Prepare for the coming small business renaissance with insights from a customer service expert.
/ An interview with Frank Eliason
The following summarizes an interview facilitated by Capterra team member Kyle Rich and CX expert Frank Eliason. This conversation was edited for length and clarity.
After all the stress and strain of the pandemic years, are small and midsize businesses (SMBs) headed toward a renaissance of creativity, productivity, and profitability?
Frank Eliason believes so. An author and legendary American corporate executive who specializes in customer relationships, Eliason sat down with us (virtually) to share his insights into how SMBs can deliver stellar experiences to B2B customers.[1]
We started off talking about the importance of offering customers a true omnichannel capability so they can connect, browse, buy products or services, or request assistance within their channel of choice—without any friction. But our talk blossomed into advice on how to avoid adopting every faddish technology that comes along, why smaller businesses must deploy technology incrementally, and the coming post-pandemic renaissance Eliason predicts will be the biggest disruptor of them all.
Here are the highlights from our discussion.
SMBs have a unique advantage for delivering omnichannel customer experiences
You can’t be halfhearted in your omnichannel customer experience (CX) efforts, says Eliason. He believes that most large companies are failing at their omnichannel attempts—as well as many other ventures into advanced technologies.
“The problem is that they’re still incredibly siloed,” he says.
This is where opportunities to take a different approach are opening up for SMBs in the B2B space. The biggest difference between SMBs and larger companies?
Smaller businesses know their customers. They know exactly who they are, and what they want, and how they want it. They have the human perspective.
Frank Eliason
Customer service expert and consultant
Because of this, SMBs can make smarter and more strategic choices when it comes to applying the latest innovations to customer experiences.
But Eliason also believes SMBs are better at taking a human approach to serving customers. “It doesn’t mean that the technology's not important,” he says. "However, in the future they will use the information they collect much more intelligently, and customize experiences to individual customers across all channels.”
Go back to the basics for a great customer experience
All too often, businesses invest in technology—and spend budget—in an attempt to make it easier for their customers to find or buy their products. But that’s not what they should focus on. They should be thinking of their customers’ strategic needs. This means helping customers boost revenues, cut costs, “or even win more customers themselves,” says Eliason.
One way to do this is to go back to the basics when it comes to tech tools. “Customer relationship management solutions are a great example,” says Eliason.
“I love all the different functionality that’s been built into the industry leaders, but are SMBs fully using it? Go back to the basics. What are those tools meant to do? They’re meant to collect data to know customers—and improve sales.
Among other things, this means capturing the specific preferences of individual people at customer sites. So you knew what the executive assistant liked, what the owner of the business didn’t like, and you remember those things the next time you contact that customer.
"We're forgetting the basics,” says Eliason. “If we start there, then we can deliver messages that align to what each person needs, and not necessarily the latest messaging coming out of the marketing department.”
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Don't be dazzled by every piece of cool tech you hear about through the grapevine
One of the biggest problems Eliason has witnessed among businesses large and small is that they jump on new technologies because they’re getting a lot of buzz.
“Companies hear that a tool is the best thing since sliced bread, so they jump on it without having a coherent strategy. They end up spending a ton of money. Then they realize it simply doesn’t work for them.”
As an example, Eliason recalls when the business world went through a mobile app craze. The conventional wisdom was: “Your business must offer an app, and small businesses were wasting vast amounts of money developing apps that no one was ever going to download,” says Eliason.
Often, they just imitated what others in their niches were doing. For instance, in the restaurant space, everyone offered a Starbucks-like app. “Why? Because they used the Starbucks app and loved it,” he says. “But they didn't think through why their customers would necessarily love something of that same kind.”
To avoid the “cool factor” mistake, Eliason recommends smaller enterprises use what he calls a “strategic” approach. Eliason doesn’t believe in a high-level, top-down vision for technology, but rather a bottom-up one with a laser-like focus on the customer.
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Above all, think small
Eliason’s advice: Start small. Buy tools that will help you help your customers. Increase spending incrementally. And then, after seeing real success, keep building.
“It’s not about being cool; it’s about doing the best for your customer,” says Eliason. “Buzz will inevitably falter."
And it's okay if you don’t have all the technology pieces in place right at the start. “You can take a few basic building blocks, see what works for your customers, and then go from there,” says Eliason.
“That’s the strategic approach. And it’s one that big businesses, in my personal opinion, very rarely take.”
And you need to be able to say, “You know what? This isn’t working. You should be able to easily back off and switch gears. And never do anything because it’s the new thing or the cool thing, but because it’s the right thing.”
Listen to your employees
If your employees hate the tech tools you're implementing, it's a pretty good sign you’re making a mistake. “People won’t always change,” admits Eliason. “But when they see value in changing, they will usually go along.”
To get to this point, make sure your employees are a part of selecting and piloting new technologies.
Your employees usually know their customer better than anyone. They know them personally. And they’ll give you extremely valuable feedback on whether specific tools will actually be useful in serving them.
Frank Eliason
Prepare for the coming post-pandemic renaissance
We wrapped up our talk with Eliason by asking about the next big trend in the SMB space. After the pandemic years—the lockdowns and the layoffs, and the unfortunate permanent shuttering of many smaller businesses—what should the ones that survived expect?
Here Eliason struck a surprisingly upbeat note, pointing out that whenever humankind has been through very difficult times, something interesting always happens. “It’s often some form of renaissance, and a renaissance is when art flourishes. And art just doesn't manifest on canvas. It flows in our interactions with each other, it flows in business, even. We start to think differently.”
Technology during a renaissance really starts to take off in interesting ways, Eliason believes.
“If I’m right, we're about to enter one of those periods of creativity and growth. And whenever you go through a renaissance, it redefines society for hundreds and hundreds of years. That's what excites me.”
He believes this renaissance will bring insight into how tech can best be applied. “We’ll say, ‘oh, that’s how social media is supposed to work! That's how we’re supposed to interact with each other!’” he says. “We’ll understand why AI wasn't succeeding, and how to make it viable."
We’ll also understand better how to keep the human element intact despite all the technology surrounding us, he says.
“Always follow human emotions and try and deliver on those human emotions,” says Eliason. “That’s how your tech journey will continuously improve your relationships with customers.”
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