Customer Focus in Turbulent Times

Response to challenges can define a company. The classic example is Johnson & Johnson’s reaction to the never-solved 1982 Tylenol murders, when cyanide-laced capsules were found in eight bottles of Extra Strength Tylenol. Seven people died as a result.

 The poisonings did not originate in the manufacturing or distribution process. Investigators showed that they were the work of a person who tampered with bottles taken from supermarkets and drug stores. Johnson & Johnson stopped production, distribution, and advertising of the product. They issued public warnings, and instituted a highly publicized and very costly product recall. When the product was re-introduced, it featured triple-sealed packaging, which was not standard or required at the time. This response positioned Johnson & Johnson as more concerned with the safety of its customers than with short-term financial losses.    

Just as the reaction to a difficult situation can define a company, a major challenge can also be a catalyst for defining your internal e-Learning team. When your organization’s relationship with its customers changes, you have an opportunity to shine by providing a swift and targeted response.

Customers are key

Your company’s customers are the key to its success or failure. Whether your e-Learning development department focuses on customers, staff, or both, changes in the relationship between your company and its customers have implications in the e-Learning that you develop. Customers are not just those who spend money with your company – customers include everyone who wants something from the company.

Naturally, you already know your customers as a function of your training analysis and design. However, when the business climate changes in sudden or drastic ways, your existing customers may have new needs, and you may acquire new customers.

A team that is ready with viable learning solutions for meeting these new needs will be well positioned while the organization evolves to meet the new challenges. We all know training functions tend to be seen as disconnected from the bottom line and expendable. However, you avoid that image when you are providing leadership in ways that help the company build new, positive relationships with potentially nervous or even hostile customer groups.

Four rules

In my career, I have been involved with several companies at times of major shifts in the perceptions of customers. From what I have seen, there are four rules for being able to successfully respond and lead in these times: know your business, know your culture, forget history, and be considered but quick.

Rule 1: Know your business

Knowing your business is the key to successfully anticipating a major change in your company’s relations with customers. As learning functions strive for recognition as business development partners, it’s not enough for us to be proficient with the applications of adult learning theory. We also must become experts in the field in which we are employed.

Only if you are knowledgeable about your industry, and follow the news related to it, will you be able to recognize when major changes are occurring. A pivotal court case, a scientific discovery, a scandal, an economic shift, a new law or regulation, a disaster, or even a popular movie can cause or signal a change in the zeitgeist that affects the business climate. The change may apply to your entire industry or just your company. You must have enough understanding of your field to see that change coming.

The first indications of a business shift may be in trade publications or legal reviews. One of the more obvious signals is that your industry, company, a major product, or even a major product ingredient appears as a topic in the news media and on the Web more often. There could be mentions in comic strips, talk show monologues, or TV shows. Are there new blogs devoted to the topic? Are your help systems getting more inquiries? Has a politician mentioned it in a speech? If you’re well-versed in your business, you’ll pick up on it in the early stages.   

Rule 2: Know your culture

Knowing your company’s culture is the key to figuring out how you will introduce your new e-Learning ideas for affecting customer relationships in light of the rapidly changing landscape.  If you know your company’s culture, you can probably predict the response to the shift in your business pretty accurately.

Some companies are very proactive, while many are rather ponderous when it comes to making changes. Some companies pride themselves on being early adopters; others are more risk-averse. But just because your company moves deliberately, and would prefer to stay away from risk, doesn’t mean you can’t propose new solutions. You might just need to do it carefully. Of course, in any company, you must have good relationships so that your team is known and trusted, because your team’s reputation will make or break your proposal.

Here are some ideas for introducing solutions for the needs of new customers and new needs of current customers, according to four different company types:

Proactive, early adopters

Your challenge with this group is to be ready to go soon after you propose your solutions. If you can convince leadership that your reasoning is solid, they will want to move fast. It’s a good idea to have a prototype ready to pilot before you make your solution proposal, so that you can launch something quickly. Proposing an idea that is accepted, but then having an implementation time frame that is much longer than anticipated will undermine your credibility.

Proactive, risk-averse

This might seem like an oxymoron, but it isn’t. This type of company wants to respond to a stressful situation quickly, but also wants to make sure that the response is tried-and-true. That doesn’t mean your response needs to be limited to your current solution set. Before you make your proposal at this company type, do some quick benchmarking. If you can cite great results at other organizations for the response you propose, you will be much more likely to get a green light to move forward.  

Ponderous, (relatively) early adopters

This type of company wants to consider all the options and ramifications before it will try something new, but once you have shown that you have considered all the possibilities from many angles, you can get the support you need. Benchmarking is a good tactic in this situation. It is also a good idea to bring in other teams as partners. If IT thinks the proposed reaction is feasible and secure, and Communications thinks that your message strategy is sound, you are much more likely to see your proposal go ahead. 

Ponderous, risk-averse

With this company type, it is important not to go too far before seeking approval for your solution concept. Even if you have benchmarked and you have buy-in from other teams, appearing to have moved ahead without approval will be viewed with a very jaundiced eye. Having a high-level champion for your customer relationship solution proposal is a good idea in any case, but with this type of organization it is crucial. You should encourage your company sponsor to introduce your proposal, with you in the room to answer questions, show samples, and present benchmarking information.

Rule 3: Forget history

The first two rules focus on what you know, but forgetting history is the key to freeing you and your e-Learning team to look at new possibilities. Your business has changed. Just because your company never did something before doesn’t mean it won’t now. Things that you proposed unsuccessfully in a previous climate may now, in the new climate, get the support that was previously lacking. This is not the time to bring something up that company leadership perceives as a bee in your bonnet – then you will look opportunistic. The important thing is to make sure that what you propose is appropriate to the needs of the customer group. If you can show that it is an effective solution for that population, then you should make your proposal with confidence, and not let history hamper you.

Rule 4: Be considered but quick

A team can shift more quickly than an entire organization. When your analysis of your company’s position indicates that a major shift is the offing, you need to start preparing. You are in a position to get out ahead, and even help lead the organizational response when it comes. You need to balance the timing, so have a solidly researched solution ready to propose as the company is seeking ways to react. It’s worth extra effort and some late nights to analyze the situation, define new needs of current customers and the needs of new customers, research viable solutions, and prepare proposals. Then you are ready to volunteer your team’s expertise.  

The worksheet

If you follow the four rules, you will be ready when your company experiences a business-shifting event. By knowing your business, you will be able to see the crisis coming. By knowing your culture, you will know how to propose your solutions in a way that will put your team in the best possible position. If you are able to forget history, you will be ready to look outside your normal solution set for a problem that is outside the norm for your organization. If you are considered but quick, you will able to position your team as an organizational leader. So now, how are you going to figure out your response?

In this section you’ll find a worksheet that I use as a framework for defining new or changed customer needs, and for help with analyzing possible reactions. It is slightly different for current and new customers. This worksheet consists of two almost-identical tables. One table (see Table 1) is for major shifts that a current customer is experiencing. The second table (see Table 2) is for a new customer. You can use the appropriate worksheet on your own, with your team management, or with your entire team.

Analysis of the situation

As you can see, the worksheet starts with the Customer and the Effects that the situation has on the customer. I recommend that you use a separate worksheet for each customer and effect. Also, remember that the customer that you are considering is your company’s customer, not your e-Learning team’s customer. Of course, you’ll have to deal with changing requirements of your team’s customers as well, but that’s not the focus at the moment.

For example, if you create e-Learning for a toy company, and your doll designs from the early 20^th century were featured in an exhibit on images of different races in the United States, you may find that ethnographers are a new company customer group. That might not seem to affect your team at all, but you would still want to do an analysis to make sure you don’t need to update your training to include how cultural imagery in the toys has evolved over time.

On the New Customer worksheet (Table 2), there is a line for a Quick Analysis of what the new customer will want from your company in the current situation.

The next line (for current and new customers alike) is for defining New Goals. You’ll notice that the worksheet has space for only three. Since you’re working on quick response planning, you don’t want to have too many goals fragmenting your efforts.

My suggestion for using the worksheet is to fill out these fields (Customer, Effects, New Goals) first, on your own. Then, prioritize the worksheets by stacking the most important on top. Once you have the three that are the most important, put the others away in a folder for later. If you are able to successfully address the top case (Customer/Effect and the associated goals), you can go back to the other sheets and see if they are still applicable, or if the situation has evolved further.

Next, I’d suggest asking team members to review the results of your analysis and prioritization – either just management or the entire group, depending on what’s most comfortable for you. Get their reactions to check your analysis of the customer, effect and goals, then continue filling out your three chosen worksheets.

Responding to the situation

The next two lines are where you put possible responses to the changing customer relationship. I have broken them down into Team Changes and Product Changes. 

Team changes

Team changes are structural in nature. They are the things you do to make sure you are ready to provide the solutions that you are proposing. I have not included big changes such as adding staff, bringing in people with different skill sets, or purchasing a new Content Management System. The interventions proposed at this stage of the game should be fast and cost-effective. If they are very successful, you may have set the stage to propose more costly and far-ranging solutions. Team changes that I have found to be effective are:

• Partnering: A cross-functional team or a task force might be the best way to develop an appropriate solution to a new customer need. Let’s say that your business is now subject to new regulation. A task force from IT, Legal, and e-Learning might be needed to bring about a training solution that will show that your company is meeting new training requirements. If your team and another have skills and resources that both need, you might even want to consider a merger.  
• Focusing: In a stressful business climate, you may have to focus most of your efforts on solutions to the crisis. Cut other tasks that cannot be abandoned for a while to the bone, and gradually pick them up as your customer relationship solutions are implemented. 
• Renaming: Are you certain that leadership understands your contribution to the company? Does your team name clearly indicate (to people without Instructional Design degrees) what you do? Do your product names align with business terminology? When the business climate is shifting, it’s more important to have your function explained with a glance at the organization chart than to have a name that is prestigious-sounding but vague, or that spells a clever acronym. Another reason to rename your team might be to show capabilities that you would like to exercise. For example, you might change your team name from “E-Learning Development” to “E-Learning and Web 2.0 Solutions.”
• Restructuring: If your team structure is not efficient, change it. Points of contact should be clear to the rest of your company, and the skills of your team members should be fully used – titles or reporting arrangements should not keep you from taking advantage of the expertise of each person.

Product changes

Product changes are ways in which your e-Learning itself might evolve. They include:

• Repurposing: You may already have e-Learning that could meet the new customer needs with a little tweaking, which could consist of making it available on a different Web page or making minor content or interface adjustments.
• Changing content: The situation will most likely call for you to update content in existing training, or add new courses, etc. If content is changing rapidly, you may need to come up with ways to streamline input, production, and approvals.
• Providing new tools: If your help desk is now responding to a new set of user troubles, you may want to provide some decision support tools. If you have new compliance requirements, you may need to add scored tests and a way to report the data. In this case, rather than telling your senior leadership that you need a LMS that costs many thousands of dollars and takes six months to configure, you should propose an interim solution to get your company through the short term.
• Delivering with new vehicles: New customers or new needs of existing customers may require new delivery vehicles. For example, if security becomes an issue, you may need to move training behind a firewall or add password requirements for access. If geographically diverse customers need quickly updated information, you may want to use blogs, Webinars, Twitter, or text messaging. 

You’ll notice that I’ve put these tactics along the bottom of the worksheet, because I want to remind myself to consider them. I’m sure there are others that could also be added; these are just my favorites.

Risks and resource

The next section of the worksheet deals with figuring out assets and risks. Challenges is where you list your risks, plus your potential, probable, and definite difficulties. When you design your proposed customer relationship solutions, you’ll need to keep these in mind.

If anything in this space is too much to deal with, you may need to table this goal and approach it later in the process of assimilating the changed business climate, or let another group take it on.

Partners and Collaboration go together. Partners are the other groups that you need or want to work with to meet your goal. Under Collaboration, you honestly assess whether you will be able to work together and share credit for the solution idea and the work to implement it. If the partner is a team you can collaborate with, then you can work together to propose the response to the new customer need. If not, you are better off making the proposal alone or with an executive champion, and pulling the partner in if your proposal is accepted.

Outcome deciders

Finally, the Decision makers section is where you list those who will decide whether your proposal is accepted and set the parameters of how you implement the solution. The questions “Do they get your role?” and “Do they get your resources?” are very important to your proposal development. If the decision makers don’t understand why your e-Learning team is involved in developing this solution (role), or what you have to put toward implementing a solution if it is accepted (resources), you will have to highlight that information in the proposal.

Case study (very definitely made-up!)

Let’s look at a fictional company crisis, and relate the four rules and the worksheet to it. Here’s the scenario: Small capsules from outer space have landed in many locations across the world. They contain what appear to be tiny insects, some of which have been released into the air. So far, the insects have caused no problems, although governments and people in general are concerned about them.

These bugs have been found in all areas of the planet except strawberry fields and patches. Tabloids, and even mainstream media, are speculating that strawberries repel these “insects.” You are in charge of the training team for a company that makes exclusive strawberry-scented shower and bath products sold at a national boutique. Your team produces e-Learning for sales staff at the stores that carry your products.

At first glance, this might seem to be a great position for your company. It’s a potential windfall! But you know that there is a danger that your company will look like it’s profiting from a panic, especially if it turns out that the “insects” are completely benign, or if it turns out that strawberry scent doesn’t repel them. Here’s how you might use the rules and the worksheet to analyze your possible role in this situation.

Know your business: As soon as the lack of “insects” in strawberry fields came to light, you began paying attention. When the tabloids started doing stories on bogus strawberry hoarding, you knew it was time to start making plans for an e-Learning solution. Since the sales staff in the boutiques that carry your products work on commission, you know they will be tempted to hint that customers should stock up on your products to repel the “insects.” You also know that since the tabloids have picked up the story, and the capsules are already a news obsession, the media will be seeking comment. Your company generally doesn’t get much attention from any media except the fashion magazines, so you know that your executives and scientists aren’t going to be prepared to deal with the press.

Know your culture: Your company makes upscale cosmetics, so it almost has two cultures: executives, Sales, and Marketing are aligned with the Health and Beauty field, while Research & Development is a hard science team. You know that both sides of the business are concerned with carefully protecting the company image. You see your company as proactive but risk-averse.

Forget history: There has never been a need for your company to respond to the news media before, but since your team creates Sales e-Learning with branching video scenarios, you think you might have a role to play in media training.

Be considered but quick:  Sales are suddenly on a sharp upswing (which is great, but …) and you’ve seen a few interviews with strawberry farmers on the morning talk shows. You’ve got to do your homework, and then it’s time to make your proposals. See Table 3 for an example of your worksheet for current customers.

Your existing customer is the boutique sales staff.  Let’s look at one of your goals:

1. Make sales staff aware of facts – there is no evidence that the “insects” are dangerous, and no evidence that strawberry-scented bath products repel them. You also want to highlight the consequences of appearing to take advantage of the public by encouraging people to buy based on false concerns by dramatizing the customer reaction in scenarios. This can be added to your existing scenario training, so you have no need of team changes. Your products will need new content. A challenge might be to keep up with new information, but stores have daily stand-up sales meetings, so your e-Learning can catch up in a day or two. Your partners will be Research & Development, Sales, and Marketing. Updates to e-Learning are within your current scope, so you will have no problems with collaboration. The decision makers understand your role and resources. You will definitely propose this solution.

Your new customer group is news media representatives. (See Table 4.) They will want comments about your products as related to the “insects.” They will be persistent, and will want brief, plain-language statements.

Let’s look at two of your goals for the news media:

1. Media training for executives – Your role here may be secondary, as Marketing and Communications may take the lead. However, online coaching, Webinars, and Webcam conferencing could be excellent strategies to support face-to-face media training, which would require product changes to content, new products, and new delivery vehicles. Team changes required to support this work will certainly include partnering, and you may also need to restructure to free people up to develop the new tools. You will partner with Marketing, and probably with a media training consultant to provide content expertise.  Decision makers will understand your role and resources. You will propose this solution.
2. Media training for selected R&D scientists – This is very much like the previous goal, except that R&D may not understand the need for media training, since their scientists are experts. Executives also may not see a need for the scientists to speak to the media, but you (and Marketing) are certain that the media representatives will insist. With the support of Marketing, you will propose this solution.

This is admittedly a silly case study scenario, but it is one that could result in many new customers, customer needs, and goals. I look forward to seeing some of them in the “Talk Back to the Authors” Forum, as well as suggestions for improving the worksheet.

“May you live in interesting times”

At the moment, the world-wide economic crisis has us all feeling like we’re on the receiving end of the apocryphal Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” We do; events move quickly, and are just as quickly reported, judged, and commented upon through dozens of media. And new media vehicles are introduced and adopted very rapidly. It’s a challenge to stay on top of what’s going on, but it’s worth the effort. With industry knowledge and customer analysis, you can help not only your company and your customers, but you can also increase your team’s likelihood of surviving the crisis with acknowledged organizational value.

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