Customers are not fools. They see how suppliers react to economic adversity and whether ‘customer focus’ is rhetoric or reality. Customers are also becoming more demanding. As people travel they become aware of standards in other parts of the world, and their expectations rise. Increasingly, they also seek respect and want to be treated as individuals rather than as ‘targets’ or ‘statistics’.
Economic recession presents suppliers with a golden opportunity to build closer relationships with their customers. Successful companies are working with customers to find better ways of helping them to cope with tough times.
How people behave when the going is difficult is an acid test. Economic hardship brings latent qualities to the service. While some people think largely of themselves, the most caring companies distinguish themselves by enabling their customers to confront the challenges and opportunities of an economic downturn.
Customers are not fools. They see how suppliers react to economic adversity and whether ‘customer focus’ is rhetoric or reality. Customers are also becoming more demanding. As people travel they become aware of standards in other parts of the world, and their expectations rise. Increasingly, they also seek respect and want to be treated as individuals rather than as ‘targets’ or ‘statistics’.
Pioneering companies such as Cisco Systems are using a new generation of tools to support people in the front line. These enable customer facing staff to quickly respond to the distinct requirements of individual customers. Building checks into processes and tools ensure bespoke responses do not cause quality, commercial or regulatory problems. Staff are liberated to do what they feel is best for a particular client.
Employees need to understand that customers are the source of value, corporate revenues and their salaries. Where and whenever there are competitors people can take their custom elsewhere. In many cases they can simply go on-line and buy over the internet. Customers can no longer be taken for granted.
It may not be too late to change. Customer disappointment, frustration and dissatisfaction represent an opportunity rather than a problem for organizations that are committed to raising their customer service standards. Improved customer service may enable them to both differentiate themselves from competitors and win customers from them.
Encouragingly, those who are seeking to improve customer service may find they do not need to improve every aspect of customer service at once. One should start by endeavoring to better understand what represents value to customers and addressing areas that will have the greatest, quickest and most visible impact upon the customer experience.
Smart companies are transforming customer relationships by making it easier for people in the front line to do their jobs. Eyretel became one of the UK’s fastest growing companies by adopting this approach. Most employees do not wake up each morning eager to rush to work in order to frustrate customers. Once improvements occur they are likely to themselves become more fulfilled. Helping others can be both satisfying and rewarding.
Mutually beneficial relationships with customers require a customer focused approach. Too many companies seek to use their customers to achieve their own objectives. In place of the ‘hard sell’ successful companies devote much effort to helping customers understand their requirements and making it very easy for them to obtain what they need.
Excellence in customer service in one context may be unacceptable in another. Requirements can vary from business to business, and not all customers may require the same level of service. A person’s expectations in a supermarket when doing a weekly shop may vary from those in a boutique when searching for a special present for a loved one. Customer expectations and requirements need to be understood before they can be addressed.
However, in all cases there is little excuse for having badly trained, undisciplined, indifferent or inadequately paid staff. People should be fairly rewarded and properly equipped to do what is expected of them. Smart companies recognize that a smaller number of better trained, equipped and supported staff may be preferable to a larger number of less capable ones. In some cases it may be possible to ‘segment the market’ and offer different levels of service to different categories of customers.
People should be encouraged to work with customers to assess how economic recession and other developments in the business environment are likely to impact upon them, and what these customers should do in response to address challenges and seize opportunities. They should also think through what the company can do to help individual customers respond. Because each customer may be impacted differently bespoke solutions may be needed.
An economic recession can open up relationships with some customers that may have endeavoured to keep suppliers at arms length. Under pressure they may feel obliged or forced to seek help, creating an opportunity to forge some form of collaboration.
Sometimes quite small steps can lead to an upwards spiral of improvement as customers respond positively to noticeable progress and their favourable reactions spur further initiatives. A customer focused and service culture can lead to both commercial success and greater personal fulfillment for the people of an organization. A commitment to greater service sometimes leads to new service offerings or additional services for which some customers may be prepared to pay a premium.
The right tools can help those supporting customers to raise their game. They can also protect a supplier against naïve and simplistic responses. Delighting every customer by gold plating every aspect of service may cost too much and threaten corporate solvency, particularly where and when there are greedy customers who take unfair advantage of corporate generosity.
Companies need to keep their feet on the ground. There may be good and bad customers, some which are highly profitable and others that more trouble than they are worth. The customers to retain are the profitable ones, and the first steps to improvement should be in the areas that have the greatest positive impact upon them.
Further information
Over 2,000 companies have participated in Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas’ research programme which examines what the most successful people, teams and companies do differently in areas such as building relationships with customers. Critical success factors identified by these investigations are set out in a series of reports and summarized in his book Winning Companies; Winning People which can be obtained from: www.policypublications.com.
Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas is an experienced consultant, chairman of award winning companies and author of ‘Winning Companies: Winning People’. He has reviewed the processes and practices of over 100 companies, helped over 100 boards to improve board and/or corporate performance, and spoken at over 200 national, international and corporate conferences in 35 countries. He can be contacted by Tel: 00 44 (0) 1733 361 149; email: colinct@tiscali.co.uk and via www.colincoulson-thomas.com.
© C J Coulson-Thomas, 2008
