Staying customer focused

Doing business successfully requires a firm to be customer focused, all the time, because you want to build customer loyalty towards your brand. And obviously some companies are better at this than others. If you think that your company has the best product or service to offer and yet you have trouble building customer loyalty and increasing your customer base, consider the following points:

1/ Who is in charge of building brand loyalty?

The easy answer would be — the Marketing and Sales team. In reality, every team member should consider himself responsible in building brand loyalty, right from the CEO to the receptionist. Consider this simple scenario: your VP Sales just brought in a multi-million dollar client, Mr. Bond, after having invested months in contacting him, building a relationship with him, positioning the firm and its offer and finally negotiating the terms. The following day M. Bond calls the receptionist in order to speak to the VP Sales and the receptionist asks him to spell out his name and explain what the call is about. Wouldn’t it have been much better if the receptionist had known who M. Bond is even before he called?

2/How good is your after sales service?

In the example above, the VP Sales seemingly cried victory when the contract was signed, without worrying about what comes next. Signing a contract, even if it may have taken months, is winning the battle, not the war. Your ultimate objective should be to make your customer come back and bring 10 other prospective customers with him. And I can assure you that this does not solely depend on the quality of your product or service. Every human being likes to be valued and heard. That is what good after sales service means and should become the natural way of working for every team member.

3/ How to inculcate a sense of customer service in each and every team member?

By making them understand that without the customer, the company is nothing. Each and everyone should feel personally responsible for the success of the company, which can only come from ultimate customer satisfaction. In order to get there, it won’t suffice to display “Customer is King” in each one’s office or the common areas. Having HR send out a manifesto to everyone won’t really work either. What you need to do is build a corporate culture that turns exclusively around the importance of having happy customers.

a) Organise regular team meetings, not just with managers but will all team members, in order to explain clearly and simply where the company is and where it is headed. This will give employees a sense of pride in working for the company and they will naturally do everything with the customer in mind. Especially when the going gets tough. Coming back to the above example, if the receptionist had never heard of Mr. Bond before the phone call, she couldn’t possibily have imagined that he was a customer, and a big one at that.

b) Set an example. If as the CEO or a manager, you are customer focused, your team will take the cue and follow in your footsteps. You can, for example, organise events with clients where the team is invited as well. Not only will the team be thrilled to be involved in such initiatives but the client satisfaction will improve as well; after all, customers know that only a good CEO or a good marketing director are not enough for a company to provide value, that it takes a team to make the company function.

c) Include customer focused objectives in every team member’s individual objectives. For example — every call should be returned and email should be answered within 24 hours; even in a situation of conflict, mails and calls should remain polite; if one does not have the answer to a client’s question, he or she must do everything to get the answer…

I am sure that this all sounds like common sense but I often like to say that common sense should never be taken for granted. Efficient internal communication, customer focused team incentives and well thought out processes are the only way to ensure that customers will remain your company’s priority, even when teams change!