What Will Your Customer Relationship Quality Be In 2019?
Amongst all the predictions and forecasts that you’ll read as we enter 2019, here’s one that I’m 100% certain will be spot-on for B2B companies this year:
The quality of your customer relationships will directly impact your profits in 2019
Most B2B companies measure customer satisfaction or NPS. I would assert that in today’s complex and often commoditised B2B environment we must dive deep into long-term trust and commitment in customer and intermediary relationships.
We call this CRQ – Customer Relationship Quality. It’s so important that we offer it as one of our services – and we undertook a CRQ™ assessment on ourselves to check that we are ‘practicing what we preach’ when it comes to building trust and working together for mutual commercial benefit.
What is CRQTM?
CRQ™ is a world-leading B2B-specific voice-of-the-customer methodology to understand and manage long-term relationship quality and thereby improve sales and account management effectiveness.
The model upon which it is based acts as a diagnostic of all the critical drivers of B2B relationship.
The approach is based on sound academic research and has been adopted globally – we are about to go live in the UK with the world’s largest CRQ™ assessment, in the automotive sector.
How did we do?
CRQ™ is measured on a 1-7 scale. Anything over 5 is above-benchmark and anything 5.8 or more is world-class. Customer Attuned was accredited by its customers with a CRQ™ score of 5.5, which is a solid starting point from which to attain our aim of being amongst the very best.
Scores break down into the elements of the model and it was heartening to see that our clients already rate us world-class in trustworthiness and the service we deliver.
CRQ™ includes the NPS question, and in B2B any positive NPS score is good. We were given an NPS of 24 by our clients, which is also a great first-assessment position.
Relationships WILL COUNT towards profits in 2019!
- Relationship Quality can become a central pillar of your account management strategy and plans to develop mutual value
- Account managers can escape from working hand-to-mouth and firefighting to focus on more profitable endeavours
- The loss of one big client (or one major intermediary) could cost you profits and your job!
- The customer’s voice has to be heard clearly enough to identify any issues that damage trust
How will you build relationship quality?
Scores and results from voice-of-the-customer surveys are only worthwhile if they generate real insights that lead to positive actions to build, recover and/or capitalise on relationship quality.
This is another strength of CRQ™, as it generates insight at all levels, from strategic initiatives required to raise capabilities across the board to specific actions to incorporate in individual client account plans/joint business plans.
Sharing the results in an open and transparent way with clients builds trust and demonstrates your commitment to listen and improve. Including CRQ™ scores in account team performance management adds a highly valuable counterweight to short term measures of performance.
How would your business score and what should your priorities be to build and restore trust?
Please get in touch to find out! Contact Customer Attuned at hello@customerattuned.com
- B2B Trust as a Predictive Indicator - November 12, 2024
- Relationship Crises and Trust - October 2, 2024
- Relationship Transitions – Testing the Resilience of B2B Trust - September 18, 2024
