Do You Know Who Your Customer Is?
If there is one thing I feel quite confident speaking of, it is customer service. I could write a book on customer service. But then, I'm not sure I could say anything that hasn't already been said. There are no secrets. No new techniques. Just people who wish to sell books with purported new ideas. Customer service is not contained in a book. It must be coursing in your blood. You must truly have a desire to delight your customer. It is an attitude not a ten step process. In fact, all successful strategies are simple. Complexity in any business strategy is the kiss of death.
I've spent fifteen years managing client relationships. Clients who typically spend $50, $100 or $200 million with you on an annual basis. Relationships of such importance put customer service in another league. It is an honor and an opportunity never to be taken for granted or taken lightly. Should that relationship ever wither or be damaged for any reason, there is little if any opportunity to save it without extreme measures. Effectively, customer relationships are no different than that of marriage and require as much thought and appreciation.
I have learned to worship my customers. In fifteen years of direct customer involvement, I never once said no. I was so cognizant of that fact that I made it a personal goal to never say no. Now, ultimately the client may not have received exactly what they wanted but I would always offer to see what I could do even when I knew the request or demand would ultimately lead me down a dead end. Even if I knew there was no way I could fulfill their request as stated I never said no. I knew my competitors were saying no and by never saying no it gave me the chance noodle on their request, strategize with my team about it or come up with an answer which might not be exactly what the client wanted but was better than anything they had considered or were able to get from anyone else.
My focus on serving the client rather than my self interest granted me unconditional trust and access to the inner circle of many companies. I developed many great personal relationships because of it. I took my relationships with my clients personally and fought many times with my employer to move mountains on behalf of them. I can't tell you how many times I had somebody tell me that I couldn't do what I wanted to do. They were seldom right. Nor were they often looking at the big picture or the long term profit potential of saying yes. I worked for my clients not my employer. Anything they wanted, regardless of how absurd, I tried to make happen as long as we could find a win-win solution where I could increase my penetration, gain more of their total spend or strategically position myself for more business. Ultimately the customer's request and my company's success were never mutually exclusive. That includes wiping the slate clean on a massive bill if there was justification for it.
As time went on I developed a reputation as a miracle worker of sorts. I could make things happen that many before me were never able to accomplish. As my reputation grew, my employers were more inclined to give me what I wanted on behalf of the customers because they knew of my ability to outperform. And customers were more inclined to ask me if I could help them before they would ask a competitor because I was very creative and always helped them. Many times they took credit for work we may have done. Never did I care. Why? Because all you care about is a satisfied client. Eventually many would quit asking my competitors all together leaving the spoils to my team.
I knew the secret of success. It wasn't because I was smarter than anyone else. Not because I was better than anyone else. Not because I was nicer than anyone else. Success isn't some magical Harvard management technique. It isn't found in a new book on new fangled ideas. It's the lost art of customer service. I don't care if you never talk to an external customer, you have a customer. Accounting's customer may be purchasing. IT's customer may be the line of business. The line of business's customer may be sales. Ultimately, everyone's customer is the customer.
I find it amazing how simple this concept is yet how difficult it is to actually deploy. Business will many times do anything except satisfy their customer. Let's look at a company whom I would consider as having the worst customer service imaginable for decades. That company is GM. Let's look at a hypothetical which would be considered radical and unimaginable for GM at the time. Forty years ago if General Motors sold many an automobile which had problem after problem. Some were entire product lines and some were simply individual cars which had so many problems they were considered a lemon. What if GM would have taken back the failing product they arrogantly shoved down their customer's gullet? Do you think they would have lost 50% of their market share or be in financial crisis? Or, if they would have had a policy of 100% satisfaction and simply repaired their poorly made products with no hassles or questioned asked? Cars that were poorly assembled or engineered would be returned or repaired at company cost. Manufacturing, engineering, sales, design, accounting, procurement, they all would have been held accountable. The senior management team would have had no other choice than to employ total quality programs to fix the crisis in manufacturing quality, solve engineering problems, procure more reliable components, resolve accounting's demand to save 10 cents by buying inferior parts. Sound familiar? Sounds like kaizen. Sounds like what Toyota, Datsun and Honda were doing thirty years ago while GM was trying to sell the consumer whatever they felt like shoving out the door. If GM would have undertaken this approach, it would have spurred a revolution inside the company. But how much would such a policy have cost GM? A billion a year until they got their act together? Two billion? Five billion at the height of their ignorance? But, how much more quickly would such a program have resolved itself with a company focused on its clients? Would GM have languished for forty years while incompetent senior executives walked away with billions of dollars in compensation as hundreds of thousands of workers were sacked and most importantly millions of customers were lost?
Forty years ago GM had north of 55% share of the American auto market. Today that number is less than half. That equates to a loss of approximately 4+ million units per annum. The average price of a new car is $28,000. Swagging unit and price growth over thirty years gives me a dirty guess is that GM has lost over $2 trillion in sales in that period of time because they refused to focus on servicing the customer. There have been many studies done which show it takes ten times the amount of effort and money to re-acquire a lost client. In GM's case, all of the money in the world will never win back many bitter customers who had to pay thousands of dollars to fix GM's poorly made product. So, while my comments about what GM should have done may sound absurd, are they really?
The moral of the story. You work for one reason. To serve your client. You lose sight of your client and someone else is going to take them from you. Great companies realize this. They are maniacal about customer satisfaction. They realize that if they get it right the first time, they don't need to resort to such extreme and costly measures. They realize that not making customer service the primary focus ultimately is prohibitively expensive. They measure customer service, they benchmark it, they are constantly looking at ways to improve it, they processize it, they develop formal feedback mechanisms to identify problems quickly and they have formal methods of quickly resolving problems. The best never rest. If you want to win, you must be better than the best. Toyota, Honda, Apple, Coach, Louis Vuitton, Nordstrom, Proctor & Gamble, Nike, Harley-Davidson, Hilton.
Are you good enough? Can you articulate what you did at work today and how it benefited your client? If not, you should ultimately be worried about your employment status because your company will eventually fall prey to someone who can.
I've spent fifteen years managing client relationships. Clients who typically spend $50, $100 or $200 million with you on an annual basis. Relationships of such importance put customer service in another league. It is an honor and an opportunity never to be taken for granted or taken lightly. Should that relationship ever wither or be damaged for any reason, there is little if any opportunity to save it without extreme measures. Effectively, customer relationships are no different than that of marriage and require as much thought and appreciation.
I have learned to worship my customers. In fifteen years of direct customer involvement, I never once said no. I was so cognizant of that fact that I made it a personal goal to never say no. Now, ultimately the client may not have received exactly what they wanted but I would always offer to see what I could do even when I knew the request or demand would ultimately lead me down a dead end. Even if I knew there was no way I could fulfill their request as stated I never said no. I knew my competitors were saying no and by never saying no it gave me the chance noodle on their request, strategize with my team about it or come up with an answer which might not be exactly what the client wanted but was better than anything they had considered or were able to get from anyone else.
My focus on serving the client rather than my self interest granted me unconditional trust and access to the inner circle of many companies. I developed many great personal relationships because of it. I took my relationships with my clients personally and fought many times with my employer to move mountains on behalf of them. I can't tell you how many times I had somebody tell me that I couldn't do what I wanted to do. They were seldom right. Nor were they often looking at the big picture or the long term profit potential of saying yes. I worked for my clients not my employer. Anything they wanted, regardless of how absurd, I tried to make happen as long as we could find a win-win solution where I could increase my penetration, gain more of their total spend or strategically position myself for more business. Ultimately the customer's request and my company's success were never mutually exclusive. That includes wiping the slate clean on a massive bill if there was justification for it.
As time went on I developed a reputation as a miracle worker of sorts. I could make things happen that many before me were never able to accomplish. As my reputation grew, my employers were more inclined to give me what I wanted on behalf of the customers because they knew of my ability to outperform. And customers were more inclined to ask me if I could help them before they would ask a competitor because I was very creative and always helped them. Many times they took credit for work we may have done. Never did I care. Why? Because all you care about is a satisfied client. Eventually many would quit asking my competitors all together leaving the spoils to my team.
I knew the secret of success. It wasn't because I was smarter than anyone else. Not because I was better than anyone else. Not because I was nicer than anyone else. Success isn't some magical Harvard management technique. It isn't found in a new book on new fangled ideas. It's the lost art of customer service. I don't care if you never talk to an external customer, you have a customer. Accounting's customer may be purchasing. IT's customer may be the line of business. The line of business's customer may be sales. Ultimately, everyone's customer is the customer.
I find it amazing how simple this concept is yet how difficult it is to actually deploy. Business will many times do anything except satisfy their customer. Let's look at a company whom I would consider as having the worst customer service imaginable for decades. That company is GM. Let's look at a hypothetical which would be considered radical and unimaginable for GM at the time. Forty years ago if General Motors sold many an automobile which had problem after problem. Some were entire product lines and some were simply individual cars which had so many problems they were considered a lemon. What if GM would have taken back the failing product they arrogantly shoved down their customer's gullet? Do you think they would have lost 50% of their market share or be in financial crisis? Or, if they would have had a policy of 100% satisfaction and simply repaired their poorly made products with no hassles or questioned asked? Cars that were poorly assembled or engineered would be returned or repaired at company cost. Manufacturing, engineering, sales, design, accounting, procurement, they all would have been held accountable. The senior management team would have had no other choice than to employ total quality programs to fix the crisis in manufacturing quality, solve engineering problems, procure more reliable components, resolve accounting's demand to save 10 cents by buying inferior parts. Sound familiar? Sounds like kaizen. Sounds like what Toyota, Datsun and Honda were doing thirty years ago while GM was trying to sell the consumer whatever they felt like shoving out the door. If GM would have undertaken this approach, it would have spurred a revolution inside the company. But how much would such a policy have cost GM? A billion a year until they got their act together? Two billion? Five billion at the height of their ignorance? But, how much more quickly would such a program have resolved itself with a company focused on its clients? Would GM have languished for forty years while incompetent senior executives walked away with billions of dollars in compensation as hundreds of thousands of workers were sacked and most importantly millions of customers were lost?
Forty years ago GM had north of 55% share of the American auto market. Today that number is less than half. That equates to a loss of approximately 4+ million units per annum. The average price of a new car is $28,000. Swagging unit and price growth over thirty years gives me a dirty guess is that GM has lost over $2 trillion in sales in that period of time because they refused to focus on servicing the customer. There have been many studies done which show it takes ten times the amount of effort and money to re-acquire a lost client. In GM's case, all of the money in the world will never win back many bitter customers who had to pay thousands of dollars to fix GM's poorly made product. So, while my comments about what GM should have done may sound absurd, are they really?
The moral of the story. You work for one reason. To serve your client. You lose sight of your client and someone else is going to take them from you. Great companies realize this. They are maniacal about customer satisfaction. They realize that if they get it right the first time, they don't need to resort to such extreme and costly measures. They realize that not making customer service the primary focus ultimately is prohibitively expensive. They measure customer service, they benchmark it, they are constantly looking at ways to improve it, they processize it, they develop formal feedback mechanisms to identify problems quickly and they have formal methods of quickly resolving problems. The best never rest. If you want to win, you must be better than the best. Toyota, Honda, Apple, Coach, Louis Vuitton, Nordstrom, Proctor & Gamble, Nike, Harley-Davidson, Hilton.
Are you good enough? Can you articulate what you did at work today and how it benefited your client? If not, you should ultimately be worried about your employment status because your company will eventually fall prey to someone who can.
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