Energy must be focused on serving customers in a way that creates the kind of value where they will view your organization as fundamental to their success. Every member of the organization must understand the important contribution they make in this partnership with the customer.
To help focus and align your thinking and actions, and to help your organization anticipate and correctly react toward building both a perceived and an actual customer value proposition – every organizational member should be able to answer the following questions with a Yes!
• Do I deliver what I promise?
• Do I anticipate my customer’s needs?
• Do I proactively listen to the customer?
• Do I proactively seek to meet the needs of my customer?
• Do I provide the customer what is required for their success?
• Do I create new and unique products/services that will benefit the customer?
• Do I seek to understand their problems, concerns, interests and strengths?
• Do I constantly develop solutions that solve their problems?
• Do I outperform the competition?
• Do I encourage customers to recommend my products/services to others?
• Do I continually work on improving my relationship with my customer?
• Do I continually make it easy for my customer to do business with me?
Customer-value focus or customer satisfaction and service is absolutely key, because it is the wellspring of why any organization can stay in business. Without the customers seeing and buying the value of the organizations’ knowledge, products and services, all other corporate values cannot evolve. Customer attraction, satisfaction and retention, to knowledge, products and services (both internal and external) are driven by the customer’s perception of the value of the offerings relative to the competition. They are also driven by the connection the customer makes to the “real” or practiced organizational culture. Do they like doing business with the organization?
With this said, we will discuss some of the “why’s” and “how’s” of the questions you just answered. The action of delivering what is promised speaks to the idea of commitment. Commitment to the customer is of key importance in building a customer focused relationship. Relationship building leads to gaining a better understanding and anticipation of what the customer needs and the requirements they are seeking for “their” future success. By understanding both the industry needs and the specific customer needs, an organization is better prepared to create new and unique products and services that will benefit their industry at large and their specific customer.
A solid understanding of the customers concerns, interests and strengths, helps make a sale a joint problem resolution, rather than a traditional “buy-sell” negotiation. This approach leads to a win-win relationship. A win-win approach is at the heart of strategic selling, which is at the heart of organizational long-term sustainability and growth.
It is important to understand that the customer buys the organizations products and service for their reasons, not the organizations. This is why the organization must walk in their customers’ shoes, understand what problem the customer wants solved and proactively seek to meet the customer’s needs. They must connect the organizations knowledge, products, service and solutions to the customer’s problem or need.
When you truly walk in the shoes of the customer, you then begin to see how the organization is perceived from the outside, looking in. The organization can then ask the questions, do we show one face to the customer? Are we easy to do business with? As examples, can the customer call one place and get whatever they need – from the purchase of a product and service, to having a problem solved? Does a 99% on time to the “scheduled delivery date” accurately reflect the customers “need date?” Do the internal processes make the job easier for the organization to accomplish, but impede or slow down responsiveness to the customer needs?
In the eyes of the customer, does the organization truly outperform the competition? Does the organization try to influence the customers with the complexity of their product or service, or the simplicity of their solutions? Customers do not buy complex systems or services from an organization… they buy “solutions.” Does the attitude and body language of the organization convey a genuine excitement when solving a customer problem? What does the organization say and how does it act when it does not have what the customer needs or wants and/or is unwilling to provide? Finally, do the actions of the organization demonstrate the fabric of its collective customer awareness?
If you cannot answer yes to all of the questions posed in this article, it opens wide the door of opportunity and possibilities to better serve the customer, both internally and externally. When you begin to honestly answer the above questions, you then begin to gain insight and the knowledge required to take specific actions to shape the customers future. That is what customer-value focus is all about!
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You MAY reprint the information contained in this article as long as no portion of the contents are modified and it used “exclusively” within your organization. You must also give credit to information by including the tag line...Roger M. Ingbretsen, Author, Speaker, Leadership Coach, Organizational and Career Developer
Customer Service, Customer Satisfaction - To learn more about this author, visit Roger Ingbretsen's Website.
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