What Does Every Modern Company Want Now?

We all want to know the reply when we cry out the challenge, ‘What is it that every so-called modern company wants right now?’.

‘What we want are customers and employees who are loyal and excited by what we do’

If you want loyal and excited customers then give them something to be loyal and excited about!  Blow them away with your legendary/wow commitment, enthusiasm and passion about your business.  Stop messing around – go for it!

‘What we want to see is commitment and a pride that shines through in everything that we do’

It is up to you to set the levels in your business – don’t create aspirations; create standards of service that are the absolute minimum level of reasonable service.  Enthuse, excite and turn on you staff to take pride and satisfaction in being part of a winning team.

‘We want the phone lines jammed and the corridors awash with customers wanting to do business with us!’

Those phone lines aren’t going to be jammed unless you’ve got something that people really want.  Ask yourself:

• ‘Why should people bother to buy from us when they can buy from the competition?’
• ‘What makes us different from the rest?’

If you are the same as the competition then I can’t think of a single reason why people should buy from you!

What can we do?

Step One:  Create a workplace where all this happens naturally – where your people are treated as well as you would expect them to treat your customers – teach by example.
Step Two:  Re-focus the organisation’s very purpose – putting the customer at the centre of the organisation changes how you do everything.  Can you afford not to?

Ask the following:

• Why do customers buy the product at all?
• Why do they buy it from us?
• How are we different from the competition?
• How will the customer benefit from this difference?
• What problem are we solving?
• What service levels do we expect to deliver?
• What service levels do the customers get?
• What are the minimum acceptable service standards?
• Do we understand and do we give far more than just basic courtesy?

Why focus on the customer?

Focusing on the customer will improve business performance.  Why?  Because you will give the customer what they really want! 

Use simple, basic techniques (for example, use existing information properly).  Decide which customers you want. Next, customise a specific to fit their particular needs.

The discipline of putting the customer first brings with it systematic planning, prioritising, and measuring effectiveness.  This all sounds very boring but actually it will put fire into the belly of your marketing and sales campaigns; hope is not a method!  Focusing on customer needs should change the whole outlook of the business as it reviews and recreates all its functions in a new light. 

Your people may well need to change to adopt the new philosophy; this should create a sense of purpose about the organisation.  You can’t make an omlette with breaking a few eggs, so, beware, there may be some casualties!

Serving the customer – questions to ask yourselves

Ask the following of everyone in the organisation:

• What does our brand represent? 
• What do our customers expect from us? 
• How do they expect to be treated? 
• How far do we exceed their expectations? 
• What do we do when we fail to meet these expectations? 
• Are our processes, systems and front-line people set up to give the sort of service that the ‘promise’ suggests?

How to keep customers for life

Any initiative to put the ‘customers first’ must be underpinned by the following assumptions:

1.   Reward them – make it feel good to do business with you; let them know what great service they are getting
2.   Forget about selling – people love to buy; they hate to be sold at!
3.   People only buy good feelings and solutions to problems
4.   Keep asking: ‘What’s the unmet need?’, ‘How are we doing?’, ‘How can we do better?’.

POST SCRIPT #1: why customers quit – why we can’t keep them

Research tells us why most customers quit. 

• 3% move away, geographically
• 5% develop relationships with other suppliers
• 9% leave for competitive reasons
• 14% (that’s all!) are dissatisfied with the product or service
• 69% (Yes, a staggering 69%!) quit because of an attitude of indifference towards the customer! (LeBoueff.)  They believe we don’t care about them. 

POSTSCRIPT #2: old customers good, new customers bad!

Most businesses put all their marketing effort into getting new customers yet it costs between seven and twenty times more to sell to a new customer than it does to sell to an existing customer.  So why don’t we put more effort into keeping the existing customers by blowing them away with our incredible ‘wow’ service – sell more to them and sell more often?  After all, if they already love what you do then they will be happy to buy more from you, or tell their friends and colleagues that they should be buying from you.

It makes sense to deliver a remarkable customer experience!

About the author

Robert Craven is a keynote speaker and author of the business best-sellers 'Kick-Start Your Business' and 'Customer Is King'. He has recently been described as 'one of the UK’s leading marketing specialists' and the 'entrepreneurship guru'. He runs The Directors’ Centre, helping growing businesses to grow.
For further information, contact Robert Craven on 01225 851044. (rc@directorscentre.com) www.directorscentre.com

©2007 Robert Craven and Start Your Business Magazine.

publication details

First published in Start Your Business Magazine, Feb/Mar 2007.