Here’s a quick look at what our most successful clients are using for their customer reference search options.
Customer reference management is about efficently matching the prospects with a customers that can share their experiences, making search critical to the process. There are two primary ways of searching.
Google-Type Keyword Search
The simpliest user experience is a single keyword search box like Google. For most of our clients, this is the number one way that they like to search. Enter a value and be able to find references that match.
Filter Search
Search filters are helpful to picking the right search term. Your sales people may not have your industry list memorized and sometimes it just helps to show them the available options.
Determining the right search options to offer is very specific to your business, but our advice to clients is offering fewer options is actually better. It provides a simplier experience, focuses searchers on what’s most important, and most importantly ensures there is a reasonable portfolio of customers that match the search criteria.
While the exact search fields and values are very business specific, here are the primary dimensions we’ve seen used most successfully:
- Solution/Product
- Industry
- Company Size
- Geography
- Relevant Value Propositions
- Reference Activities Agreed
- Contact Type (ie: Executive, IT Staff, Business Stakeholder)
- Competitor Involved
We believe the right solution is a combination of Google-type and Filters, with added intelligence to show the best results even if we don’t find any match against one of the search terms. Nobody wants to create a search and see “no results found”.
Have you seen a better way of tackling this important problem? I’d love to know about it.
