Revolutionary relationship marketing
Article Date: Apr 21 2005
Case study: Trust is important
Mark Pinter-Krainer is founder and chief executive of AIM-listed Knowledge Technology Solutions, which develops market-data services for the financial industry.
‘Building trust is very important with relationship marketing and you need to be careful that you are not doing too much of a sales job when you are dealing with your customers. Ensure that your staff do not build up fiefdoms in the business. Information about individual accounts needs to be apparent to all of your team. People can be unwilling to share business and we’ve suffered from this in the past. We now have a robust customer relationship management system in place which logs every call from our clients,’ asserts Pinter-Krainer.
He adds that it is important to set standards and stick to them, and cites an example where an account could all too easily have been lost.
‘We were in a situation once when we paid a site visit to one of our customers. One of our staff walked the floor and got booed at. It’s amazing how a client can go from happy to mad overnight. It can be a difficult situation to recover from, but we have looked after the client as much as possible, with fortnightly checks, and he has continued to buy the product,’ adds Pinter-Krainer.
Need to know: How to make relationship marketing work for you
- Trust between both parties is crucial
- Communication is also vital – don’t allow issues to build up in the background
- Set standards and stick to them
- Find out what your customers’ expectations are and monitor them. It can be all too easy to keep providing the same service, but you must be aware of your customers’ changing needs
- Learn to stand your ground. Don’t dilute your brand or your product with potential customers who are going to make small or one-off purchases
- Be prepared to sacrifice the price, but never compromise the service
