Last month, my colleague discussed the benefits of developing a customer scoring program (and why you can’t just duplicate your lead scoring program). So, now that you’ve made the case to your organization, how do you go about actually putting one in place?
We have developed hundreds of customer scoring models for our clients over the years, so we know a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t. Below are five tried-and-true steps every company should follow when launching a customer scoring program of their own.
1. Put together your team.
It may be tempting to put a single person in charge of your customer scoring program, but resist. It’s the same with a lead scoring program. If you create any scoring model in a vacuum, your sales team will likely disagree with what you consider to be a lead, and they may not follow up with them in a timely fashion — or at all.
Regardless of how quickly you’d like to put a customer scoring program in place, you may as well not have created a customer scoring program at all if you don’t include the key players from the beginning. As you begin to build the team required to design and implement a customer scoring model, there are specific resources that need to be in place during the project:
- Executive Sponsor: Usually a C-level person who has authority over the budget and signs off on the team that is put in place to execute the project. The executive sponsor requires project updates from the project lead, but is rarely involved on a daily basis.
- Project Lead: This person is typically the primary point of contact for the project team and will devote a substantial amount of time to the project. This person is involved with all aspects of the project, has the authority to sign off on milestones and deliverables, and provides updates to the executive sponsor and other stakeholders.
- Sales Operations: When selecting a resource from the sales operations team, it is important to select someone who understands the sales processes related to customer leads. Since a customer lead is handled differently than a prospect lead, this person should have a good understanding of the customer lead flow and the sales resources that are assigned to customer leads.
- Marketing Operations: The marketing operations role on the customer scoring project team is the person who is most familiar with the types of marketing campaigns aimed at customer expansion and the content used within those campaigns. This person will have a clear understanding of the different touchpoints and when to handoff a lead to sales.
- Project Manager: Successful projects require the guidance of a good project manager. The project manager manages the tasks and timelines, sets up the communication preferences for the team, and ensures the project team has all of the tools and resources it needs to complete the project on time and within budget.
2. Develop customer-focused content.
Before even embarking on a customer scoring project, it is wise to consider the content your organization has generated that targets the customer base. You might think customer-focused content isn’t necessary since you are marketing to an existing customer. They purchased your products, so they’re already a fit, right? Well, they were a fit for that particular product. Now that they’re a customer, you need to talk to them like a customer, not a stranger who isn’t familiar with your business or your products.
Making sure you have current, relevant content to offer to your customers is a big help in expanding your footprint in the account. So, consider how your content frames your other offerings from a customer’s point of view instead of a prospect’s.
3. Design your customer scoring model.
Putting together a customer scoring model that is tailored to your business requirements takes careful consideration and several discovery sessions. Before you apply a score to any type of customer interest or behavior, you need to evaluate and understand the signals that help determine a customer’s propensity to buy. Then, you can prioritize your marketing efforts (and your budget) on those customers most likely to buy.
In order to get a well-rounded look at each of your customers, you need to score your customers based on their interest and qualification level. Use real-world examples of good, bad, and mediocre leads to determine what to score and how many points you should assign.
Interest Score
First, determine the activities and behavior that indicate interest in another product or service. For example, take a hard look at the content on your website. Once you’ve identified what you consider high-value content for your customers (not prospects), determine the correlation between customer consumption of that content and new business by asking questions such as:
- Is your customer visiting pages on your website that pertain to other product offerings?
- How is your customer interacting with marketing emails?
- Are they opening and clicking through or ignoring them?
Then, you can score certain activities and behavior based on how likely they are to indicate an existing customer’s serious interest in a new product or service:
As you can see in the example above, visiting an existing product page scores lower than visiting a new product page, and viewing high-value content or visiting your website within the past 30 days scores higher than less recent activity.
You may also add more points based on the number of website visits or score certain email campaigns, webinars, or landing pages higher than others based on your offer. Determine which behaviors indicate interest for your customers. Also, don’t be afraid to apply a negative score to indicate little to no interest; you want to be selective in what kind of leads you send to sales for follow-up.
Based on the interest criteria in the table above, a customer might end up with the following score:
Qualification Score
In addition to scoring your customer’s interest, dive into your database to understand other indicators that should be used to determine a potential buyer’s qualification level. Some common customer data points include:
- Account classification
- Renewal date (if applicable)
- Contact job level
- Segment association
- Past NPS scores
Qualification scoring also includes a weight value, which helps identify the importance of the information being scored. Apply a point value and weight to each qualification level you’ve identified:
Based on the qualification criteria in the table above, a customer might end up with the following score:
Many companies use a score of 60 to 100 to indicate a high level of interest, but your point system will be unique to your organization. The important thing is to send any high-interest leads to sales for immediate follow-up, and keep any others in your nurturing program.
After the customer is scored on qualification and interest, a combined score is achieved as shown below:
The example above shows a customer that scored highly in both areas and is now considered an A lead and ready to be passed on to sales.
4. Implement your program!
Once you’ve gotten sign-off on your customer scoring model, it’s time to build it out in your marketing automation tool based on the documentation you created during the design phase. The customer scoring model will continuously track the customer behaviors you’ve identified and assign a point value. Once a certain point threshold is hit, the customer lead will be routed to the appropriate team member for follow-up.
After implementing a customer scoring model, it is common to see an uptick in the number of customer leads getting routed to sales. It is recommended that you hold a training session with the sales team prior to go live so they are aware of the new customer scoring model and are prepared to manage a potentially large number of customer leads.
5. Monitor your program’s effectiveness.
It is important to monitor the results of your new customer scoring model. Based on feedback from the sales or client success team, are the customer leads coming through the quality you intended? Is the scoring model sending over too many unqualified leads or too few qualified leads? All of this can be monitored through scoring reports and open communication with the team members receiving the leads.
It is not uncommon to adjust the scoring model over the first few months (and best practice is to review any scoring model every six months to ensure it’s still accomplishing what you designed it to do).
Remove the guesswork from customer scoring
Now that your organization has decided to undertake a customer scoring project, you must determine the best approach to ensure a successful project. Do you keep the project in-house or outsource to an agency?
Customer scoring can be a daunting task for any organization. BDO Digital has a seasoned team of consultants and solution architects that can do the heavy lifting for you. Our world-class team, coupled with our proven methodology, has enabled our clients to expand their customer accounts through solid customer scoring and timely outreach. We can help you, too!
Patti Ammann, a Client Engagement Manager with BDO Digital’s Demand Gen Group, works with clients of all sizes to understand their objectives, needs, and challenges and build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders across the organization. She has over 15 years’ experience in project management, strategic account management, marketing operations, high-tech marketing and sales, and implementation and execution of campaigns supported by marketing automation platforms.
The post Keep Them Coming Back for More: How to Create a Customer Scoring Program appeared first on DemandGen.
