It is critical for organisations to adopt a scientific approach to understanding how they can meet customer needs, and to firmly ingrain a customer-focused culture throughout the organisation
1. Make a list of the values you’d like your company to exemplify. Then, examine your current culture, and ask yourself if those values are apparent in your company and driving your everyday efforts. 2. Before you can convince your company’s end customers of your focus on satisfaction and service, you need to convince an even more important customer audience – your internal customers – the employees who represent your company to the world. Talk with all your employees about corporate values and ask for input and suggestions. 3. Customer focused companies constantly seek and document feedback. They have a system to analyze and feed this information back into the loop so that response is immediate and not an annual feat 4. A strong customer orientation also demands that the company treats customer complaints positively. They not only make toll-free numbers and helpdesks available, but also staff it with knowledgeable people to work on them. 5. This means that they get back to these customers within an acceptable time frame So how does one tell if the customer is truly on your side? Most companies survey their customers in some way, shape or form – formally or informally. After decades of forms, interviews and focus groups, studies have shown that in gauging a particular customer’s overall satisfaction, a single question is needed to provide a fairly accurate answer: “Would you recommend us to your family, friends and colleagues?” If the answer is “Yes,” you are meeting or exceeding that customer’s expectations; if it’s “No”, it’s time to get to work.
It’s important to have carefully defined, written standards for a customer service-centric culture. Don’t be afraid to keep raising the bar; after all, that’s exactly what your competition will be doing. By visibly measuring – and rewarding – superior customer service, you’ll establish it as a top priority in employees’ mindsets. By holding associates accountable for the agreed-upon standards, you’ll build a high level of trust—one from which your customers will ultimately benefit. At the same time, it’s important to take advantage of “coachable moments” when employees occasionally fail to meet established standards. Don’t “blame”, but just analyze the situation and offer encouraging, constructive feedback. In time, your employees may actually welcome the occasional complaint as an opportunity to improve service.
Globally, companies like Apple and IBM have reaped rich rewards by being customer focused. In India, Microsoft aims to become relevant to the country’s one billion population; it made a start by introducing the Windows 2000 and Office 2000 range, which supports Hindi/ Devanagari and Tamil scripts. In 2001, it launched the Office XP and Windows XP, which supported 11 Indian languages. It also launched Project Bhasha to promote local language computing in 2003.
1. Make a list of the values you’d like your company to exemplify. Then, examine your current culture, and ask yourself if those values are apparent in your company and driving your everyday efforts. 2. Before you can convince your company’s end customers of your focus on satisfaction and service, you need to convince an even more important customer audience – your internal customers – the employees who represent your company to the world. Talk with all your employees about corporate values and ask for input and suggestions. 3. Customer focused companies constantly seek and document feedback. They have a system to analyze and feed this information back into the loop so that response is immediate and not an annual feat 4. A strong customer orientation also demands that the company treats customer complaints positively. They not only make toll-free numbers and helpdesks available, but also staff it with knowledgeable people to work on them. 5. This means that they get back to these customers within an acceptable time frame So how does one tell if the customer is truly on your side? Most companies survey their customers in some way, shape or form – formally or informally. After decades of forms, interviews and focus groups, studies have shown that in gauging a particular customer’s overall satisfaction, a single question is needed to provide a fairly accurate answer: “Would you recommend us to your family, friends and colleagues?” If the answer is “Yes,” you are meeting or exceeding that customer’s expectations; if it’s “No”, it’s time to get to work.
It’s important to have carefully defined, written standards for a customer service-centric culture. Don’t be afraid to keep raising the bar; after all, that’s exactly what your competition will be doing. By visibly measuring – and rewarding – superior customer service, you’ll establish it as a top priority in employees’ mindsets. By holding associates accountable for the agreed-upon standards, you’ll build a high level of trust—one from which your customers will ultimately benefit. At the same time, it’s important to take advantage of “coachable moments” when employees occasionally fail to meet established standards. Don’t “blame”, but just analyze the situation and offer encouraging, constructive feedback. In time, your employees may actually welcome the occasional complaint as an opportunity to improve service.
Globally, companies like Apple and IBM have reaped rich rewards by being customer focused. In India, Microsoft aims to become relevant to the country’s one billion population; it made a start by introducing the Windows 2000 and Office 2000 range, which supports Hindi/ Devanagari and Tamil scripts. In 2001, it launched the Office XP and Windows XP, which supported 11 Indian languages. It also launched Project Bhasha to promote local language computing in 2003.
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