Managing the Customer Relationship

Practical applications of personality typing

About the author of 3DPersonality.com

These days, customer relationship management has become both familiar and a recognized tool needed for success in the corporate world. Case studies from Nordstrom to Starbucks have explained why an extra effort in catering to the individual customer relationship can reap big returns. Often these strategies involve getting to know more information about customers, remembering their names, their preferences, and their standard orders. Knowing the clientele's personality types as a way to create better customer relations is an idea that pushes the concept of outstanding customer support one step further.

Know Yourself First

The first step in building a successful customer relationship program is to hire the right people and to make certain that they know how their own personality styles affect the interactions with customers. (See our discussion on Hiring and Employee Performance Management.) Writer Denise Duclaux reported that giving employees at a bank a simple personality test and a one-hour training session on personality types not only improved the staff's ability to get along with each other; it also improved the quality of the staff's interactions with customers.

What kind of person do you want to have building your customer relationships? All the personality types can make an effort to be personable and solicitous to the folks who walk in the door, but that behavior will come more naturally to some of the styles than to others. A salesperson who is outgoing, people-pleasing, good-humored, energetic, and accommodating is a good fit in a customer support position. But in addition, that person needs to have a solid background in the company's products.

Building the Customer Relationship

Once a sales team understands its own personalities, it is ready to move on to the next stage. The second step is to identify the customers' personalities and to design communication styles and even products better tailored to fit each customer's needs. Even when a company is already using customer satisfaction surveys and customer support software, an intuitive observation of personality styles adds another dimension. And gaining a basic understanding of customers' motivations and ways of looking at the world combined with their needs will improve customer retention rates.

Recognizing that it is rarely possible to administer a personality test to customers, other techniques have been developed to increase the chances of coming close to identifying another person's personality type. Although these methods are subjective and cannot be considered infallible, they nevertheless can be useful when customer representatives start to interact with their customers. After a customer's preliminary personality type is assigned, it can be modified over time as interactions continue and more information about the customer is obtained.

The way to construct a tentative guess about the personality type of a customer – or anyone else that you meet – is to look for clues that are readily apparent. By being a careful observer, taking careful note of what you see, you can make inferences about a person's personality. But you must be careful, since these tentative indications only give you a starting point in your investigation. There is often more than one explanation for the kinds of behaviors you can observe. But in general, these observations will reflect the personality of the subject person.

10 Ways to Learn About Your Customers

Authors Sam Deep and Lyle Sussman developed a list of 10 signs for learning about customers. Several of the categories on the list reflect insights derived from the development of neuron-linguistic programming (NLP) by mathematician Richard Bandler and linguist John Grinder in the 1970s. NLP is a process that allows people to read someone else's body language, word selection, and other non-conscious communication signals to come to a greater understanding of that person. People can look for clues about whether a customer would be more comfortable with a salesperson using different kinds of interaction styles on a continuum: direct to indirect, bold to accommodating, and professional to friendly.

1. Work Space Appearance. In today's business world, a person doesn't necessarily keep a work space for a long time and rarely has control over furnishings or location. But the space is usually imprinted by how well organized it is, by whether or not there are pictures of family or past vacations on display, and by other kinds of personal objects. These can give a clue as to what the customer values and believes is important in life.
2. Apparel. In checking out a customer's clothing, the purpose is not to be a fashion critic but to reflect on his or her personality. Is the clothing neat, clean, and well cared for, or does it look like it was thrown together at the last minute? Has the person made an effort to be stylish, coordinated, and tasteful, or has he or she opted to be daring and flashy instead?
3. Facial Expressions. Revealing information is communicated through facial expressions, including what memories people store and how some people give themselves away when they lie. Some people are very expressive and are quick to smile or frown. Some seem to be born with a poker face and are difficult to read. Others have a disconnect between their facial expressions and the emotions they actually feel.
4. Meeting and Greeting. Whether a customer keeps to schedules and meets commitments is demonstrated by whether he or she sees the salesperson on time for an appointment. When they first meet, does the customer treat the salesperson warmly or in an off-hand manner? Does the customer open the conversation by getting right down to business?
5. Building Rapport. To the extent that a customer representative can build rapport with a customer over time, he or she can correct any mistaken personality type assignments that might have been made initially. When the two meet for the first time, the representative can evaluate whether the customer is interested only in business and not in getting to know the representative better.
6. Speech Patterns. Does the person talk fast or slow? Does he or she use an argumentative or a warm tone? Here, the issue is whether the client's speech patterns give clues about how relatively emotional he or she might be.
7. Conversation Pace. This characteristic is not about the speed of speech but rather the pace of the interaction itself. Does the conversation with the client seem pressured and rushed, as if there isn't enough time to get everything covered properly? Or, does the client have plenty of time for a leisurely conversation?
8. Dialogue Intensity. What words does the customer choose? Does he or she like to use colorful, expressive language, or is the word choice more precise and down to earth? Some clients are critical, whining, and negative, while others are positive, spontaneous, and enthusiastic.
9. Use of Gestures. The use of gestures can indicate how nervous people are. Sometimes they have unconscious habits that they use to soothe their anxieties. The customer representative can watch for telltale nervous or fidgety gestures. On the other hand, calm and controlled gestures serve as a natural way of stressing points in conversation.
10. Focus of Comments and Questions. Notice how customers are asking questions and what those questions are about. Are they looking for facts and figures, or are they asking about other customers' experience with the product or service? When describing their questioning style, would you call it penetrating or casual? Explicit or tentative? Businesslike or relaxed?

DISC Profile: How Customers make Purchasing Decisions

Deep and Sussman developed the DISC categorization of personality types that focuses on how people make decisions on purchasing. The authors use the information from the 10 points above to assign customers to one of four categories:

D – Dominants.

Dominants want to be in charge and make decisions. They see the world as win-lose, and they want to win. They are independent and have no trouble in exploiting the weaknesses of others to improve their bottom line in a negotiation.

I – Influencers.

This type also has a need for independence and has no problems with being assertive. However, they have a greater need for building relationships than Dominants, and they want to be liked. Due to their impulsiveness, they can experience buyer's remorse.

S – Steady Relaters.

This type also likes to maintain friendly relationships with those at work and is much less assertive and impulsive than Influencers. They don't like change and don't like new ideas or products. They tend to be slow to make decisions.

C – Compliants.

This type is motivated by security concerns and is afraid to take risks. They like to do everything perfectly, so they focus on details. They make decisions slowly and do everything systematically. They require detailed information about any product and need considerable reassurance that the product will perform as promised.

A Customer Relationship Example

As a simple example, suppose a customer representative met her customer for the first time and made the following observations:

• His office was well organized with only one family picture (of his wife).
• He wore a long-sleeved shirt and tie, looking coordinated but not overly formal.
• He did not smile often and did not speak with much emotion.
• He did not keep the customer representative waiting.
• He was all business and did not engage in small talk.
• He talked fast and seemed somewhat pressured.
• He was precise in his language and not particularly positive.
• His questions tended to be penetrating, unequivocal, and businesslike.

From these clues, the customer representative might start with the working hypothesis that she was dealing with a Dominant, and would tailor her sales strategy to that type. Using a combination of personality evaluation techniques, customer support representatives can further develop their customer relationship skills and improve customer retention.

References

More real world examples of personality typing:
     Employee Performance Management
     Team Building
     Professional Career Choices

About the primary author of 3DPersonality.com: Dr. R. Jean Maddigan is a professional social scientist who has been interested in personality systems for over a decade. Read more on her background.