be sure to take the time needed to address any gaps.
Reassess Your SWOT Analysis: Once you’re sure you have the current scope of your customer’s big picture, apply Kapta’s SWOT framework to test and prioritize their strategy and objectives. Remember that SWOT exercises are best done in a workshop setting; use your insights in cooperation with the customer, and keep them front and center in 2021 account planning and goal setting.

Step 2: Act Purposefully

If you take the time to ask thoughtful questions, update and keep detailed stakeholder profiles and assess areas of strength, weakness, opportunity and threat, you’ve got the elements needed to create a standout, proactive account plan.

Strong account plans should include explicit objectives and meaningful tactics to get there, all with clear ownership. But account planning isn’t a one-sided show—alignment between your team and the customer is critical to executing a successful plan. Goals, statuses, notes, and all other details should be organized in a centralized hub, and changes and milestones should be shared among the team and with the customer on a regular basis.

Remember that ideas and strategy, alone, are just that; turning ideas and strategy into clear, results-oriented action is what will help you build trust and value with your customer, particularly in times of uncertainty.

Step 3: Measure Progress

Of course regular reporting is a requisite to demonstrate progress against your customer’s predetermined KPIs, but challenge yourself to be more than just a reporting robot, and think about ways that reporting can help you shine. How can data and reporting be used creatively to illustrate what’s working, as well as what’s not? If you can put reporting in front of a client in a way they may not have thought to look at it previously, you’ll show the customer that you’re more than an average partner, and that you’re willing to walk the extra mile in their favor.

Another method for gauging performance is to take a broad evaluation of an account’s overall customer engagement, satisfaction and success. Kapta’s account health score algorithm helps put a grade to an account’s general health; this can help designate areas that may need attention.

Lastly, if in the process of getting to know your customer, you’ve also taken the time to make sure your goals align with theirs, it should be easy to identify wins and opportunities for celebration. Taking time to commemorate victories big and small will foster a stronger customer relationship; if you can celebrate with your client, you’re more likely to be given the chance to recreate that success later on.

Conclusion

Real customer engagement can’t be automated, and as the year roars to a close, you should think about the skills, resources and actions that are in your control, and focus less on everything that’s not (the pandemic and the economy, for better or worse, will chart their own course). Lead with a customer-centric, strategic and human approach to help keep your business and your customers on track heading into 2021. To see how Kapta can support, accelerate and mentor your efforts, schedule a personal demo today.

customer engagement manager at meeting with clients

Welcome to the Customer Engagement Economy

November 30, 2020/in Customer Engagement /by Alex Raymond

The Customer Engagement Economy is here—and it’s here to stay. That means it’s not enough to win new business. Customer needs are changing, and the only way to meet them is to dive into customer relationships, adding value in increasingly bespoke ways.

Today’s customers demand that you:

Understand their business
Make them more competitive
Deliver on your promises
Make them a hero

As anyone who works in Key Account Management knows, that’s no small feat. And if you’re still relying on your CRM to get you there, you won’t have the support you need. Why? Because CRMs weren’t built for the Engagement Economy.

Read more to learn why the stakes are higher than ever, why CRMs are structurally unable to rise to the occasion, and how purpose-built KAM technology can help.

Harder to engage. Easy to lose.

If you think your key accounts are safe from churn, think again. In the Engagement Economy, ever-growing customer demands lead to ever more vulnerable customer relationships. Consider these sobering stats:

Only 31% of companies believe their suppliers understand their needs
Only 47% of customers believe their vendors deliver on promises
71% of companies are indifferent towards or disengaged from their vendors

So who are the companies who are delivering on their promises and building real engagement? And what are they doing well? They’re driving growth and retention through deep understanding of their clients’ needs, clear and actionable plans, and tangible results. They’re moving beyond transactional relationships to more engaged, more strategic work.

Transactional vs Relational

CRM tools reinforce a transactional approach to customer relationships: Sales, billing, issue resolution, etc. All those transactions collect data, but very little of it actually helps you understand your customers better—much less make them more competitive and more successful. In short, transactions aren’t enough to build engagement. For that, you need relationships—and tools designed to help support them.

Relationships can never be fully automated the way many transactions can—but they can be accelerated by purpose-built technology. The right KAM platform prompts behaviors that build engagement: frequent, value-added client communication; strong, strategic account planning; and metrics tracking against key performance indicators (KPIs).

Intention and Infrastructure

Building customer engagement takes a unified approach: People, process, and technology. Leadership must commit to a customer-centric culture, and prioritize organic growth through exceptional client delivery. The right technology enables success for everyone in the organization by establishing and facilitating a clear customer engagement process: Know your customers. Act on their behalf. Measure your impact.

Your Customer Engagement Roadmap

Kapta is more than a tech platform—it’s a customer engagement roadmap, helping KAMs establish a clear framework for doing business in the Engagement Economy. Kapta gives teams a compass to follow, a clear structure for goal-oriented account planning, and an automated, visual approach to metrics tracking.

The result? When motivated teams are using our tech, they are able to:

Understand their customers’ business.
Deliver insights that make customers more competitive.
Deliver on their promises.
Make customers heroes—to their internal leadership and to the people they serve.

Sound familiar? These are exactly the things customers demand in the Engagement Economy. So while CRMs weren’t built for today’s customers, you’re not on your own. Purpose-built KAM software can help you drive success for yourself, your organization, and, most importantly, for your customers.

To learn more about how Kapta can help you excel in the Engagement Economy, schedule your demo today.

Customer Engagement
Insights and Best Practice

Defining the New Normal: Updating your Voice of Customer in the Time of COVID

Key Account Managers: Updating your SWOT Analysis in the Time of COVID

Notes from the Other Side: 5 Ways to be a Great Client

How Key Account Management Supports an Execution Mindset