Manifesto

We focus so heavily on metrics, numbers, trends, and looming market changes that we forget that, at our core, we’re all people. Trying to live the best life we can.

Happier customers choose to stay longer.
Happier customers refer more often.
Happier customers buy more.

But many businesses don’t truly understand why their customers stay and most companies don’t really understand why their customers churn. Price, competitive offerings, the departure of a champion, and mergers or acquisitions all play a small part in why customers stay and why they leave.

Do you know the number one reason why your customers stay or why they leave?

It’s your customer’s emotional state.

Every human on this planet makes decisions on emotion first and then justifies that decision with reason.

Customers think something is too expensive when their perception of value doesn’t meet their expectations.

Customers become unhappy or dissatisfied when their expectations around support, service or the product are not met.

Customers move from happy and satisfied to unhappy and dissatisfied when they feel they aren’t being valued.

We can help you change this!

Learning who our customers are from both an emotional and a rational state allows us to approach them differently. It allows us to see their differences and their similarities. It allows us to see THEM as individuals and as a collective.

Diving deep into your customer’s thoughts and feelings isn’t easy.

Many leaders prefer not to look too closely at their customers.

Many prefer to focus on metrics and create their own stories about why their numbers are trending the way they are. This makes sense. Creating your own interpretation of numbers is safe. And it’s much easier to believe the story you create than to be confronted with reality.

Asking your customers directly about how they perceive your company’s strengths and weaknesses is hard to do. What’s even harder is to ask your customers how they feel about your company. Asking customers about how they feel about their interactions with your company, about their wins or their lack of success. That’s hard to do.

Yet, courageous leaders choose to do this. And only the very courageous build these types of feedback systems into their daily processes.

We’re not talking about Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction or Customer Effort Score surveys. These surveys are monologues. They are context-poor. They offer little insight. And they certainly are not actionable.

We’re talking about dialogues.
We’re talking about actual conversations with your customers where they are asked the hard questions.

We’re talking about…

Reaching out to speak directly to your customers so you can hear the unfiltered good and the bad.

Having a strategy where customers are regularly interviewed so they feel they are being heard.

Responding to customers via support or via your customer community so you hear their challenges and struggles firsthand.

Creating a Customer Advisory Board to demonstrate your commitment to hearing what your customers want and need.

Listening and responding to your customers on social media, both the stinging comments and the good ones.

Our vision at ATI is to see happier customers around the world. And to support courageous leaders who elevate their customer insights data into every meeting, discussion, decision, and action they take.

Leaders that choose to listen to the voices of their customers first.

Leaders who understand the ‘why’ behind their metrics. Leaders who are informed by qualitative customer insights data collected from their customers and not simply rely on the stories they create in their heads or the heavily tailored stories that people tell as they “manage upwards”.

Leaders who want to hear from their customers first–before they make big decisions–so they can understand the negative and positive ways that decision will impact their customers.

This is our vision. This is every courageous leader’s movement.

A movement that pushes back against the status quo.

A movement where it’s ok to intentionally seek out what customers really think and what they truly feel.

A movement where more customers feel valued, where they are happier, where they feel they made the right decision to become and stay as your customer.

This movement is about customer insights data, taken directly from your customer base.

And it includes leaders who are courageous enough to stand up and let the unedited customer’s voice be heard.

Leaders who are willing to acknowledge what their customers really think and feel in their daily operations.

We are leaders who see Customer Insights Data as the path to solving complex problems that yield both better customer experiences and better business outcomes.

This is the vision that drives us every day at ATI to do our best and to try harder.

Because making happier customers around the world is an outcome many people want and expect.

It’s worth pushing against the status quo and against our own fears to make this vision a reality.

If any of this resonates with you, I urge you to join us.

You can start by following Anita (ATI’s Chief Churn Crusher) on LinkedIn.

You can look around this site and find resources, courses, workshops and blogs that can help you start your journey.

You can book an intro call with me and my team.

Happier, loyal and more profitable customers don’t have to just be a vision.

It can be your company’s reality.

Customer Insights data is the way to get there.

I hope you’ll join us.