Why optimising campaigns or internal communication only is useless or: How to benefit from the integration of internal and external communication
- by Jens Moeller © Copyright Jens Moeller Consulting Ltd 2011
In the business world, external and internal communications are often kept separate from each other.
External communication is all about establishing a dialogue between an organisation and its stakeholders such as prospects, customers, the media, analysts, shareholders and so forth. This is the world of public relations, marketing campaigns, advertising or telemarketing campaigns. Heads of sales or marketing, or board members carefully plan how to win more customers and/or how to prevent existing customers from churning. The organisation reaches out directly to potential and existing customers via advertising and campaigns. Also, it reaches out indirectly via public relations, analyst relations and other opinion leaders and multipliers.In the business-to-business (B2B) arena, there are more direct concepts such as public speaking or workshops with potential and existing customers.
The more complex external communication is, the more challenges occur regarding the internal communication. Usually there are several departments, teams, and sometimes even sister companies dealing with the same prospects and customers. There may be departments such as sales, marketing or customer care. There may be teams such as the field sales force (often in B2B), sales support, outbound telemarketing, inbound hotlines, customer win-back or churn prevention. And there may be sister companies, for example one for each product in the bundle. Now, how does everybody know details of the campaign and how exactly to deal with the incoming enquiries? How do we measure how successfully the incoming leads could be converted into sales? And for our in-house operations: how can we make sure, that dealing with the campaigns does not negatively impact our day-to-day operations of customer care?
If we carry this thought further throughout the customer life cycle, it is easy to imagine that the same interdependencies apply for existing customers and customer care. For instance, an existing customer who pays the normal price per month may complain that the new offer is much lower, claiming and according price reduction. Now, how do we want to deal with that? Or, in difficult market conditions customers may contact us because they are worried and/or want to terminate the contract. This precisely what happened in the Retail Banking arena during the financial crisis, and it keeps going until the present day. Customers have lost their trust and are worried about losing their savings.
The list of potential questions as mentioned above is long. In a nutshell, it tells us that the more complex external communications are, the more important it is to organisehow to deal with the response and to organise who does what exactly. This in turn raises two more major questions, which lead us into the HR field:
- How can we enable and motivate our employees (and external partners) to communicate effectively with enquiring potential and existing customers?
- How can we lead these employees effectively?
Both questions are vital for the success of our campaign, for how successfully we can win and retain customers.
Regarding point a: In training and coaching sessions with hundreds of employees and team leaders I have heard the same questions raised by staff and leaders over and over again:
- What can we say, the customer/prospect asks for X or says Y?
- How can we react, if the customer is critical/cautious/angry etc.?
The crucial thing here is this: usually, training and coaching plans separate three major education categories: the subject matter (e.g. whatever the company offers, product knowledge etc.), process knowledge (e.g. how and when to escalate complaints) and the so-called soft skills (e.g. how to be friendly, response, assertive etc. during a customer interaction). The problem with this is, that the real-world challenges for employees usually consist of a mix of all three categories. Therefore, workshops or group coaching sessions targeting such issues in an integrated way, are much more successful than the one-dimensional traditional training sessions.
Essentially, we need to trainemployees with a view to not only how (soft skill) they should communicate with the customer or prospect, but also what (content) as a matter of fact they can offer in this situation to add value, and finally how to proceed (process) with the case according to internal organisational rules. These integrated sessions are deeply involving, highly motivational, and require the full engagement of the trainees and an experienced workshop / coaching session leader/moderator.
Regarding point b: Again, in hundreds of training and coaching sessions with team leaders, usually the same questions have come up and needed to be dealt with urgently:
- My superior wants me to take care of X, but I do not fully understand his/her expectations, what he/she wants me to do about it, and how I should proceed.
- My superior often gets into a mood that I cannot deal with, and I don’t dare to bring the topic up.
- Some people in my team/department are ex-colleagues, and it feels ridiculous to act as a superior towards them now. They don’t respect me as their superior anyway, they rather still see me as a colleague. How can I deal with them if they don’t meet their goals or deliver what they are supposed to?
- There is a conflict in my team, and the team members would not tell me about the details, because they don’t want to involve the superior – they rather keep on not working with each other.
Executive coaching sessions with department leaders have shown even more complex communication issues such as
- How to report to the headquarter with a positive impact, or
- How to interpret Key Performance Indicators (KPI), so they are understood and delivered upon throughout the organisation, or
- How to resolve conflicts between different teams and their leaders
Let us conclude here that the more complex external communication is, the more complex challenges in organisational development (OD) and human resources (HR) development we will face.External and internal communication are inseparably linked with each other, they are interdependent.If we treat them as separate entities, we will often reach the same effect as a doctor who treats only one part of our body (which shows the symptoms such as pain), only to understand much later that the root cause is much more complex and the whole body needs to be considered: how the different body parts interact with each other and impact each other. For instance, if I have a headache, the root cause may be problems with my neck.
We need to define goals for the campaign and the resulting internal operations and to map out processes how to deal with enquiries. To plan and roll out campaign briefings, team workshops, training and coaching. To make sure that there is room for getting better along the way and for the next campaigns - through organising employee panels and feedback, and customer panels and feedback.It is obvious, that the external communication plan we roll out in order to win and retain customers require sophisticated internal communication: Which is one of the strongest interdependencies between marketing and sales on the one hand - and organisational and human resources (HR) development on the other.
Let’s take an example here.
Let’s say, a provider of broadcasting and telecoms services has decided to offer a new bundle of TV, broadband and telephone line. The head(s) of sales and marketing will define the product, the terms and conditions, the pricing and then plan how to make the offer to potential and existing customers. For a start, a TV campaign spreads the message motivating prospects and customers to call a 0800 number. These generated inbound calls were expensive to generate, so it is decided not to lose any of them. The same applies for inbound e-mail enquiries generated by ablended Internet/Email marketing campaign. The latter includes a special offer on the company website, several e-mails shots to previously registered prospects and customers and promotions with third-party websites.
It is expected that the number of calls and emails directly after a TV commercial could easily be much higher than the internal organisation could take on. Therefore, it is agreed to set up co-operationswith outsourcing partnersto cover the overflow that cannot be managed by the in-house organisation.For our example it is likely that such co-operations already exist. If they don’t exist yet, marketing and sales will search and select an outsourcing partner for the planned campaigns. There maybe a tender and several companies will be shortlisted and then invited to bid. But let’s skip this part here, as it is a different topic (see my article “Specifying Search and Selection”,http://jmoellerconsulting.com/specifying_selection.htm)
There is a campaign briefing by e-mail for all involved employees, which raises many questions that employees turned with to their team leaders. Most of these questions are based on long experience in dealing with customers, so employees anticipate certain customer questions that they do not have answers for. During the campaign more questions come up, which could not be anticipated. Team leaders do not have answers to all these questions and turned to their superiors, and do not find the time to deal with all the details. Increases frustration on the team leaders’ side. Their motivation decreases, and itself in their day-to-day leadership activities. They tell their team that they do not have answers to all the crucial questions, which in turn frustrates the team members. As a consequence, enquiring prospective and existing customers will get answers to the questions such as:
- “I don’t know, I can’t help you with that.”
- “This is a new campaign launched by our marketing department and I don’t have all the details, sorry…”
- “For that, you need to contact our technical department…”
…and so on.
From the customers’ perspective it may look like this example from the B2B arena:
“Just recently I was in touch with a provider of telephone broadband and TV services. I had ordered a package and made clear from the start that an early installation date would be crucial. When talking to the sales representative, I learned that all providers use the same installation company and service, which came as a surprise. Nobody could tell me when exactly installation date would be and they could rely on me not having any other choice because they all use the same service.
Then I received a text message telling me that at some point an installation will take place - with no address or contact details about who to turn to. A couple of days later I decided to investigate and was held in their queue for the usual long waiting time. When I finally got somebody on the line, I was told again that at some point the installation will happen without telling me any date or time.
Roughly a week later, I received a simple text message telling me when the installation will happen without even bothering to ask me whether I could make it. Knowing that I could not get hold of anybody, I had to arrange for it.
In the first place, I had asked the sales representative to get a full installation including all broadband settings and connections. When the installation engineer came, however, he informed me that he would only be responsible for connecting the office to the network and not for any settings. My requirements were not met, and I had to call the provider again to cancel the extended service that I have paid for but which was not delivered - with the need to explain why I don’t have to pay for the extra service.”
What lessonscan we learn from this?
- For customer communications to be successful, it is vital to integrate external and internal communications.
- Speaking in business terms, there is a strong interdependence between a) sales and marketing activities to win and retain customers on one side, and b) organisational and human resources development activities to enable and motivate the internal organisation to make this happen.
- We do need to look at both sides in detail. Yet, if we ignore the larger picture and the independencies between external and internal communication, we will never use the full business potential of our customer communications, sales and marketing efforts. Much worse: we will actually lose existing customers in the long run.
- The biggest potential for improvement is usually at the interfaces between different departments, teams and employees that need to work together in order to succeed.
- If we do not find the time to communicate internally how to deal with the customer enquiries that we have paid so much to generate, and how to effectively lead our employees dealing with the enquiries - then we should find an expert who does.
- If we want to enable our employees to deal effectively and in a self-motivating way with triggered customer enquiries, then we need to train and coach them in an integrated way considering subject matter, process and communication skills.
- If we want to make the whole system work - customer enquiry generation, converting enquiries into sales, retaining and/or upgrading those customers – our team leaders need a clear picture. This includes what we want to achieve, how we want to achieve it and what can be done to make it happen. Also, how we want to measure our success and how to explain that to our employees, how to gather their opinions and experience successfully and how to provide feedback what we did with our lessons learned. Team leaders are the vital hubs for our succeeding in winning and retaining customers.
- In order to have a clear picture on team leader level, it is essential to have a mutual understanding and agreement on department leader level regarding the co-operation on the main processes of winning and retaining customers.
…ife.g.a Marketing department plans campaigns without letting the Customer Care department know and prepare in time…
…ife.g. the Customer Care department does or cannot provide feedback regarding the customer response to new campaigns, products or services to the Marketing and Sales departments…
…our success is at risk.
- For any of these efforts, it helps to have an expert on board to e.g.
- Facilitate workshops so everyone can concentrate on his/her own contributions and the discussion
- Mediate between conflicting parties so a mutually satisfying agreement can be achieved
- Ask the “stupid questions” that no internal leader or employee dares to ask
- Find that yet there is no immediate answer and getting everyone involved to work on an answer and get results.
- Gather honest and open feedback without the fear of any drawbacks (which would arise when facing superiors)
- Enable participants to find their joy of learning again, and to develop it further – much to the later delight of their superiors
- Motivate leaders and staff by involving them in the organisational improvement process, by delivering feedback to their individual contributions and to the overall progress.
- Enable us to see our organisation’ performance through the eyes of our prospective and existing customers – without “sugarcoating” the insights.
- Enable us to learn from other organisations’ actions, experiences and results with the same and similar challenges.
- Coach Executives to help them understand the full picture and to develop their own solutions.
Would you like further information? Do you have questions or suggestions? We look forward to your call, email or letter. You can contact us via the following methods:
Jens Moeller Consulting Ltd.
Phone: +44 20 799 32 415
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