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"Long-Term Customer Focus" - a worthy goal!
Frontline leaders, learning to ask "How Are We Doing?", generate recognition to create loyalty, collaboration, partnering, and caring.
Focus Note: How do you explain the common problem of compliments/recognition leading to lowered performance in individual situations? We believe and strongly endorse recognition, compliments, appreciation, and attention for those providing services and products to customers on a daily basis. The reason, we believe, is lack of focus! Focus is the glue that keeps the purpose and reason for being in front of everyone. This leads to accountability, intentions, and expectations so that after attention or appreciation the emphasis is still there on what needs to be done and to not let down the side. Also, another reminder that focus must be maintained long-term and this will only happen if relationships can be maintained in three areas simultaneously between team members and 1) fellow team members (teamwork), 2) customers (customer service), and 3) members of collaborating teams both internal and external to the enterprise (partners). To accomplish this relationships must be led on the frontlines as well as managed by programs and procedures. Programs usually manage one of the relationship areas at a time so it is the leadership activity that coordinates all the relationships.
Focus on customers is a catalyst which, when proactive, can pave the way for teams to be more effective in executing their service delivery systems. Notice that the first step is a strategy for building focus -- then it can be directed to customers. Focus, for a group, is a learning activity and a function of teamwork which leaders must instill and foster. After creating the action of focus it is relatively easy to pick the subject or purpose for that focus - the customer. To often, teams/enterprises place the cart (customer) before the horse (focus) by initiating a customer-centric project without a strategy for growing and maintaining the focus. A primary way to instill and build focus is to teach the team how-to get feedback which is frequent, consistent, valid, and real-time. A goal worthy of pursuit is the building of customer focus. A far greater challenge is to maintain customer focus at the point (s) of delivery for services and products. This tool, through its six step cycle, creates a practice which is a significant catalyst for such maintenance of customer focus - making it long-term. By practicing:
A sporting analogy would be for team leaders to ask themselves: "Can my players see the scoreboard?" , "Can they look at a current scoreboard answering for them "How are we doing?" anytime they want to?" With so many sporting events on television and the jumbo scoreboards in every venue, notice how often players look at the scoreboard - I think you will be amazed. Many are coached to check the scoreboard for decision making purposes. Not a bad idea!
How can the practice of focusing on customers help?
Customer loyalty and retention have and are becoming larger and larger business issues with the high cost of attracting new customers and the increased ability of most industries to track customers and attach values. Thanking customers is not hospitality training, most organizations have addressed this for some time. It is about using a simple, basic, proven practice toward building and maintaining, for the long-term, a recognition and appreciation for customers within the culture of an organization. It begins where the organization provides its services and products to the customers and, with management and other organizational functions in a support role spreads through the organization to involve everyone and all teams. It is based on actions and accountabilities and can measured to track performance. The primary purpose of the measurement should be to align the performance of this practice with corporate strategies and results in the long view. This also helps mesh the needs of customers and those teams that serve them with the needs of the organization and managements need to view benefits to all stakeholders. Made easier and more understandable if there is one common denominator or element of focus for all - the customer.
Collaboration is another growing issue as more organizations and teams find themselves directly and indirectly working together to provide services and/or products to the same customer (s). Becoming more of a necessity with the increased uncertainty of the future in terms of where competition will come from as well as how one's own products and services will be marketed and which channels will be used to reach customers. This practice lends itself well to helping multiple teams either within the same or different organizations get and measure feedback, share that feedback instantaneously, collectively thank the customer, and align results with their common purpose. Or simply, let everyone answer the question for themselves: "How are we doing?" Due to the focus tool being proactive the parties who are collaborating can plan and periodically change the feedback they need to be most effective. They will also receive a 'snapshot' of their delivery systems for services and products and may opt to get different snapshots or have different feedback forms. If the same customer (s) are involved, however, caution should be exercised to keep multiple teams working together which is a great benefit of this tool that should not be minimized.
Partnering considers all stakeholders of an organization and the teams that provide for its customers. This would include formal as well as informal partners with the latter having nothing to bind or maintain their partnership other than mutual benefit. Customers would, in most cases, fall under this informal partner category. The customer focus practice is effective here also, as long as all partners recognize the principal benefit long-term in their continued relationship is the customer. Often partnering, involves the issues of and difference between customers and consumers. Customers being the ones that pay you and consumers being the ones that actually use the products and services. These can be the same and can be different. If they are different it is advantageous for your provider teams to be knowledgeable, appreciate, and be able to recognize the difference. This can create at least a triad of relationships with multiple opportunities to use a focus tool to share feedback and involve providers for a common mutual benefit.
Customer care is a popular and even advertised term today in an environment of increasing customer awareness on the part of all organizations. The first and most obvious aspect of perceived care by the customer is with the general issue of hospitality and consideration at the point (s) where the organization delivers its products and services. Hospitality is perceived by the customer with their senses and this focus practice can help reinforce and support specific actions to the extent that they are 'critical' in a particular delivery system (s). Another often more difficult aspect of customer care is the perception by the customers and/or consumers of the care of a provider of services or products to meet their needs and wants. This perception reflects a vast array of influences from expectations, marketing messages, senses, assumptions, markets, and even absence or negative where a customer does not consciously think about if a provider cares about their needs until a lack of support creates doubt or a question mark. The complexity of customer retention with regards to caring then arises in 1) demonstrating through actions that you care, 2) demonstrating through your products and services that you understand and care about customer needs, and, finally, 3) even demonstrating through actions, products, and services that you do not, not care! The moral of this story is for the long-term the only chance an organization has is in getting every team and team member (everyone) involved, interested, focused, learning, communicating, committed, accountable, motivated, and yes even afraid ! This practice of operational focus is a catalyst for all of these through getting frequent, consistent, valid and real-time feedback, sharing it, and measuring it. It uses the number one teamwork tool to focus on the customer as a sense of purpose - peer review.
Copyright © 2003, George Reavis
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