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Creating the Nexus

Good customer service is not enough! Customer satisfactionis not enough! Success in business requires an integratedmarketing and communication approach that will result inthe cultivation of nexus. This article explains the conceptof a "nexus" and how it applies to your effective deliveryof customer service.

This article is excerpted and digested from Jack Burke’s Creating Customer Connections: How To Make Customer Service A Profit Center For Your Company. Originally published by Merritt Publishing in 1997, this popular book remains in print at Silver Lake Publishing. Ordering information can be found by clicking the book title above.

Nexus is one of my favorite words (right up there with oxymoron). Before you run off to the dictionary, my old friend Webster defines nexus as “a means of connection; link.” A noun, it stems from the Latin verb nectere, meaning to bind or connect. In good times and in bad, for many companies the phrase “client nexus” is an oxymoron -- the combination of two opposites like bright darkness.

For example, a major manufacturer of plain paper FAX machines has an 800 number to call for customer service. However, if you should call that number, you’re referred to a 900 line with a $10 fee per customer inquiry call. The company initiated the customer service fee to reduce their customers from making unnecessary calls. The sheer stupidity of that policy negates the need to say much about it at all. Yet many, many companies continue to charge for service. In fact some software firms charge in advance for service that may or may not solve your problem.

As long as we’re defining some terms, you will also notice that I will frequently use the term “client”, as opposed to “customer.” Client signifies an ongoing business relationship, while a customer might only be a one-time purchaser. Businesses spend millions of dollars on “customer” satisfaction to often find out that they were never a client. The nexus never developed! Creating Customer Connections is about the actions you need to take to turn customers into clients. The goal of all marketing must be the cultivation of client nexus. Through that your product or service becomes integrated into their personal or business lifestyle.

Years ago we found a small company which manufacturers embossed foil stickers that say things like, “Thank You! We appreciate your business,” and are brightly colored with rainbows, happy faces and the like. We use these stickers as envelope seals, enhancements to letters and attachments to invoices (we found that our invoices got a higher priority when the payable clerks smile). That little item has become part of our business style. There is a nexus between the manufacturer and his client...us.

On a greater scale, Ford capitalized on the pre-existing nexus that had been formed with people who had purchased Mustangs over the past thirty years. This nexus became the basis for their introductory marketing campaign for the very successful, redesigned 1994 Mustang. Throughout the United States, Mustang Club events featured sneak peaks at the yet-to-be-released ‘94. Ad campaigns were developed on past Mustang memories. Ford recognized the nexus and capitalized on it. More recently Volkswagen utilized that same type of nostalgic marketing nexus for the new and improved “Bug.”

Over the years other companies have managed to combine product and lifestyle. Think of that little alligator on millions of pieces of clothing, catalogues like L.L. Bean that turned a niche outdoor market into a life statement, Apple computer turning on an entire generation with a bite of the electronic apple, trendy restaurants that become “places to be seen” within a community and vacation resorts known as the “in” spot. In each of these instances of nexus, business has made a connection with the client that goes beyond the basic “I sell/You buy.” They have integrated into one with the client. It’s nothing new, but it definitely isn’t commonplace.

Auto manufacturers have been doing it since the gitgo. I had a great aunt who had owned over 30 Buicks within her lifetime. She never considered a different make, purchasing her final 440 Buick Wildcat with bucket seats when she was in her eighties. To her, Buick and car were one and the same word. Occasionally there will be articles about automobiles as “members of a family.” Perfect example!

Nexus begins long before a sale with your corporate image and extends long after the sale through client advocacy. Neither the making of a solitary sale, nor the post-sale efforts to maintain customer satisfaction, will enable a business to prosper in today’s economic realities.

Business, like history, is an ongoing evolutionary process that requires a mastery of the past in order to plan for, and deal with, the future. Today’s gurus and mavens, with the mind-boggling capabilities of automation, often lead us into uncharted conceptual territories for the “new” answer to our “old” problems. Now I’m not against anything new, but a strong grasp, understanding and implementation of the basics is essential to any potential success with new concepts. Plus, many of these “new” concepts are merely repackaging of the old products.

Understanding the basics of the past is like calculating the square root of a number which, at least under the old math of my youth, meant finding the essence of a number, its origin, its basic beginning. If your company is to evolve into a client nexus, the basics are critical. Cultivating a nexus is always rewarding, but creating a nexus is critical. Nexus, like marketing, encompasses every facet of your business. To effect it, you must become one with your client.

There’s no simple answer or how-to-do-it strategy, other than following all of the basics of good marketing/branding:

Become involved and maintain a high level of visibility within your marketplace.
Keep your product or service in front of the consumer with continuity.
Once a sale is made, nurture the relationship to turn a customer into a client.

Points number one and two are self-explanatory. They deal with public relations, promotion, advertising. Point number three, however, goes back to surpassing expectations. Residents of New Orleans refer to this as lagniappe, “a little bit extra.” Bakers call it a baker’s dozen. Other industries talk in terms of value added benefits. Whatever the name, the meaning is the same: Surpassing Expectations. If you strive to serve a little “lagniappe” to every single client, you’re on your way to cultivating a client nexus.

Why worry about nexus? Nexus is your lifeline to the future! It means REPEAT sales! It means REFERRAL sales! More importantly, it creates a network of clients extolling the virtues of your product or service. We’ve all seen this type of spontaneous communication. You’re standing in a checkout line and the person behind volunteers some unsolicited bit of information about a product that they “just love.” My wife, who is the very proud owner of a Mustang, shouts its virtues from the treetops to anyone who’ll listen.

Only though a client nexus can a company experience this type of endorsement. It cannot be bought, it must be earned. Airlines and other companies have tried to buy it through frequent flyer and other programs. However, the wide swath they cut across the landscape has defeated their purpose. It isn’t a nexus, it isn’t even lagniappe anymore. It is now a common expectation, like car rebates and low interest rates. Customers have assumed it to be their right. It doesn’t surpass anyone’s expectations.

As for the melding of marketing and communications, it must be integral. You can have communication without marketing (maybe); but marketing without communication is impossible. ost personal communication is marketing of a sort. Even the most objective reporter is marketing his/her capabilities to an audience or a superior. Cocktail chatter often markets one individual’s image to another. When you think about it, nearly all communication has a marketing agenda, conscious or unconscious.

To define marketing is like trying to describe a color to one who cannot see. It is an almost overwhelming word. Simply put, marketing is everything we do, internally and externally, in order to do business. Sales and advertising are specific niches within the business world, marketing relates to everything.

Communication, on the other hand, is the exchange of knowledge, opinion or facts from one to another. Note the word exchange. Communication is not a one-way process, it’s a two-way intercourse. All too many businesses, to their eventual detriment, only communicate outward. Communication, by definition, must be a shared exchange with your prospects, clients and employees.

Since majoring in communications in college, my life has taken a circuitous route from news broadcasting to the upper echelons of major corporate management to entrepreneurial endeavors. Throughout it all, the ability to effectively communicate has been the critical factor in successful management, sales and marketing.

Jack Burke is the president of Sound Marketing, Inc., host/producer of Audio Insurance Outlook, editor of ProgramBusiness.com newsletter, and author of both Relationship Aspect Marketing and Creating Customer Connections. For more information, please visit http://www.soundmarketing.com, call 1-800-451-8273, or e-mail jack@soundmarketing.com.