In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous business world it is incredibly easy to get lost in
the thousands of emails, the endless meetings, and the never-ending pressure to meet quarterly financial objectives. And when business professionals become lost in all of these seemingly important activities, it’s easy to forget about the most important thing in this process; your customers. It’s almost as if we all have to remind ourselves every day when we go to work that our customers pay us for the value we provide and our first focus must be on them and the complete customer experience.
As a designer and facilitator of Business Acumen, Business Leadership, and sales training solutions, I spend a lot of time working with and helping business professionals understand and execute business strategy. Much of our work is based on research and practical experiences and one of the disturbing trends I’ve noticed recently is that too many business professionals are taking customers and the customer experience for granted because they think their value proposition automatically addresses it. It does not. Never has, never will. Consider the following traps of executing the value proposition from the customer experience perspective:
Product Leadership – The trap is that the product is so good and so innovative, it “sells itself.” But when then first copycat competitor duplicates the innovation, how do you differentiate?
Customer Intimacy – The trap is that we say we are customer intimate and provide all sorts of services but too often the services aren’t the services customers want. Are you differentiating on the intimacy that support the best customer experiences?
Operational Excellence – The trap is we are offering the customer the lowest possible price and they should be happy with that. But when your competitors offer the exact same low price, how do you differentiate?
So, here’s the thing; in most instances, there is no additional cost to focus on and deliver the best customer experience no matter what your value proposition is. I learned this lesson from a thoughtful, customer-focused employee at a fast-food restaurant several years ago. It was 10 pm at night and we had just finished a long hard day of delivering a training session. We realized that we hadn’t eaten dinner and figured we’d pick up something on the way back to the hotel. Unfortunately, on a cold, snowy February night in Columbus, Ohio nothing was open. We had just about given up when we saw the lights on at a “higher quality” fast-food place and it was like an oasis in the desert. Until we pulled into the parking lot and walked up to the door.
As if in a movie, the moment we got to the door, the lights went out and we were standing there starving, and now freezing. We knocked on the door, but there was no answer. We turned back to the car and all of a sudden, the lights went back on and we heard a voice; “Hey, sorry guys, I didn’t see you. Come on back, let me fix you up some food!”
Within minutes we had trays of sandwiches, fries, and milkshakes. Life was good! The employee who was shutting down came over and sat with us and asked us about our day and couldn’t have been happier watching us scarf down all of the great food. As we ended the meal, I had to ask the employee “why?”, what prompted him to open the restaurant back up for us when he could have easily gone home. His next words will stay with me forever;
“It don’t cost me nothin’ to be nice to our customers.”
The power in those words are important lessons for any one in business. No matter what your strategy, it doesn’t cost you anything to be thoughtful, considerate, and most importantly appreciative of your customers.
Based on observations and best practices accumulated over many years, here are 3 ideas for keeping focused on customers:
- Put yourself in your customer’s shoes once a day
Stop for 15 minutes and just look at the entire experience from your customer’s perspective. Is this what you want their experience to be? What’s good about it? What can be changed? Is there anything that horrifies you?
- Ask your customers what they think; have a dialogue
Customer feedback is truly a gift that we don’t get nearly enough of. Sure, we do obligatory surveys and get net promoter scores, but how often do we sit down with our customers and engage in a dialogue that is an open and honest conversation about how you are delivering on your value proposition.
- Coach your employees (especially the inexperienced ones) to think about your customers at least once a day
If you are an experienced business professional it’s hard to break away from the daily routine and the velocity of change. If you are an inexperienced business professional, it’s hard to understand the big picture even know foundationally how to focus on customers. One of the most important things you can do as a leader is to coach your people to think about your customers and the entire customer experience.
