Is your organisation paying lip service to customer ??

Customer focus at one level appears to be something that no business should be able to do without. Yet there are countless examples of businesses that would rather focus on unending analysis and countless (mostly unproductive) meetings to discuss balance targets and team performance than on understanding the voice of the customer or acting on it.

One common syndrome that afflicts many of these organisations is the belief that they are customer centric. I am yet to meet a CEO who says that his organisation isn’t customer centric. After-all their sales went up last year, they conduct research once in a way and have set up a customer service department as well. If that isn’t being customer centric, then what is ?

To my mind, irrespective of the industry the organisation is a part of, or its business model, an organisation that equates customer focus and customer centricity with having a customer service cell or infrequent research that it conducts – is in some ways like a frog in the well, unaware and oblivious of what lies ahead and most likely to fail when the business environment gets tough. An uptick in sales is therefore more likely to be temporary.

To me the answer about the customer focus of an organisation lies not in whether it has a customer service department or the frequency with which it conducts research. It lies in focusing on the customer at the expense of everything else. It lies in the attitude of management when they would rather give preference to resolving customer issues than attending to the demands of their superiors. it also depends on the linkages of the customer insights or service teams with the rest of the organisation and the integration of consumer feedback into the processes that this organisation runs on. In this context, an organisation that responds, attends to and closes customer queries, concerns or feedback in 24 hours vs 4 days would definitely be more customer focused and customer centric in its approach.

Customer-centricity rests on 2 core pillars and a bedrock

1.      The first pillar : Consistent and ongoing understanding of customer needs, desires, motives and actual demonstrated behaviours including feedback on products and services;

2.      The second pillar : Processes that collate and convert this information into insights that become the raw material for new or altered propositions, programs and products

3.      The bedrock : The firm belief that the organisation needs to err on side of delivering superior customer experience even in situations where there could be a conflict between company need and customer need.

The first pillar is all about actively and proactively listening to customers. Informally at stores and markets etc as well as formally through periodic research as well as through solicited and unsolicited feedback on company’s websites, social media platforms, etc.

The second pillar is about the routing of information gathered through above processes and to appropriate departments at pre-defined intervals and discussions about how the insights gained can be used to refine processes or introduce new products and services and defining both timelines as well as process owners for the same.

The bedrock is perhaps the most critical. It is the belief system that makes the organisation design its products and services; it is what makes leaders and teams design  processes that continuously captures and it is what helps inculcate and percolate this value into rest of the team members.

It therefore becomes critical for the head of the organisation to demonstrate the same value system on a day to day basis for it to percolate down to his team. A leader can easily get away into zillions of other priorities on a day to day basis, but one who is customer focused would not hesitate to roll up his sleeves to daily look at or help resolve actual customer issues (a) from a view that the problem that caused the customer some grief should be looked at not as an isolated incident but as a systemic issue that must be addressed and relevant corrections made to prevent recurrence of similar issues (b) the value of sending the right signals to the rest of the organisation.

In this context, several corporate leaders like Mr Anand Mahindra, are seen as trend setters. They are available to anyone who cares to reach out to them on social media and actively address these issues. It is not just a great practice of a leader demonstrating consumer centricity but also a great PR tool and even better for converting aggrieved customers into firm believers and brand advocates.

For those of you wanting to start the journey – the chart below captures the broad points.

To make matters clear – let me explain through a real life situation faced at one of our businesses. Through ongoing consumer tracking in our gourmet retail business, we figured that one of the pain points for customers was time taken to transact at the cash tills. At one level it was a relatively minor issue that could have been neglected as business was continuously delivering high double digit same store growth. However, we chose to accept and address this feedback from existing customers seriously.

The entire cashiering process was mapped to understand that the time taken at cash tills was a function of several things including placement of the bar code reader on the cash till, the space available on the till for the cashier to scan products & bag them simultaneously, updated inventory in the system, number of redundant & duplicate SKUs carrying the same bar code as the product being scanned and training of the new cashiers in the system (given the high attrition rates) etc. So addressing the billing speed issue needed to actually tackle all of these for a really meaningful impact on the customer.

Programs and action plans were made for each of the identified issues and key responsibilities and timelines defined. For each of the Process owners, it was ensured that relevant KPIs are modified and actions that impacted billing speed, incorporated. Stake holders identified and Clear targets set.

We modified our reports dashboard to have a monthly update on billing speed for each store that could be further drilled down to the level of each cashier and then into every transaction. Simultaneously, we closely monitored customer feedback and as performance on billing speed improved, we actually saw a fall in the level of complaints related to billing speed.

The journey of capturing what is important to the customer and actions and ownership to address the issues, is however continuous and relentless. It is critical as well. For, customers are smart and their observation and perception that the company creates products and services that resonate with them or responds to their concerns and feedback in meaningful ways, goes a long way in building their sense of overall satisfaction and delight with the business. It also directly impacts the way they talk about the business and recommend it to their peers et al. This perception of a company that cares can seldom be created through a single action. It is something that is built over time into the fabric (and the processes) of the entire organisation through consistent effort and belief that it is the customer that is their raison d’etre. Mere lip service to customer focus can obviously never be enough.