Everyone has sat around a campfire at one time or another in their life…most of us I would venture to say still do it regularly as a social event. When you think about what goes on around a campfire, you will understand just how critical it can be for your business.
What happens around the campfire…STORIES…lots of them. And when one story is told, someone else has an opinion, a perspective, questions, or some other discussion they would like to add. One story leads to another and another and another until either the wine runs out or the cigars are all smoked or the s’mores are all eaten. But until then, something very interesting happens around the campfire.
Campfires are like a “truth serum” for people…they tend to want to talk and tell whoever is there something in-depth about whatever the topic is that is being discussed. Besides the stories, people tend to talk about their relationships, their businesses, their employees, customers, and a host of other topics that are normally taboo during the day come to life at night over the campfire. Everyone feel safe and protected by the campfire and so the words flow out…
If you want to know what’s really going on with your customers…the real truth behind how they are treated and how they feel about you, invite them to a campfire. The wine doesn’t hurt either but the campfire will help them feel safe and comfortable and open up about what is going on with them and what they love and hate about their relationship with you and your company.
I remember back in my early days, my first job out of graduate school when I went to work for IBM. It was an awesome experience and company to work for and the branch manager, Paul Willingham, was a great leader. He knew the value of the campfire. Every year he held an overnight fishing trip for salmon off the coast of Washington for some of our best customers. And you guessed it…there were campfires, wine, cigars, and even some poker going on. This is where you learned what your customers really thought of you and where they thought you could improve.
There was no survey on the planet that would have given us this depth of information…it was amazing. Some of it was not so good to hear but all of it was incredibly valuable. We took this information and figured out what we were going to do over the next year to improve upon our service and experience based on what we heard. The key to all of this was to have less wine than your customer or you couldn’t remember anything important…and taking notes wasn’t going to work in the darkness of the night. So clear thinking was critically important.
The point of all of this is that your customer is very willing to talk to you…in fact they always tell me that most companies just really don’t ask the right questions at the right time. They are willing to tell us but the circumstances have to be right as well as the person you are seeking the information from. In my IBM story, all of these people were leaders of IT, CEO, VPs of something…they were key decision makers in the organization and had no problem telling you the way it was from their perspective. The truth serum of the campfire always worked.
For any business, regardless of the industry, this strategy works. Leaders and decision makers inside your customer organizations are more than willing to tell you about their experiences and what they like and dislike. They just need to be asked in the right way at the right time with the right questions. And they need to be free to simply talk…and tell their own stories. This isn’t the time to solve issues or disagree with what they are saying, this is the time for leaders to LISTEN and continue to listen and bite their tongue when they want to say something to defend what they do. This is the most valuable customer information you can get so let it flow long and deep.
If you are striving to be more OBSESSED about your CUSTOMERS and move towards being Customer Centric, you need to schedule some campfire outings…several of them with various groups with your customer organizations.
Customer Experiences are at the core of being obsessed over your customers. You can‘t obsess over them if you don’t know the experience they desire and would rave about and tell others about…it’s impossible. And an experience isn’t the products and services you deliver…it’s how they “feel with every interaction” they have with your company. They need to tell you what makes them feel awesome and what makes them feel like a “number” in your system. They have to be open to talk about what they tell others about you…good and bad. And the campfire is one way to get this depth of information.
The beauty of the campfire strategy is they are there to enjoy themselves…they feel comfortable. You can use other such venues but this is one that is guaranteed to get you some incredibly deep information they won’t give you under normal circumstances. Dinners and lunches out won’t do it, it just wastes your money and gets you surface information. You need something like a campfire to get to their real feelings and truth behind their experience.
Whether you use the campfire or something else that allows your customers to really get deep and personal about their customer experience, the point is to go deep…get the information others can’t get at and then create a plan of how to deliver this to your customers. Gathering the information is the first step…creating a plan…along with Customer Experience Maps…will get you to delivering this experience to your customers. And when you do, they will be amazed and tell others how you listened and acted.
And when you invite them to the next campfire session, they will be first in line to sign up and go with you…and you will get even deeper information the second time and third time and every time they attend. Getting this type of personal information from your best customers is more than critical today for organizations that are under constant attack from competitors and being commoditized. But holding a campfire outing is one way you can beat them out by knowing more than any of them would ever hope to know. Need some wood and matches???
