Category Archives: Customer Service

Is Wells Fargo regaining its customer culture?

Posted on December 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

customer focused banks

We all have a love-hate relationship with our banks. We see this in the annual customer satisfaction ratings that are far from stellar for all banks.

Wells Fargo slipped to second-place behind JPMorgan Chase in customer satisfaction among big banks in the American Customer Satisfaction Index released in December 2012. Wells Fargo received a score of 71 on a scale of 100, down three points from 2011. Chase scored a 74, gaining six points in 2012. Citi dropped four points for a score of 70. It marks the first time in a decade Wells or predecessor Wachovia has not been ranked No. 1. Charlotte-based Wachovia had long enjoyed the top spot in the rankings, and its momentum lifted Wells Fargo to that spot after the banks merged in 2008.

But Wells Fargo is trying to increase the “love” side of the equation by actively working to offer meaningful services that will help its cash-strapped customers.

Wells Fargo, like many banks have a large number of customers that are unable to meet their mortgage payments and are struggling to hold on to their houses. In this situation Wells Fargo could take the view that it is the customer’s problem if they can’t make the repayments. But a customer-centric view would be to fully understand the customer’s problem, then look for alternate ways to enable customers to meet their commitments and help them understand the options and advise on the most realistic and acceptable plan to meet the need.

Recently Wells Fargo started offering workshops for consumers that are having difficulty paying their mortgages and who are in danger of foreclosure. Customers can learn about options that may help them overcome payment challenges, understand how they may be able to avoid foreclosure and connect with resources like housing counselors and online tools.

Another initiative is helping small businesses understand alternative financing arrangements and develop a strong proposal for borrowing to finance their growth. “As America’s leading small business lender, we have an important responsibility to provide small business owners both access to capital, and access to the financial guidance they need before and after obtaining credit,” said Lisa Stevens, Wells Fargo lead executive for Small Business and West Coast Regional Banking president. “The new Business Credit Center is another way we support small business owners. It offers straightforward, relevant information business owners can use to better understand financing options for their businesses.”

Are these signs that Wells Fargo is acting to strengthen its customer focus by seeking to really understand customer needs and provide valuable services for cash strapped customers?

What are you doing for customers that have difficulty paying for your products or services? Do you regard it as the customer’s problem or your problem?

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Posted in Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Leadership, Customer Centric Values, Customer Communications, Customer Experience, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, Empathy, Market Culture in Action, Trust, Uncategorized

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Why some companies succeed without focusing on customers

Posted on November 22, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Ben Wignall, when owner of the Tasmanian firm, Blue Banner Pickles, used to get a lot customer complaints. Each time Ben’s response would be the same – he put his prices up.

The complaints were from supermarkets that were not able to get enough stock of the famous (in Tasmania only) pickled onion brand. Ben figured that if he put up the price it would dampen down demand and the complaints would disappear. He was right – and very profitable. Blue Banner had 90% of the Tasmanian market for pickled onions – a virtual monopoly – and, like other monopolies, it could dictate the terms and not be too concerned about focusing on customers.

Ben was in for a shock when he expanded into other geographic markets in Australia where there was strong competition and his Tasmanian strategy would not work. He hadn’t realized that the remote island state of Tasmania acted as a market fortress where he could act as a monopolist – but not elsewhere. If you have a monopoly you can probably succeed without focusing on customers….

In fact where everyone in an industry provides a poor customer experience it is still possible to be profitable. Forrester’s Customer Experience Index shows this to be the case in the wireless services industry in which all competitors show similarly low scores. Customer experience is not a differentiator and other factors like market footprint and price dictate results in this growth industry. As my college marketing professor used to tell me:

“Even Donald Duck could run a company profitably in a rapid growth market!”

Dominant market leaders can survive offering poor customer experience for a time due to better distribution or a broad product range. Inertia carries these companies through. But a time comes when these factors are not enough to retain leadership. We have seen this with the successful emergence of online (only) banks and online retailers that have decimated competitors in those industries that could not provide a consistent high-level customer experience.

These are some of the reasons why companies can be successful while offering poor customer experience.

“Make sure you know why you are winning.”

If it is not based on good customer experience, it is likely you are on living on borrowed time.

How long can you continue ignoring your customer’s experience?

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Posted in Customer Centric Culture, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Customer Value, Customer-Centricity, Market Culture Inaction, Uncategorized

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5 Reasons why your customers don’t believe you?

Posted on November 19, 2012 by | Leave a comment

customers don't believe you You’d be better off not saying it if you can’t deliver it!

Customer focus is a term both overused and underdone. It sounds good in a mission or vision statement but many leaders don’t really know how to achieve a customer focused culture nor are they doing anything specific about improving it in a sustainable way. Many other leaders may know how to do it, but feel it may not be worth the effort and time required to achieve it.

There are many reasons the leadership of companies talk about it. They believe their customers and employees want to hear the “customer first” story. It sends the right message. Most leaders believe, at some level, focus on the customer is an important part of running a successful business. They understand that without customers there is no business.

So why do leaders of companies talk the talk but do not walk (or run) the walk?

The reality of being truly customer focused – that is, having a customer culture – is somewhat different. It is challenging, particularly when companies have developed habits and structures that work against it.

Internal focus on operations, processes and working in silos create habits that can be hard to change. As companies grow they become more complex, communication becomes difficult and frequently confusing, processes are set-up to maintain quality and improve efficiency and eventually get in the way of doing the right thing for customers. Silos develop and internal politics result in people acting in their own best interests above the customer and the business. These conditions lead to at least 5 reasons why customers don’t believe you.

1. Misdirected compensation

Sometimes people are compensated in ways that work against the best interests of customers. There is no better example of this than the mortgage crisis in the US where mortgage salespeople were incented to sell mortgages to people that could not afford them. This leads to customers not having their real needs met.

2. Short-term focused behavior

Another reason for the lack of customer culture is the short-term behavior driven by an investor focus and reporting of quarterly results. This leads to a focus on profit and revenue to the detriment of customers. An underlying customer culture providing a sustainable business focus will lead to more integrated thinking and reporting based on medium term performance trends.

3. Focus on technical skills

Many of today’s professionals are specialists with highly developed technical skills in their areas of expertise. This leads to a narrow focus without a broader understanding of the business environment and how they affect the value received by customers. Some professions even view customers as inhibitors to getting their jobs done – an annoyance to minimize. For example the university academic that laments the fact that they have to teach students rather than focus 100% on research or the surgeon that dislikes having to communicate in person with patients. Others focus on profit to the exclusion of customer interests. When this attitude takes hold in organizations it becomes a significant roadblock to a customer culture regardless of what the mission states.

4. Operating in silos

Functional silos where there is lack of cross-function collaboration and unclear customer “ownership” creates problems for customers. We have all experienced being sent from one department to another by customer service representatives who are not empowered to take ownership of our problem. This leads to customer frustration and then your customer promise lacks credibility.

5. Lack of strategic alignment

When staff do not understand or care about the company’s strategy and how what they do contributes to delivering value to customers. This leads to the customer receiving mixed service and conflicting messages.

Why should your customers believe you?

If you want to regain customer trust in your organization check out our MarketCulture Academy.

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Posted in Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Values, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Customer-Centricity, Trust, Uncategorized, Voice of the Customer

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Do your customers inspire you? How Virgin Rail was saved by its customers

Posted on November 16, 2012 by | 2 comments

inspired by customers

Sometimes our customers inspire us to great heights. 

Recently Richard Branson’s Virgin Trains created a major bureaucratic turnaround by sheer force of will and the inspiration of their customers.

On September 10th 2012, Richard Branson and his CEO of Virgin Rail, Tony Collins, were answering questions at a Parliamentary Enquiry in London initiated by Branson. This was about the awarding of the West Coast train franchise (London to Glasgow) to a competitor, FirstGroup – a franchise that had been held by Virgin Trains for the previous fifteen years.

Branson said: “We submitted a strong and deliverable bid based on improving the customers’ experience through increased investment and innovation.”

He added: “Our team has transformed the West Coast line over the last 15 years from a heavily loss-making operation to one that will return the taxpayer billions in years to come.”

Branson, who had considered abandoning the rail industry in Britain after this 4th unsuccessful bid (second each time), decided to put up a fight this time. It was not because of the money – he has plenty of that – it was because of the customers and the staff of Virgin Rail.

Buoyed by 170,000 passenger signatories to an e-petition supporting the company, rallying support from unions and staff, he decided to press the government for an investigation into the transport franchise tendering process and how decisions were made.

When asked on 10th September by a member of the Parliamentary Inquiry why he was objecting, he said: “The customer is the heart of our business”. He went on to say that customers and staff had given overwhelming support to him and the CEO, Tony Collins, and he did not want to let them down. The growth of over 10% per annum in passenger numbers over the previous 10 years was testimony to the customer appeal and quality of the service provided.

The parliamentary Enquiry overturned the decision to award the franchise to the competitor, citing irregularities and lack of transparency in the bid decision.

Here is a man who believes that the most important thing in business is to have satisfied customers and fully engaged, happy staff around a customer culture that delivers increasing value to all stakeholders – and he has proved it in Virgin Rail and other Virgin businesses.

This only happens when your customer culture is so strong that your customers not only like your products and services, but they love you and your organization. When the going gets tough, your customers will “go in to bat for you”.

Would your customers help save your business?

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Posted in C-Level Quotes on MarketCulture, Customer Advocacy, Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Leadership, Customer Experience, customer focus, Customer Service, Customer Value, Customer-Centricity, Employee Engagement, Market Culture in Action, Uncategorized

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How to be insanely service centric – Lessons from Zappos

Posted on November 13, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Customer Culture Car from Zappos

Zappos is renowned globally as a legend in customer service, partially for the e-retailer’s unique approach to customer interaction management. Zappos invests in the call center not as a cost, but as a marketing opportunity

Recently, Software Advice  Analyst Ashley Furness sat down with the company’s Customer Loyalty Operations Manager Derek Carder. He said the company’s whole strategy is to create loyalty through incentivizing ‘wow’ moments and emotional connections. Here are the four KPIs they use to monitor, track and improve performance:

  • Measure Total Call Time, Not Time Per Call

Instead of valuing quick time to resolution or processing high call volumes, Zappos looks at the percentage of a time an agent spends on the phone. Agents are expected to spend at least 80% of their time in customer-facing communications. This measure – called personal service level – is a way to empower the team to utilize their time how they see best promotes customer loyalty.

Reps who achieve this target get receive rewards, while those who fall below the 80 percent line are coached.

  • Quantify and Reward Wow Moments

Zappos measures calls against a 100-point scale called the “Happiness Experience Form.” This is based on answers to the following questions:

  1. Did the agent try twice to make a personal emotional connection (PEC)?
  2. Did they keep the rapport going after the customer responded to their attempt?
  3. Did they address unstated needs?
  4. Did they provide a “wow experience?”

Agents are expected to achieve a 50-point average or higher. Again, agents earn incentives for meeting their goals, while under performers are required to take extra training.

  • Mine for Idle Chats

Zappos monitors “abandonment time,” or periods when an agent has a session open even though the customer already disconnected from the chat.  Carder said sometimes agents do this purposely to avoid responding.

This strategy of looking for idle chats zeroes in on the cause of unproductivity. When agents aren’t productive, customers wait longer. And the longer they wait, the more apt they are to abandon the session.

  • Reward Perfect Attendance and Punctuality

Zappos uses a program called Panda to combat absenteeism. Employees receive a point for every day they miss work or come in late. Staff with zero points in a given period receive a varying number of paid hours off. These hours can be accrued and stacked for an entire paid day off, Carder explains.

The primary take away is that Zappos created metrics that emphasize creating a relationship with the customer rather than rushing them through the call. At the same time, these KPIs still successfully improve performance and make employees feel appreciated and rewarded.

This is what call center metrics look like when they are designed to maximize value for customers, rather than minimize costs for the company…..

Thanks to Ashley Furness for providing great inputs for the content of this post, for more on this story visit her here

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Posted in Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Values, Customer Experience, customer focus, Customer Insight, Customer Metrics, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, Customer Value, Customer-Centricity, Empathy, Employee Engagement, Freedom, Market Culture in Action, Trust, Uncategorized, Voice of the Customer

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How CFOs can use a customer culture to deliver $15m to the bottom line!

Posted on October 29, 2012 by | 1 comment

Internal Customer Culture

A lot of the discussion about building a more customer focused organization centers on the customer facing parts of a business. While there is no doubt major improvements can be driven by sales, marketing and customer service, the real turbo boost to organizational performance comes from support functions that creates a culture around their internal customers.

“If your not serving customers make sure you are serving someone that does”

 Corporate Support functions like Finance, IT and Operations have the potential for releasing huge gains to the business in terms of cost savings and profit improvement. How? By developing a culture where they see their internal stakeholders – that is those to whom they provide their services – as customers.

When they develop a “customer” mindset they think about the value (or lack of) they are providing. They stop delivering reports or services that have no value to their customers and focus on things that will increase value.

John Stanhope, CFO of Telstra, a $25 billion Australian telecommunications business set out to transform his Finance & Administration Group of 2500 people into a support group that would create new value, provide top service and be seen to be valuable by its customers. He painted a vision of what he called a “Value Service Culture” (known as VSC) in which he wanted all his staff to identify their internal (to Telstra) customers and deliver services of value to them. This journey from 2008 to 2012 was an outstanding success.

“We have delivered $15 million per annum in recurring gains from stopping non-value services and activities while creating more value in those services that were needed by our customers. This translates to an additional $55 million added to the value of our business.” – John Stanhope, CFO, Telstra Corporation, 2012.

An investigation by Telstra’s Finance & Administration group of estimated gains and savings conducted in 2010 showed annualized gains and cost savings of $15 million for 2009 representing added value to the business of $55 million.

These gains were derived from analysis of specific initiatives by:

a)    Credit Management acting to collaborate with Telstra customers to reduce bad debts, cost savings from less follow-up calls and longer customer retention periods.

b)   Risk Management & Assurance collaborating with internal customers through an education initiative clarifying compliance requirements and streamlined processes for reducing work for both parties. Cost savings from labor savings.

c)    Corporate Security and Investigations working with Telstra retail shops to provide better processes, follow-up and liaison with those shops most targeted by consumer fraud. Reduction of fraud yielded large cost savings.

d)   All finance and administration groups engaged in activities to reduce duplication and eliminate non value-add activities and reports resulting in measurable savings.

Care was taken to attribute only those gains and savings that could be aligned with VSC initiatives to do with understanding customer needs, providing greater value for customers, monitoring customer feedback and collaborating with customers to deliver the Group’s fiduciary responsibilities more efficiently. Later analysis showed these gains were continued over 2010 to 2012.

Stay tuned for my next blog post in which I will summarize the actions vital to Telstra’s VSC success and the lessons learned from this transformation experience.

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Posted in C-Level Quotes on MarketCulture, Case Study, CFOs, Client News, Customer Centric Culture, Customer Service, Customer Value, Customer-Centricity, Internal Customers, Marketing Finance, Uncategorized

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Does customer focus matter in banking?

Posted on October 9, 2012 by | Leave a comment
Customer Service in Banking Does it Pay?

Customer Focus in Banking Does it Pay?

A recent article in the New York Times highlighted one bank analyst’s view that “Spending time solving problems with people is not selling products…. Its wasting time”.

As a bank analyst his role is to review the bank’s financials and make buy, sell or hold recommendations to his clients. His statements came after having a poor customer experience at his local Wells Fargo. He lamented, “I’m struck by the fact that the service is so bad, and yet the company is so good.”

This particular analyst has a history of being controversial so what he says has to be taken with a grain a salt, however, does he have a point?

The analyst decided to change banks as a result of the poor experience. Did he expect other customers not to respond in the same way? By letting their feet do the talking?

This incident raises challenges relevant to all leaders trying to improve customer focus.

Would you use a single example of failure to conclude this is the way Wells Fargo does business? Common sense suggests the answer would be “no”.

Was this experience and an anomaly or symptom of greater problems? Was it a one off issue confined to one employee in a single branch or a sign of a broader cultural issue?

In Wells Fargo’s case the evidence suggests the former. Over the past few years the bank has a string of top place finishes in customer satisfaction independently measured by the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Based on our research we know that companies with high levels of satisfaction are more profitable. The reason Wells Fargo is doing well is because of its customer focus not in spite of it as the analyst suggests.

Another question highlighted by this story is how important is “customer service” to the banking experience?

Customer service is part of a customer’s consideration set but it will vary in importance depending on the customer. Customers have different needs and will use the bank’s services in different ways. A customer looking for a mortgage will be more sensitive to the bank mortgage rate than one that only has a checking account. Some customers may never enter a bank branch. They conduct all their banking online. Customer service from them only becomes an issue when something goes wrong.

As a business leader what is more important to understand is how customer centric is the company’s culture. Am I setting sending the right messages to our team about the importance of customers? Am I role modeling the behavior that I know will make us successful in the customer’s eyes?

What do you think?

Is this a bank analyst just trying to be controversial to get publicity? Is it a one off or an early warning sign?

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Posted in Customer Centric Culture, Customer Culture and Profit Link, customer focus, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, Customer Value, Uncategorized

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How Hawaiian Airlines has built a Customer Culture

Posted on October 3, 2012 by | 2 comments
Hawaiian Airlines Customer Focused Culture

Hawaiian Airlines – Customer Focused Culture

Charles Nardello, the SVP of Operations at Hawaiian Airlines, recently wrote about how they were able to drive improvement in the key metrics important to airline customers.

Hawaiian are now routinely ranked first by the US Department of Transportation among all airlines for on-time performance and fewest cancellations as well as garnering top marks for best baggage handling and fewest customer complaints.

How did Hawaiian achieve these outcomes? By creating a customer culture based on 3 strategies:

1) Really understanding the Hawaiian travel customer

2) Benchmarking Hawaiian on customer “moments of truth” regularly

3) Empowering Hawaiian employees to handle unexpected situations

Knowing your Customer

Hawaiian Airlines is infused with a customer focused culture that permeates everything.

“For every decision we make, from the most basic to the complex, the customer always comes first—they are the driver of our decision-making and strategic planning,” – Charles Nardello

A culture that brings the customer perspective to every decision acts very differently than a company where customers are an afterthought or are only considered when reacting to customer problems. At every level of the organization, whether deciding on which cutlery to use in the cabin or which markets to fly to, a deep understanding of the customers they serve and the experience they want to create drives the decision.

Benchmarking and Embracing Complaints

In order to benchmark, Hawaiian Airlines surveys customers every month on their experiences with the airline and factors the results into every employee’s bonus pay.

“Every employee receives a scorecard rating them on how well they’ve performed in interacting directly with the customer or, in the case of senior executives, on decision-making and strategic planning.” – Charles Nardello

It’s an approach that guarantees that everyone at the airline will remain focused on the customer. In particular they are focused on the key moments of truth that drive the most value for their customers. This includes check-in, boarding, the flight itself, baggage retrieval and how customers are treated via each stage of their journey.

The airline reinforces this customer focus via a streaming news ticker that runs on the lower part of computer screens and TVs  in break rooms and crew lounges. The ticker show unedited, unfiltered, real-time customer reaction via social media.

Nardello suggests that he is grateful for complaints as it provides the opportunity to do something immediately to improve.

Unfortunately most customer’s don’t complain they just leave and the company wonders what happened. In fact customers are more likely to complain to someone else about the experience than the company directly. This creates even more of challenge for a company to win them back.

If a reaction is negative, the airline addresses it immediately. As Nardello points out, “Our speed in addressing the problem could make the difference between retaining that customer for future flights or losing him or her forever.”

Empowered Employees

No company can prepare for every situation  that can trigger customer dissatisfaction, which is why those that excel at customer service train and empower their frontline employees to solve problems on the fly.

“We believe employees perform best when empowered to improvise and bring unmatched service to their customers in a sincere, personal way.”

This strategy has served Hawaiian well as it continues to be ranked among the very best airlines in North America. It was recently ranked 3rd most profitable on a pre-tax margin basis behind two other airlines know for high levels of customer focus – Alaskan Air and Southwest Airlines.

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Posted in C-Level Quotes on MarketCulture, Case Study, Culture Change and Social Media, Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Leadership, Customer Culture and Profit Link, Customer Experience, customer focus, Customer Insight, Customer Metrics, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, Uncategorized

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Why most companies don’t deliver great customer experiences

Posted on September 27, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Poor Customer ExperiencesWe are all customers and we know what a great customer experiences feels like. We also know that a great customer experience influences our behavior, we want to talk about it with friends and we feel good about doing business with the company that provided it.

We know all this and yet we see time and again examples of poor experiences, just like this Range Rover customer above taking revenge on the company that clearly did not create the right car ownership experience. Why does this happen?

In our work with clients we have found a number of key reasons:

1. Culture – culture drives everything in an organization.  It creates the expectations for how employees behave. It can be left to chance or actively managed. The culture develops not from what people say is important and valued but by what is visibly shown to be important through the way people behave.

For example many companies say that customers are important but then will make decisions that will directly disadvantage the customer in the interests of the business. Bank fee increases, hidden charges, confusing pricing models are great examples of companies trying increase profits without providing customers with any more value.

This is usually the result of short term profit pressures. The message: customers are important until we need to make our numbers – then all bets are off!

2. Goaling – what’s measured gets done. The metrics a business uses will drive behavior, if none of those metrics include measures that are important to customers, people will not focus on the impact they are having on customers.

3. Hiring – hire people that buy into the company’s mission and actually want to add value and contribute to delivering on it. Specifically put hiring practices in place that filter out those that can’t connect their work with customers. Test potential employee’s mindsets, do they have customer friendly skills like the ability to listen, accept feedback, empathize with other people’s positions.

4. Silos – silos can be great, they drive efficiency and specialize expertise but when they become too competitive and an “us and them” mentally develops collaboration is crushed and customers will suffer.

So what do companies with strong customer experiences do right?

Improving the customer experience is about changing a company’s culture.

Companies that can achieve a customer culture take improving the customer experience as seriously as improving financial outcomes.

Our studies of organizations around the globe that have built strong customer cultures have revealed some major themes:

Strong and visible leadership

Leaders are not only committed to the customer experience but also able to instill that commitment in the rest of the organization. There are usually two primary  leaders involved in the process – a CEO or business unit leader who sets the vision and a head of strategy or customer experience who helps execute the strategy. In addition a guiding coalition or customer engagement council that brings in representatives of the broader leadership team it established to oversee progress.

These leaders commit to changing the way they do things in a way that sends the right message to the organization – that customers are important.

A clear mission, vision, and values

A clear purpose beyond “profitable growth”, one that actually does inspire and connect with people emotionally and is contextualized in a customer frame is crucial. This should drive a clear set of behavior standards that capture the intent of the organization and create accountability for customer service and the customer experience among staff members. Amazon’s mantra is “save customers money” and it drives everything (more on this here)

These are not just words on a page. Rather, companies must reinforce these beliefs and behaviors at employee inductions, coffee talks  and the regular team meetings. Companies should use real customer examples to ensure that the mission, vision, and standards resonate throughout the organization.

Customer Immersion

In larger organizations people get disconnected from customers, they lose site of the value being created and what its actually like to be a customer. A process of regular customer immersion sessions helps executives and employees regain that connection. This may include call center sessions, customer visits, bringing customers into internal planning sessions and so on.

Consistent Communication

All messages should incorporate customer focused elements so that managers and staff see the customer experience as a strategic objective that is as important as other financial outcomes. It’s essential that companies consistently communicate what constitutes the right customer experience not only in the strategic plan but also in job descriptions and performance evaluations.

Buy-in from all staff

Defining the reasons for the change and the personal value of being involved in a customer culture change initiative is crucially important. All staff need to understand the reason for the shift in focus and how it will benefit both customers and the business. Staff then ultimately need to see it is in their own self interest to change the way they go about their work.

A way to measure culture change

External and internal measures can be used to assess whether a company is actually changing, the image below shows the relationship between the internal measure of “Customer Culture” relates to the external measure of customer satisfaction and ultimately profit growth.

Customer Culture Foundation Pyramid

A customer culture can be measured using the Market Responsiveness Index which allows companies to see the progress they are making against a benchmark of companies around the world.

A message to leaders

Improving the customer experience is about changing a company’s culture. This change is the most powerful, legacy-defining step a leader can take to improve the performance of a business and the engagement of employees. Senior executives must not only take responsibility to make the customer experience a priority but also must allocate the necessary time and resources to make it a reality.

While there is work involved, it does not necessarily need to be expensive and the payoffs are enormous.  Show me any massively successful company in almost any industry and 8 out of 10 times they have a strong foundation based on a customer culture.

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Posted in Culture Change and Social Media, Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Leadership, Customer Experience, customer focus, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, Customer-Centricity, Employee Engagement, market culture, Market Culture in Action, Market Culture Inaction, MRI, Uncategorized

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4 ways customer centric leaders demonstrate they care

Posted on September 25, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Customer Centric CEOs

It is a well known fact in the marketing world that many customers decide to do business with other organizations simply because they believed the company did not care about their business. It’s a feeling, not a product characteristic or benefit deficiency that can often drive customers away. On a purely rationale level it makes no sense, they got what they paid for, why not continue doing business with the same company?

This same concept undoubtedly applies to the leadership of customer centric organizations. Leaders that really care about their employees and their customers demonstrate this through their actions.

Some great lessons come from Rick Silva, the CEO of a quick service restaurant chain called Checkers and Rally. Based primarily on the East Coast and South of the United States the chain first came to my attention through the show “Undercover Boss”.

CEO of Checkers and Rally's rick silva in "Undercover Boss"

Lesson 1: DEMONSTRATE you actually CARE.

“People are our most important asset” is a cliche often used by many leaders but it is not usually followed up with specifics. If people are your most important asset what are you doing to demonstrate that? What culture have you created, are people respected for the value they bring? Is collaboration seen as an important capability that is role modelled from the top?

Rick Silva was undercover at one of his 200 restaurants when he observed the manager of the store barking orders at staff, the environment was tense, one based on fear rather than hope. Rick could tell pretty quickly the culture in that store was toxic. He decided to shut the store down then and there.

Lesson 2: If its NOT GOOD ENOUGH for CUSTOMERs stop doing it and GET IT RIGHT!

The other side of the story is the impact on customers, Rick could see the results first hand of a poor store environment. In his case this meant slow service, poor quality food and lack luster customer interactions. Basically in the quick service restaurant business if staff don’t want to be there eventually customers won’t want to be there either.

Lesson 3: Give your employees WHAT THEY NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL.

The next day Rick visited a new store, one with a high energy customer focused manager. She would go out of her way to make sure customers were happy but was hamstrung by something as simple as an intercom system that actually worked. It was almost impossible to hear the orders from customers on the intercom, something Rick experienced first hand while working to drive through ordering system.

Lesson 4: PEOPLE WANT TO BE HEARD.

Be brave enough to solicit and act on feedback. Many leaders are afraid to get honest feedback from employees, they don’t want to open a “can of worms” or distract them from their work. The reality is employees want to be heard by their leadership. Our company conducts many internal surveys and interviews as part of our consulting practice and it is amazing to see the participation rates and length of open ended responses we often receive.

Rick Silva in “Undercover Boss” was told by one of his employees that staff on the shop floor should participate and be rewarded for a job well done in the same way managers were recognized. Rick listened, recognized that the need made sense for employees and the business and took action to build an incentive program for all employees.

Are you willing to listen and take action?

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Posted in C-Level Quotes on MarketCulture, Cross-functional Collaboration, Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Leadership, Customer Experience, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, Customer-Centricity, Employee Engagement, leadership, Market Culture in Action, Market Culture Inaction, Uncategorized

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