Example of a customer champion

A perfect example of the saying - anyone can make a difference!

The story of an individual who went out of his way to create memorable customer experinces. A walking talking marketing machine for United Airlines. Imagine the effect if even 5% of United's personnel adopt such an attitude - god save the competition.

Lessons from this story -

• What Capt. Flanagan is doing is not a result of any corporate customer centricity initiative. This is in fact a result of his own initiative. Similary, anyone - just about anyone anywhere in the hierarchy / value chain can make a difference. Recruit individuals with the right mental make up ...that has the potential to generate such initiatives.


• Capt. Flanagan did things that were valued by the customers ...examples like what he does for unaccompanied childeren, confirming of baggage on connecting flights, etc. Value is customer defined.


• Its good to see United backing up this individual's modus operandi. Every small initiative / gesture / acts should be glorified by the organization if it has see more of this. Spot such positive actions & glorify them to the hilt.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118826634834410559.html?mod=The+Middle+Seat

Drucker on Customers

“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

Are you customer focused?

In a world where customers (both end consumers and intermediate customers) are becoming increasingly powerful, all companies declare that they are “customer-focused”. Few really are. How does one determine if you are or not?

John Hagel offers questions, the answers to which could answer if you are customer focsed.

1. Power Core - Who in the organization holds real decision-making power? Is it the organization that manages relationships with the customer or is it some other group?
2. KPIs - What are the primary measures of performance for the firm?
3. Brand Promise - What is the primary focus of the brand promise of the company?

Reference: Tests for Customer Focused Companies

Great Service

If any reminding is required -- great service isn't about grand acts, it is about common courtesy, artfully delivered.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/jul/24prof.htm

Processes are enablers of customer success

Ever so often, customer facing teams become so obsessed with internal processes that they forget that processes are meant to be enablers of customer success. Achievement of process goals become the be-all and end-all. Instead of striving for the customer, these customer facing teams become slaves of internal serving (mostly) processes.

How does an organization escape from this kind of internal serving behaviors?

An organization vision that makes clear the overall objective of the business needs to provide an overarching direction to keep all teams gunning for the customer - not only customer facing teams, but also other teams that serve internal customers.

Another factor that promotes appropriate behavior is an active recognition framework. When designed & implemented appropriately, this would essentially keep the teams focused on whats important for the business.

Lifestyle - Taking the extra step to please customers

Yet another visit to my favorite multi-brand mall Lifestyle prompted me to write about their success in creating superior customer experinces ..not once, but over & over again.
Being the second day of an annual sale, the place was jam packed within the first 2 hrs of opening on a public holiday. The sales staff were struggling to answer the product & discount related queries raining from the customers eager to grab a bargain ahead of others. How were the sales staff coping?

• There were a big augmentation of permanent staff to take care of rush


• Inspite of the maddening rush, most of the sales staff were calm & trying to respond to as manyu queries as humanly possible. These guys were mentally prepared to handle the rush.


• The staff were also apologizing to customers whenever they were being pulled between customers. They were not just blaming the crowd for a lack of requisite service.


• The huge work load not withstanding, one of the sales staff actually volunteered to stand in the long check out queue on my behalf (seeing that I was struggling to cope with huge shopping bags & an overactive toddler). He even offered a chair to me & called me 20 mins later when the invoice was ready.

Note that the above was characteristic of all the sales staff in Lifestyle today. And I suspect there were quite a few temporary employees there to handle the sale rush.

I wouldn't have written about the store if such behaviors were isolated to one day / person. The truth is they consistently deliver such experinces over and over again. Thus creating an edge for themselves.

Creating value for customers

Dave Wolf's blog Creating Customers for Dummies is my inspiration for this entry.

Some excerpts from his entry :

When we fail to create value, we are compromising the first fundamental of business. We are here to create customers. We do this by creating unique value, consistently delivered. When we do this well, profit is the reward.

An earlier entry on customers / employee first ..profitability will follow.

Customer Focus Consulting

Listing of consulting teams focusing on Customer Focus

http://www.customerfocusconsult.com/index.htm

http://snowassociates.com/index.asp (mostly keynotes & trainings)

Customer Service - when good is just not enough!

Accenture Report: Customer Service and Support

• Not only does good customer service result in loyal customers, but bad service just drives them away.
• Average customer service just will not cut the mustard. If you are satisfied with good or average, you might as well kiss 75% of your customers goodbye.

Source: http://www.accenture.com/NR/rdonlyres/7D6D009D-598B-4B6F-8651-AAC3C2CA3717/52014/css_results_91.pdf

Customer delight high on the agenda - Infosys

For someone passionate about customer centricity, its a delight to see an organization mention customer delight in the first quarter of its quarter ending report to its shareholders.

Infosys does exactly that in its latest report to its shareholders. They go on to list the awards & appreciations they have received from their customers for being focused on delight rather than just satisfaction.

If Infy takes this spirit beyond letters into action, the shareholders can rest assured that their networth will take an upward journey as a result.

7 Habits of Highly Effective Customer-Centric Companies

Ginger Conlon blogs about eBay - Kip Knight's take on 7 Habits :

1. Time Employees are genuinely excited about spending time with customers.
2. Management focus Top management is committed to customer-centricity.
3. Organizational alignment The entire organization has to understand and invest in gathering and acting on customer feedback.
4. Internal sharing and communication Departments share feedback and other customer information.
5. Minimal internal corporate politics Knowing and acting on customer feedback must come before executives’ internal agendas.
6. Well-defined consumer target The company has clear, data-based customer segments, and knows which customers it cares about most and why (e.g. customer value).
7. Well-defined processes There must be a formal strategy for collecting and acting on customer feedback.

Source: http://www.1to1media.com/weblog/2007/08/ebays_kip_knight_on_customer_c.html#more

Customer Satisfaction -->> Business Profitability

In a previous post on this blog, there is a mention that pursuit & implementation of customer centricity leads to business profitability. Is this just a feeling or there metrics to correlate these?

Evidence Supports Customer Experience Drives Bottomline and Shareholder Success

By Dale Wolf

Claes Fornell, director of the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index has plenty of evidence to support the role of customer satisfaction in creating bottomline success. Customer satisfaction shows up faster than ever on a company's bottom line and companies that score high ratings in the index beat the stock market as a whole.

Follow this link to get the answer.

Bhagvad Gita & Business Management

Drawing a connection between the Gita, You, Inc. & Customer Mania (am reading the last 2 currently).

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Karmanyeva adhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana

Ma karmaphalahetur bhurma te sangostvakarmani.

"Thy business is with the action only, never with its fruits;

so let not the fruits of action be thy motive, nor be thou to inaction attached."

-- Gita: Chapter II-47.

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In You, Inc., Harry Beckwith makes a point about the dots & the lines. Urging readers to focus on a dot at a time w/o worrying too much about what line comes off the dots over a period of time. Only consideration for deciding on the dot being that it should result in learning & you giving your whole into pursuing it.

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In the Yum! Brand implementation of Customer Centricity, Ken Blanchard makes a mention of the fact that taking care of customers & employees was the primary focus of initiatives. Effort & resources were spent on this area. And profitability & shareholder returns were to be a by product of the primary focus areas.

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Personal Research on Customer Centricity

Follow the below link for a mind map I created while researching on the topic a few months ago.

Customer Centricity Information Research.

PS: For more information on Freemind - the application used to create the mind map, see this posting from the past.