“Customer interaction has fundamentally altered”: Orro CEO

Dan Greengarten on how customer expectations and behaviours have changed.

The way customers interact and consumer services with partners has completely changed, Dan Greengarten, CEO at Orro Group explained.

Before the real proliferation of the internet, the power was always in the partner’s hands, but now that power has shifted over to the customer.

Speaking to CRN Australia exclusively, Greengarten broke down how the information age has put the power all in the customer’s hands.

"By the time someone's approaching you for a service, they know what the options are, they know what they want, they know what their outcomes are, what they're trying to achieve, and they've already assessed you,” he explained.

Greengarten pointed out that now with AI, this doesn’t make it any easier, “At the same time, you are empowering people and the technology is absolutely empowering the consumer or customer with a vast array of options,” he said.

But there is a silver lining, where the array of options causes decision fatigue for customers. Greengarten highlighted how the types of questions customers asked have changed.

“We now need to be much more deft at understanding the outcomes of our customers they're trying to achieve,” he said.

“Me going to a customer saying, I would like to drive a digital network through your organisation. The question you get is, why?

“If I say, do you know that we can connect you in such a way that you free up $3 million of free cash every year on your balance sheet. The question becomes, how?”

Greengarten noted that regarless of the sector or segment a customer is in, they all want the same thing: success.

“You've got to align yourself to the outcome on what makes your customer successful in the eyes of their customer or in their stakeholders,” he said.

“If you can do that, you become a trusted partner by choice, and selling things become inherently easier.”

The calibre of individuals required for that conversation has changed, Greengarten explained.

He uses the example of when he was a salesperson years ago and there was a sign above the coffee machine that said: “coffee is for closers”.

“There was a tea bag pinned to the wall for everyone else that you had to reuse. That tea bag could have been a month old,” he said.

All of this is to say that it was about taking a product to a customer and telling them what they need, nowadays, this is not the case.

"It's how do you have a consultative engagement with a customer, to immerse yourself in what they need,” he said.

Having a high degree of empathy is difficult, he noted.

“The ability to reconcile that to a service catalogue that you have and ultimately present that in a way that delivers a customer outcome and maintain margins over time, connecting A and B has shifted.”