Keeping the customers sweet

Over half of the study participants confirmed that the recession has pushed them to reach out to their customers to more fully and proactively explore their needs, surface and explore underlying the assumptions made in developing their plans, exploring opportunities to support customers and build or maintain strategic relationships.

“Since I guess April about a year ago we’ve been consciously aware of the fact that we were probably going to have to offset some costs, provide some discounts and some incentives. And to do things that maybe we had never done before: a little extra for the customer in an effort to a) keep them here, b) make them happy here, and c) make them profitable here,” says one port chief executive. Another adds: “It’s important for you now to take seriously survival strategies for your customers. How can you give them ways to survive? Or can you add value to their survivability?”

Echoing this sentiment, another says: “We have to understand our customer’s businesses better than we ever have before. We need to understand what their challenges are, where their markets are, where their opportunities are, where their challenges are, and where their threats are. And that takes time to sit down, and really truly understand that I want him to see, I want him to view me as an equal to him.