Having a process to build good relationships with your customers and prospects will make business communications easy and turn your customers into great customers.

A great customer or prospect will be someone focused on the results, have an understanding of your unique systems and processes and know that only with you will they will get a higher level of service or better product than from anywhere else.

This exercise is performed by analysing your existing relationship with each customer or prospect type and reviewing their existing or perceived qualities. By comparing their current qualities with the desired qualities you wish they had, you can derive your 'quality issues' and plan a method of moving them from where they are to where you want them to be.

How to Improve the Quality of your Customer Type

Use the columns in the table below to outline your relationships with each customer type.

• Customer Type

  Indicate your category of customer

• Perfect Customer Qualities

  Consider the type of relationship would like to have with each customer type. For example: direct, indirect, peer, consultant, advisor, reseller, long-term, friendly, professional, etc.

  Indicate the attributes of each customer type that would make them the perfect customer. For example: open, patient, understanding, knowledgeable, trusting, etc.

• Existing Customer Qualities

  Consider the actual relationship with your customers. For example: demanding, impatient, distant, wrong-person/department, unrealistic expectations, etc.

  Indicate the current qualities of your customer type. For example: No-time, Low-value, Not-fully-utilised, etc.

• Quality Issues

  Indicate the qualities of your customers that need improving. The idea is that if you could attract and nurture customers that had more of these qualities, you would have a better business. For example: Informed, Educated, Enthused, Active, Nurture, Confidence, Knowledgeable, Scalable, Reassured. etc

The derived quality issues will be used to identify the subject matter needed to help educate your customers. This will be explored further in the Customer Scenario Analysis where the quality issues will be associated with customer scenarios.