Walk in your customers’ shoes
Margolis realized that TriZetto only existed because of its customers in the first place. So there was no question about how much attention to give them during the change.
His focus on customers started behind the scenes,
a
s he used customer needs as a mantra to keep employees motivated during the transition. He also used employees to vet customer messaging.
“When it comes to customers, you have to be, first and foremost, honest about any changes that could impact them,” Margolis says. “You need to think about what their biggest fears or concerns might be.”
To help him think through those concerns, Margolis brought his management team and key customer-facing employees together. After they expressed their personal concerns about the transaction, he immediately pulled them into the customers’ shoes.
“You say, ‘Now, let’s focus on what’s really important: our customers,’” he says. “‘Let’s think about how they’re going to react to the news of a change of control. Let’s go through product line by product line, offer by offer.’”
That focused approach gets the team thinking about the different types of customers you serve and the varying reactions they might have.
Of course, the real feedback comes directly from the customers instead of being channeled through employees. Hopefully, those channels can predict questions that will pop up, but you can’t avoid an active approach to customer communication.
Margolis brought in a few key customers for focus groups, but those have to be planned and timed carefully during an acquisition that takes the company private. Obviously, you have to follow the laws that restrict who you can talk to and what you can share. Margolis, for example, had to squeeze his focus groups into a weekend prior to the public announcement.
The same questions you ask in the focus groups should carry on after the announcement. Margolis assigned executives to key customers. Within the first two days after the announcement, the executives called their customers to take temperatures and garner feedback.
“Once the announcement was made publicly, then we worked with customers on the messaging further, saying, ‘What are your concerns? What do you want to know?’” says Margolis, who also encouraged customers to point out gaps in TriZetto’s communication.
Next, equip employees to do the same kind of outreach with the rest of your customer base. Margolis used online webinars to train his sales team, emphasizing points that employees should cover and including frequently asked questions to help them prepare their message. Plus, they can hop back onto the intranet whenever they need additional instruction.
Because you probably won’t think of everything, encourage employees to add new questions to that database as they talk with customers.
To gauge customers from a different perspective, you may also want to employ a third party. TriZetto hired independent surveyors to call customers before and after the transaction to see how loyalty scores were impacted.
While a lot of time and effort goes into customer communication, you don’t want to overdo it. Staying in touch frequently through your employees as well as a third party should help you gauge whether customers are feeling overwhelmed with information.
“You don’t want to make too big a deal of it,” Margolis says. “If we were to announce that we were discontinuing a major software product, that would be a much more profound impact on a customer than announcing that we were going private. They would actually have to do something different in their business going forward, whereas the change of control, you’re really notifying them and helping them understand the value thesis of this new ownership regime.”