Once we have our channels established, we need to start thinking about

the different ways in which we're going to be communicating with our customers.

By communication, I don't just mean the phone calls and

emails, but all kinds of communication with a customer.

If a person is interacting with our company or our product or

service, whether it's for the very first time or whether they've been a user for

a while, we are establishing a relationship with them.

In this section, we talk about the various kinds of

customer relationships that our business model will have to account for.

Customer relationship, in the scope of our business model, defines any interactions

with our customers and the strategies that we have built around these interactions.

In any business, there are three main groupings of customer relationships.

First, we build relationships when we [SOUND] acquire new customers.

The strategies that we build around these activities are called acquisition and

activation strategies.

Once we acquire this customer,

we work through a different set of relationships to keep them happy.

[SOUND] We call these actions retention activities.

Finally, we can maximize [SOUND] the relationship with our

existing customers through up-selling activities.

These activities should be carefully considered and

only offered to customers who have the need for additional products or services.

The ideas we develop in this stage will help us fine-tune our marketing, sales,

and retention strategies.

Depending on your value proposition,

you can have different types of customer relationships.

Up first, you have personal assistance.

This is where customers get he;p directly from a customer representative during

the sales process or at any time after.

Self-service, where the company doesn't maintain direct relationships with

customers, instead offering all the resources they need to help themselves.

Automated services, where customers are helped via automated processes.

This might sound confusing, but think of Netflix or Amazon.

They offer movie or book recommendations based on your personal preferences and

past history.

This type of relationship simulates personal assistance to keep us happy.

You also have communities.

Companies can offer online communities as a way to interact with their users and

let users help one another.

This is really useful because it allows for quick problem solving and

better interaction and thereby higher engagement from users.

Co-creation.

A newer form of customer relationship is where the company allows users to

interact with the product or a service in such a way that it betters the product

while offering value to other customers and increasing retention.

By allowing users to review books, Amazon increases the value of

its online stores and offers better choices for customers.

Similarly, by allowing user to create and upload videos, Vimeo or

YouTube greatly increases its content library and keeps users more entertained.

Since our service is a productivity tool, the best type of customer relationship we

can offer is self-service, and that should solve most needs.

We could do this by having a really good user guide on the site,

along with frequently asked questions and a contact forum.

This type of relationship mostly applies to our retention activities, however.

What about acquisition?

Acquisition strategies can be simply thought of as marketing strategies.

These strategies are heavily dependent upon first,

the customer segments, and secondly, the channels through which we reach them.

Acquisition activities are closely linked with the awareness stage of a channel.

Now, we defined our customer segment as a niche market and

that we're using an owned channel.

This means that we'll be marketing ourselves using one message that

applies specifically to our segments and the difficulties they face.

Let's look at some of the acquisition strategies we could start out with.

There's the old, traditional outbound marketing.

This includes activities where you reach out to people via email blast to

purchase lists, cold calling, traditional advertising, and so on.

These strategies seem to be getting less and less effective, with people coming up

with different ways to block out emails, calls, and filter out ads.

Instead, we're going to focus on inbound marketing strategies and

set ourselves up as thought leaders.

When people find my website,

I want to be seen as a thought leader who contributes to the industry that I'm in.

This will make it easier for my customers to trust my brand and use my services.

My main acquisition activities will be content [SOUND] marketing, that is,

blogging regularly with great productivity tips and ways to enhance your workflow.

[SOUND] Email marketing, building an email newsletter and providing readers with

actionable advice, [SOUND] social media marketing and search engine optimization.

Now, don't worry.

We'll go in depth on a lot of these activities later on in

this series as we talk about marketing.

Customer relationships are an important part of your business model, so

pay attention to all the areas where you interact with your customers.

Now that we're done brainstorming, let's throw this up on

our post-it notes to keep track of our ever-evolving business model.

Before we move on, let's recap.

Customer [SOUND] relationships cover any communication we

have with our customers throughout our business model.

These [SOUND] relationships can be broken down into three main groupings.

[SOUND] Acquisition, [SOUND] retention, [SOUND] and up selling.

Awesome, let's move on to the next section.