ThankingCustomers.com - Customer Feedback Management Skills

Building Long-Term Customer Focus

"Asking" to Learn

Provider Teams "Asking" the Question - "How are we doing?"

Team/Group leaders need to get members involved in feedback to build long-term customer focus.

One of the most elusive operational strategies for organizations is building long-term customer focus. A critical element for provider teams in the follow-through of training and the maintenance of service systems.

“Focus on people. Trust is about the relationship you have with the workforce.” says Don Peppers, co-author of The One to One Manager and http://www.1to1.com/ . “There is a name for building trust with what you build. ‘We call it a learning relationship. Trust is built by the willingness to be completely user centered.”

True long-term customer focus must build relationships beyond only those with customers (customer service). Relationships must also be built between team members (teamwork) and members of other teams (partnering and collaborating) as well. The latter includes internal and external teams to your organization.

So, for example, members of your team need to build relationships with your own Marketing team as well as a supplier’s delivery team – based on a focus on the customer! A user-centered environment is needed that asks questions and shares feedback with all team/group members, and at the same time, creates involvement and learning experiences concerning customers' needs and markets.

A key ingredient to customer focus is continuing feedback. Virtually every team gets feedback from customers in one form or another. Involvement and commitments come when teams not only receive feedback but learn to “ask” the customer the question - “How are we doing?” This feedback becomes the “breakfast of champions” and the focal point from which all the relationship building comes.

Note: the word “ask” is in quotation marks because it represents a process or cycle of events by which the feedback is gathered and then shared among team members. It represents a process and not simply a verbal action.

The challenge

The challenge with teams, at the daily operational level, is to involve everyone. Place the focus first and foremost on customers, and then to maintain this environment. How do you answer the following questions?

q Does the feedback your organization receives from customers create a focus on the customer?

q If so, is the focus maintained and long-term?

q Does the ”customer focus” permeate the entire organization, especially to all members of teams (internal and external) who provide services and products to customers on a daily basis?

Most management and team leaders at this point, especially those who cannot answer a resounding “Yes” to all three questions, are probably visualizing collecting the feedback you currently receive from customers and communicating its meaning to service provider team members. This may provide a short-term measure of customer service, but does this create customer focus for the long-term?

In building focus among team members towards any subject, there must be involvement and ownership to maintain the focus. This holds true for soft “leadership” skills just as it does for hard “managerial” skills. Certainly the last decade has seen a dramatic push to work backwards and become user centered with managerial skills. Why not do the same with leadership skills, such as building relationships, by teaching the users how-to “ask” the questions? When you ask the question, then it follows, you will own the answer.

Let’s take an entrepreneurial (ownership) look from the provider team’s perspective. Begin with direct feedback on the two critical elements for any enterprise – 1) product/service and 2) the customer (beneficiary). This is where the basic relationships and the passions are! So first, develop of clear picture for everyone of the connection between these two and then tie in the business plan and numbers later.

Teaching the skill of “asking” -- a best practice for your team trial

Re-think the collection of feedback and its communication to team members, mentioned above in two ways.

First, in addition to delivering the feedback to team members why not support them in “asking” for the feedback themselves? Teaching the team the formal process of “asking”, mostly non-verbal, for feedback from customers. By being empowered to take control of the process, teams will learn and become more involved just as with any other operational function. Engagement will become continuous only if the activity itself provides feedback. This will occur through learning from activities for asking "How are we doing?"

Secondly, support team members in the activities concerning what is done with the feedback before the meaning of the feedback itself is addressed. In other words, at least to begin with, what you do with the feedback is more important than the feedback itself. After you use the feedback to get everyone questioning (communicating), experiencing, learning, and involved then you can align the feedback for results by coordinating what you “ask” with whom, you “ask”. You will be supporting associates in receiving a critical and often missing feedback--that from their own daily activities.

Team members answer for themselves the all-important question “How are we doing?” Learning about customers, markets, needs, perceptions, intentions, recognition, and incorporate it all into priorities for execution in daily operations. These priorities, with the support of management, tie into the long-term strategies and vision for the organization.

"If you give a team member customer feedback, you focus them for a day. If you teach a team member how to "ask" for customer feedback, you focus them for a lifetime!"

Guidelines for Feedback

How do you support teams in building a foundation for long-term customer focus? And, in this all-important initial setup, what are the activities or characteristics so important for the feedback itself?

The feedback must meet all of the following characteristics. Especially as it is applied in the initial setup and the continuous “practice cycle” below:

o Frequent

o Simple

o Consistent

o Valid

o Real-time

o Proactive, and

o Shared with everyone

Maintaining the customer focus long-term.

As important as knowing how to initiate a process for building customer focus is the ability to maintain it and make it truly long-term. We must create an ongoing process of continuous improvement where measures are used to determine where we are versus where we want/need to be. Just as team members need to become involved (learning to ask) for ownership to take place and commitments to be made, so to do members need a scorecard for recognition to build accountability, pride, and celebration in accomplishment.

The cornerstone of this practice is a continuous cycle ( http://thankingcustomers.com/practicecycle.htm ), which highlights four points used to monitor the process of relationship building through recognition. A word of caution, you must still grow and maintain the characteristics for feedback listed above.

1. A formal process of customer feedback by teaching the teams how-to “ask” customers (proactively) to let them know “How are we doing?” Indicate the principal or critical items needed for the team’s success.

2. Involve everyone on the service provider team(s) through the sharing or bulletining of customer feedback.

3. Focus team members and create accountability for actions by measuring the feedback. Do not assume the measurement has to be numbers, especially throughout the whole process. Remember, words have meaning!

4. Thanking customers with various types of recognition from the team and organization. Showing appreciation to team members and customers alike for their contributions to the business.

Getting Started

Six steps to initiate the “asking”

1. Identify - choose customers to ask for feedback from.

2. Establish feedback from 'criticals', to stay in business.

3. Measure feedback and develop a scorecard.

4. Share feedback to involve everyone.

5. Thank the customer.

6. Align results with business strategies ....... and repeat steps.

Follow-Through and Maintenance

What will success look like?

More and more of the thousands of decisions that are made during daily operations where services/products are provided will meet the simple test “What is best for the customer?” The most important needs of the customer that are being met by those services and products will receive a higher priority.

Team leaders and members of provider teams will develop a learner centered environment on customer issues as they pertain to expectations, needs (customer and business),

Hard skills and soft skills

An important aspect of long-term customer focus is its dependence on relationships, or “soft” skills, to maintain. Soft skills are harder to quantify and measure. This practice attempts to do just that by involving provider teams the same way business has gained commitments in “hard” managerial skills for a decade or more. Give them the tools to ask the question for themselves, “How are we doing”. By doing, we learn! In learning we gain knowledge, become involved, communicate, make commitments, and build skills.

And if we don’t help our provider teams learn to ask the question “How are we doing?” for themselves? Frequently the focus tends to, over the long term, gravitate to the feedback process itself - even at the expense of the subject (the customer).

Summary

In today’s global marketplace providers of services and/or products are teaming up to retain customers and in many cases identify them. To do this well, organizations in most industries help their teams that are providing those services and products to take ownership of the delivery systems and develop an entrepreneurial spirit.

One of the greatest challenges faced by provider team leaders is keeping everyone on the team focused! Making sure the purpose for all operational actions, decisions, and changes are for the customer. The number one question that needs to be answered for everyone to stay focused is “How are we doing?” Most teams do get this questioned answered for them. Then why is it that, in the follow through, maintaining long-term customer focus is so elusive for team leaders?

The answer lies in the history of entrepreneurs that started many of our large organizations some forty or more years ago - most of which are built on that tradition. Why? For most industries, they became hierarchical, and the organization grew upward. A reversal occurred ten or so years ago and as organizations went flat in structure and not only were entrepreneurs on the rise, but this was a desirable characteristic for teams to take ownership of the business processes from beginning to end.

A few of the challenges leaders of these teams are faced with while maintaining daily operations are:

q Challenge between aligning the strategies and goals of the organization with those of their team members.

q Challenge of using primarily hard skills to manage and soft skills to lead and coach their teams.

q Challenge of controlling costs while building sales.

q Challenge of addressing the needs of Marketing to attract new customers while meeting the expectations to retain existing customers.

q Challenge of supervising the training of new team members while continuing the learning and interest of existing members.

q Challenge of maintaining policies and procedures while motivating and inspiring team members to thrive on change and continually improve.

If you are a team leader, how do you juggle it all? If you are a supervisor of several teams, how do you help your team leaders cope? Another program or system is most likely not the answer.

Suggestion? Get everyone focused on the same thing - the customer. Easier said than done? Your only chance, for the long-term, is to start with the providers who deliver services and products to customers on a daily basis. Make the process user-centered, just as you probably already do with managerial skills such as cost control. Teach users, or those taking care of customers, how-to "ask" the all important question "How are we doing?" of customers. Just as your organization has taught those users responsible for cost items how-to ask "How are we doing?" in controlling costs so that they can be accountable for the answers or results.

Want a WOW Project for your team or organization? Start with a “best practice” which is a learning activity for team leaders and members alike that requires no training, planning, meetings or announcements – just do it. In fact, the team does not want to change anything they are currently doing! The practice is a ‘tool’ for building leadership skills starting with provider teams and continuing up the organization as support is provided.

We would be happy to help you get started. Learn more specifics at our website: http://thankingcustomers.com/ . Get a how-to e-book with the Team Leadership Handbook as well as a "community of practice" for continuing support http://thankingcustomers.com/coursegateway.htm .

Want your team to learn to "ask"? Initiate the practice by taking an advanced course on motivational leadership called the Customer Focus Workshop, which is offered in "virtual" form by ThankingCustomers.com

George Reavis

Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments at: george@thankingcustomers.com