Once you have identified your customers and differentiated them by their value to your company, your next step, say Peppers and Rogers, is to interact with your customers to learn more about their needs, interests, and priorities. Your major objective in this step is to initiate an ongoing dialogue with your customers through all communication channels available to you including

• Promotional offers.

• Collections/invoices.

• Web-site contacts.

• Complaint handling.

• Orders/purchases.

• Customer inquiries.

• Direct sales calls.

• E-mail.

• Faxes.

• Telephone calls (inbound and outbound).

In respect to these and other opportunities you might have to interact with your customer, Peppers and Rogers say you should ask yourself whether your employees are taking advantage of these exchanges to learn more about the customer and his/her particular needs, engage the customer in a dialogue, and use the experience and understanding acquired from the exchanges to develop a stronger and more long-lasting…