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Guest post by: Ray Miller Become an Author

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Become a Customer-Focused Leader
By Ray Miller

In my recent articles, “To Be (Customer-Focused) … Or Not To Be…” and “Why Customer Focus Differentiates” I offer a number of compelling reasons for the strategic importance of making Customer Focus a critical business strategy.

If you found these reasons compelling or you already knew in your gut that Customer Focus is strategically essential, then your goal must be to create a customer-centric culture throughout your company. If this is the case then you will need to embed customer focus into everything you do.

While Customer Focus and service excellence is everyone’s responsibility, this is particularly true for anyone who manages and supervises others. That’s why we believe that...

... Customer Focus is a Leadership issue.

To become a customer-focused leader, it is helpful to look at the best practices of other organizations when it comes to management and leadership practices and tailor these to your specific situation.

Why is this important?
Truly customer-focused organizations are run and managed on a day-to-day basis by Customer-Focused Leaders. The buck stops with you.

Customer-contact and support employees are rarely the biggest obstacle to service improvement.

It's up to management to create an environment in which employees can deliver excellent service.

The reality is that you can talk about how important service is from the highest levels of your company, you can begin to change processes and procedures company-wide which reinforce customer-focus, and your staff can work diligently at trying to provide service excellence. But, at the end of the day, the only way to ensure sustainable service excellence is for those in management positions throughout your company to do things which create an environment where service flourishes. You will make it happen.

Your Key Role as a Leader is to:
 To build and maintain the conditions that make service excellence possible and worthwhile
 To make it real operationally
 To make it stick culturally

…in other words, to be a Customer-Focused Leader.

Organizations that deliver top quality service have a number of things in common. These best practices have been summarized into ten key customer-focused leadership principles.

These are:
I. Commit to Service Excellence
II. Be Pro-Active in Recovery
III. Enhance and Align your Systems
IV. Listen to the Voice of the Customer
V. Lead with a Customer Focus
VI. Define Service Boundaries
VII. Provide Autonomy
VIII. Measure What’s Important
IX. Accountability for All
X. Recognize and Reward

Let’s take a look at each of these in more detail.

1. Commit to Service Excellence

Most managers and staff typically say that service is important. The question is, do they act consistently in a way which demonstrates that service is important? A true commitment to service is based on the belief that service excellence is a competitive advantage. The term commitment in this principle means action. It is what you do as leaders, not what you say that counts. The best evidence of your commitment is found in what customers and your internal service partners say about you and your team.

2. Be Pro-Active in Recovery

Recovery is a term which describes your actions in response to a customer’s complaint or problem. Even with a goal of “zero defects,” people make mistakes. It is important to remember that the vast majority of customers don’t complain about the quality of the service they receive, they just leave. Problems will happen and should be viewed as opportunities to impress the customer and create positive stories.

In the world of service recovery, the faster the problem is resolved the more likely the customer will be satisfied. Work with your staff to ensure that the solutions provided to customers are designed to at the very least satisfy, but whenever possible impress.
Since the most frequent complaints and problems are predictable, you can work with your staff to plan recovery strategies for handling these complaint situations and empower your staff to take action.

Being pro-active also means seeking out disgruntled customers before they have a chance to complain, particularly when you know that as a result of a change in a process or procedure, complaints are likely to result. It’s about building solid relationships with each customer based on trust, honesty and a sincere desire to earn their loyalty.

3. Enhance and Align your Systems

An organization’s survival depends upon rapid, continuous enhancement to all processes, policies and systems which impact on the customer. Many processes are designed to meet regulatory, compliance and fiduciary standards. Other processes have evolved to expedite workflow. You need to be continually examining all processes, policies and systems which impact on the customer and looking for ways to make them less burdensome from the customer’s perspective. Management’s role in the development and implementation of improvement plans must be strong, and highly visible. Sustained quality improvement efforts require the highest level of commitment from managers and continual attention and action. This commitment must be demonstrated through their actions.
Any system that wasn’t designed for the essential purpose of creating a high level of customer satisfaction rarely, if ever, results in high levels of customer satisfaction… no matter how hard employees try!

Employees at all levels of the organization must be actively involved in the implementation of improvement plans. Managers play a critical role in identifying and removing barriers to the delivery of service excellence. Minor improvements can be perceived as major improvements by the customer.

Encourage your staff to constantly look for better, faster and unique ways of doing business in a way that your customers value and enable your staff to make these changes or communicate the changes required to those who are empowered to do so.

4. Listen to the Voice of the Customer

Listening to customers and continually realigning systems and actions to what customers want and need is critical. While periodic customer surveys are important, listening to the customer should be a routine part of day-to-day business practices especially at the point of contact with customers. We will address this issue in greater detail in the Know Your Customer and Learning From the Customer chapters. Enable every customer-contact person to truly listen to what customers say and don’t say. Recognize that customers’ perceptions are their reality. Create processes to catalogue your customer perceptions and act on this intelligence by aligning your operational practices wherever possible to positively impact on your customers’ perceptions.
Customers also make sweeping conclusions about product quality and service based on minor details, so pay attention to the little things.

5. Lead with a Customer Focus

Like most organizations, you probably have a Responsive Up Mind-Set where upper management is responsible for setting and communicating the organization’s vision, direction and goals. In this structure the frontline and support staff are responsive to the needs of middle management who are responsive to the needs of upper management. To visualize this, think of your company structure as a pyramid with senior management at the top, customer contact staff at the base and your customers below the base of the pyramid.

A Customer-Focused Leader’s goal is to combine this with The Service Mind-

The Service Mind-Set inverts this structure so that upper management views itself as serving the needs of middle management who service the needs of the frontline and support staff who in turn service the needs of the customer. This is the mind-set that supports leadership with a customer focus. This means seeing yourself as a service organization for your employees.
Recognize that excellent service is impossible if you over-control. Understand that people are generally eager to do a good job and distressed when they can’t. Remember that frustrated employees do not deliver good service.

View your staff as your customers while at the same time become very adept at managing paradox such as “How can my subordinate be my customer?” or, “How can I increase customer focus while looking for ways to exercise fiscal restraint?”


6. Define Service Boundaries

Each employee needs to understand your organization’s service values and be able to connect these values to everyday actions. A leader must define a performance playing field that will allow employees to handle the routine deviations from normal customer transactions or interactions. The employee’s performance playing field must be wide enough to allow employees to handle all routine transactions and interactions, as well as the predictable and routine deviations they face, and narrow enough to protect the financial integrity of the business operation. Each employee must have clearly defined goals, boundaries and guidelines which enable him or her to deliver quality service. It must be clear how achieving performance goals will contribute to service quality.

Setting effective service goals requires that every employee thoroughly understands the basic promise your company makes to your customers and Moments of Truth (this is covered in Learning from the Customer) for which he or she is responsible and can identify how to impress the customer. The customer-focused leader creates a service playing field that allows people to succeed. Clearly define measurable and achievable goals and boundaries based on employee capabilities and guidelines to enable them to deliver quality service.

7. Provide Autonomy

Every employee needs to understand why what he or she does is important in the context of service quality. Ensure that every employee has the requisite knowledge and skill relative to their specific job function combined with a clear understanding of the playing field. When employees demonstrate this understanding and these capabilities, give them the autonomy to take action; set them up for success, not failure.

The people with the most customer contact are the best source of information regarding the customers’ needs and wants. The people with the most internal business partner contact are the best source of information regarding their needs and wants. So don’t micro-manage. When people show they can do their job, then let them do the job. Too many rules make it difficult, if not impossible, for service providers to effectively perform their jobs. Rules and procedures designed to protect against a small percentage of individuals convey a message of mistrust to the majority of honest customers. Replace rules with judgment.

8. Measure What’s Important

Some say “You get what you measure.” ... The reality is... “You get what you pay attention to.”
A major responsibility of a leader is to create effective and accurate measures from the customer’s perspective. Good measurement allows employees to understand how to be successful within the organization. You can do this by translating these measures into actions that will allow employees to understand what good service looks like and how to succeed.

Measurement is about paying attention to the service performance you want, and focusing on outcomes rather than activities. Set service performance goals that are realistic while at the same time strive to go beyond the basics in an effort to exceed customers’ expectations. Ensure that every employee understands and agrees to what is being measured, why it is important and how these measures reflect the defined playing field. The scorecard you use to assess success must be developed from the customer’s point of view.

9. Accountability for All

You have an obligation to your customers, to employees, and to the company to be unwavering in your demands for service excellence. Employees will pay more attention if they know they will be provided with solid, equitable and constructive positive feedback on their performance. Employees give credibility to service quality if they are held accountable to the outcomes of their performance.

Measurement must be followed by action. Action means giving timely feedback on both good service performance and poor service performance, equally. Provide feedback as close to the service performance occurrence as possible. A lack of action communicates that service is not important, individual performance does not make a difference, there are no clear-cut performance expectations, and that the organization’s leadership is not credible. Pleasing the customer is the only valid end result of service performance.

10. Recognize and Reward

Successful service leaders ensure attention is paid to those who serve customers well and to those who assist in that effort. They show their appreciation to those who make sure the organization’s customers are served properly. Consistent recognition of achievement is an integral part of building and maintaining a customer-focused culture. A good work environment depends on positive feedback, so “Catch people doing things right.”

Good leadership makes a big deal of little things and thereby creates a performance culture where little things become a big deal. Recognize the desired changes in service behavior you want frequently and provide rewards when you have seen a sustained improvement in service performance outcomes. Ensure employees know what they need to do to earn a reward. Provide rewards that are valued from the employees’ perspective and ensure that you reward those who deserve it.

To conclude:

Built on a solid foundation of dynamic internal service your goal must be to master the effective use of all these key Customer-Focused Leadership fundamentals.

The financial gains associated with being a truly customer-focused organization are substantial and should not be overlooked or taken for granted. You have it within your power to make a difference and dare to be different. Become a Customer-Focused Leader.


How Customer Focused are you? Would you like to know? I invite you to complete a complimentary online self-assessment to help you determine this. Visit our web site www.thatscustomerfocus.com and you will see a link to this free assessment. It only takes a few minutes to complete and you will find the results quite revealing.


Excerpts of this article have been taken from our recent book That’s Customer Focus!. For more information about this excellent resource, please visit the website we have created specifically for this publication at www.thatscustomerfocus.com.

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