LISTEN TO THE CUSTOMER

Sometimes you want to shout out to your staff “Listen to the customer damn it, hear what they say!” That should be the basis of running your business – and not showing off, being smart or self-important. You may never think of serving customers as an expeditious job. You have to fight for every single customer and every single assignment, and you must make the outmost of it every time. There is no longer room for companies that run at half speed.

Customer loyalty has so much to do, if not all, with your business culture. There is a tendency in many corporate cultures to act kind of arrogant towards customers, especially when competition from other countries is involved. So many companies need a wake-up call. If you keep up the myth in your company that you have reached the top - and that you will remain there without hard work every day – standing still will become a goal in itself. But the world does not standstill, neither do the needs of customers. A trend is that the economical track will keep on changing faster and faster in the coming decades. Constant responsiveness to customer needs will become the critical success factor.

Too many companies have created an organizational structure and culture with a lot of silos, each of them performance rated separately and no links with other silos. But we so often forget that we are all in this business game together with just one common goal: loyal customers (leading to => customer value => money value => shareholder value). That’s why corporate culture is so incredibly important. A corporate culture that is not customer focused will “ eat every business strategy in the other direction as breakfast”.

Some examples. Parking lots near offices are good indicators whether a company is customer focused or not. A customer-oriented company will have customer parking lots at the entrance. In the task- or product-oriented company, the executives park their cars right next to the entrance. These daily practices say much about the culture. The same can be said about how easy the office entrance can be found or how easy you can get into the building. Or what about how you are received at the reception desk? You can sense there whether you are welcome, or if you’re a nuisance.

So, businesses should be more diverse in their customer contacts and strive for a more competitive edge in customer loyalty. In general this is quit a challenge for many companies. Many employees are so keen making a career and or are afraid of making mistakes that they’re not doing anything but indifferent maintenance of customer contacts. This behavior doesn’t help the company in developing a competitive edge. Often these companies are also simply too big, have too remote customer contact centers or have too much standardized processes. All of

15 July 2014, by J. Christian Andersen and Sjaak Pappe

“68 % of all clients who end a business relation, indicate lack of dialogue and customer care as the main reasons”

these practices inhibit customer loyalty and acceleration of a company’s excellence. There is a need for employees, who dare to speak out, who challenge the status quo of customer service. Here we lack outward looking, change-oriented and innovative people today. We have too many smooth, neat, boring and not interested employees. Incidentally, many employees didn’t behave in this way during their early career. But many people are tired of constant change, are afraid of losing their job and or have no affinity with the business culture or strategy anymore.

Everybody can talk about change, and that often sounds good. But to put these words into practice is quite another thing. When your customers are leaving your company in large numbers, you cannot point the finger at others. But who hasn’t pointed their finger at others at some stage? For example, we accuse others of unfair low pricing practices or the ones who are responsible for the present financial crisis. Change only happens when you dare to point your finger at yourself. But we have become so lazy or self-focused (me, myself and I) that we do not even bother listening to customers - it’s too difficult. Because, in case you really listen to customers you have to do things they ask you to do. It is so much easier to have your own little (hidden) agenda, so that you can get home from work at 4PM.

Every year, the Rockefeller Institute runs the market analysis “The TARP Studies” that focuses on WHY customers leave companies. This analysis indicates, that only 9 % of customers say they leave their suppliers because of price. On the other hand 68 % of customers mention lack of dialogue or customer care as the reasons that made them leave. That’s the harsh reality and proves that it is so important to have a dialogue with your customers and work actively on customer loyalty every single day. It is not just something that you put into your mission statement only. You must have a culture that enables customer service excellence.

Do you create cultural change? Or do change or your actual culture creates you? Therefore: Take the lead and be the one in your company that started the cultural

change. It will lead to a much higher pay off.

The article is an edited version from the book “Recommended – turn your customers into Ambassadors” which J. Christian Andersen has just released and can be downloaded for free. J. Christian Andersen is a founding partner at Relationwise. The company was founded in 2001, after winning a national entrepreneurial competition for the best business plan and idea. Relationwise creates tools for analyzing customer loyalty, and today the company has operations in Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK. Itim International has entered into an exclusive strategic partnership with Relationwise. Where the latter provides the tools to assess the level of customer loyalty, itim International has the tools to create strategic and cultural change in organizations for enhancing customer loyalty. Itim International has operations in more than 30 countries.

About the Authors

Sjaak Pappeitim International

J. Christian Andersen Relationwise