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Achieving a Customer-focused Culture

Written by: Michael Shays

Article Overview: Since customer satisfaction is key to increased sales, premium margins, and company growth, it makes sense to instill a customer-focused culture throughout the company. However, talking about customer satisfaction and taking the necessary steps to achieve it are two different things. Though many companies talk the talk, few are able to walk the talk. Here are seven hurdles to maintaining a customer-focused culture and how you can clear them.

Achieving a Customer-focused Culture

Achieving a Customer-focused Culture
E. Michael Shays


Since customer satisfaction is key to increased sales, premium margins, and company growth, it makes sense to instill a customer-focused culture throughout the company. Though many companies talk the talk, few are able to walk the talk. There are several reasons for this. A process to create a customer oriented culture requires a serious commitment from the top down, constancy of focus throughout the organization, and the daily involvement of almost every employee in the company. Here are seven ways to create and maintain a customer focus.

1. Make a financial commitment to customer satisfaction.
It seems words from the corporate top try to tell employees (and customers) that the customer comes first, but actions of some corporate tops actually reveal that when the chips are down, customers come first only after the shareholders. Certainly, we understand that if you don't have the earnings, you eventually won't have customers, but if you don’t have the customers, you won’t have the earnings. In fact, though you may have an outstanding product, an efficient production process, exceptional employees, and strong financial resources, you don’t have a business until you have a customer. If you want to have a customer-focused culture, you must have a financial commitment to customer satisfaction. In most cases, however, allocation of resources to customer satisfaction is not held back because the company is resource short. It is because the company lacks the conviction of its own beliefs.

2. Consistency and continuity of focus.
Consistency and continuity require the conviction of one's beliefs and a long term view, longer term than our quarterly and annual profitability mind set. Gifford Pinchot III used to talk about “nervous money” when referring to investors who are unsure of their own judgment and run hot and cold on a venture, threatening to remove the funding at every setback. In the case of any corporate commitment to customer satisfaction, the setbacks are usually events unconnected to customer satisfaction which seem to consume manage¬ment's interest. Then employees hear: “We interrupt our customer satisfaction program to bring you this special report about one more short term crisis,” and employee commitment to customer satisfaction drops another notch.

3. Understanding the big picture.
Most employees are able to appreciate that customer satisfaction is important to company survival and therefore to the security of their jobs, but not all of them comprehend how they directly contribute to customer satisfaction. Help employees identify their roles as agents of customer satisfaction. Employees are easily swallowed up in processes which they perceive as far removed from any direct impact on the customer. With few exceptions, if you cannot see how an employee is adding value to what the customer receives, the employee's job should probably be eliminated or restructured.

4. Understanding customer requirements. Even where employees have a direct relationship with customers, employees are not sufficiently able to interpret customer requirements. Train employees who deal directly with clients how to listen effectively, to interpret needs sometimes inarticulately expressed, and to respond with a common sense solution. Define what represents customer satisfaction in your industry and track it in your company. Understand lead and lag times between your actions and customer responses. Place a cost on incremental efforts to achieve customer satisfaction and a value on incremental units of customer satisfaction. Recognize that sometimes value results from increased or continuing sales, and sometimes it results from a reduction in the cost of servicing repeat customers.

5. Empower your employees.
Employees need the franchise to create customer satisfaction. A research firm reported ¬excessive management interference and control as one of the biggest problems in many of the companies surveyed. Empower your employees to act on behalf of the company to meet customer needs. Remove unnecessary red tape and reduce levels of approval. Train supervisors in the management of risk taking so that their interaction with subordinates will enhance their decision-making skills and instill a profitable discipline in the company. Let employees learn by failing so long as risk-taking is small, fast and cheap, that is, any negative impact on the company would be insignificant, short-lived, and not detrimental to the bottom line.

6. Balance quality and cost.
This appears to be one more area where mixed signals are inadvertently sent to employees. Is quality really more important than output? How do you reconcile the two? Measure the trade offs between cost and quality. If the balance between them is not obvious, segment your customers and measure the trade offs by individual group. Consider providing different levels of service by segment and even eliminating a particular segment or product. In some cases, consider achieving higher customer satisfaction through lowering customer expectations. In a business to business environment, customer satisfaction comes from helping your customer serve its customer more effectively.

7. Guard against employee fatigue.
Employees can only do so much customer satisfying with mixed signals about priorities, antiquated procedures, inadequate staffing, tight scheduling and long working hours. After a while the body may keep going but the mind stops functioning at peak performance. That means the mind doesn't listen well, it doesn't interpret customer requirements, it doesn't respond to the unusual effectively, and it sometimes forgets what the body is there for. Create a lower stress environment. Make sure signals from management are consistent and clear. Eliminate unnecessary processes and functions. Strive to structure every job so its purpose is clearly to add value to the customer. And then provide useful and encouraging feedback to employees. Celebrate customer satisfaction successes.

Customer-focused companies enjoy repeat sales, better margins and high referrals. Happy customers lead to better relationships and happier employees. Customer-focused companies are also more attuned to the market and better able to stay ahead of the competition. Doesn’t it make sense to invest in a realistic customer satisfaction program?

* * *

E. MICHAEL SHAYS CMC (ems@emsnetwork.com) is President of EMS Network, International, an association of senior consultants helping clients faced with conflict, transition, stagnation, and management dilemmas.

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Article Tags: Culture E Michael Shays, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, employee commitment, financial commitment, financial commitment, Gifford Pinchot III



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