Every once in a while, I sit back, push away from my desk and look around at all the amazing things that are happening at MindTouch, and how much we’ve grown over the past few years. It’s true, we have a really great product…but there’s more to it than that, and I thought I’d share what we’ve learned as we’ve grown from a small open-source start-up to a company trusted by thousands of other companies, large and small, around the world:

1) Understand why your buyers or users love working with you

At MindTouch we use our very own customer experience features to gather customer feedback at the conclusion of each and every customer project as well as at key milestones in all parts of an on-going relationship.

Last week our CEO, Aaron Fulkerson sat down with the information from our own feedback system from over the last year or so, to evaluate the remarks pertaining to precisely what customers really love about working with MindTouch. He rather quickly uncovered two things that clients simply love about us – we are always actively thinking about them (we have knowledge of their enterprise, are subject matter experts, supply actionable insights, as well as anticipate likely problem areas) and furthermore we really care (we are exceptionally quick to respond, very flexible and easy to work with, go the extra mile, and place a lot of emphasis on superior quality).

If you happen to be gathering feedback data from your customers, you should carry out the same exercise to expose the fundamentals of what makes you exceptional to the customers who always keep coming back.

2) Recognize who your very best customers are

When businesses begin accumulating user feedback data, the impulse is almost always to focus attention on fixing the negative feedback. Even though this is very important, it shouldn’t come at the expense of focusing on your very best customers. I describe these folks as our Passionate Promoters. For any company, Passionate Promoters are essential to company stability and growth. They really want to work with you, they advocate for your product to colleagues and across social networks, and they cheerfully spend their dollars with you. Always keep these people completely satisfied, and when a problem crops up, deal with it fast.

3) Know who your very best staff members are

Behind each and every loyal customer are extraordinary employees or, as I refer to them, Brand Ambassadors. Have you figured out which of all of your employees are nurturing your best clients? Furthermore, are have you been actively learning from them to help you coach and strengthen the skill-sets of your other employees?

4) Uncover what your very best customers want more of

We find among MindTouch users in every sector that fully engaged customers actually want to spend considerably more money with a business that engages with them proactively. The MindTouch TCS solution incorporates an environment for users to recommend if there is anything  more they would wish for, like a feature or improvement. Often times customers aren’t familiar with all of the products and services you sell and incorporating feedback tools will give you an opportunity for you to educate and inform your customers about your total suite of products or services as well as an environment to enable them to share with you a need you may possibly not have previously unearthed. One of our customers recently unveiled a $100,000 opportunity by simply using the customer feedback tools of their MindTouch powered product documentation.

5) Monitor the engines of your success

When evaluating customer engagement it is often possible to obsess over the “Mega Metrics” the big numbers that seem to indicate organizational success. However to do so could very well detract from being focused on the unique elements you can personally identify as present or not present in your company and that either drive engagement for your customers or otherwise kill opportunities.

Creating truly engaging customer experiences doesn’t require that your organization gets lopsided but it does require an investment in creating exceptional experiences and gaining the ability to tune into your customers’ sense of product and support fulfillment. Doing so means that you, your employees, your clients, and your prospects will know exactly what it is that makes your company great.