The perennial cry from CEOs around the globe is that they are focused on their customers.  It is their A-#1 mission, the critical job of their company – and everything emanates from understanding what customers need and want and delivering on it.  You may have said this yourself.

Somehow this message hasn’t sunk in because customers are having a harder time than ever getting service from the companies they do business with, regardless of how much they spend, how long they’ve been a customer or how profitable they are.  There is a fever pitch from customers using the power of the internet to make their pain known.  Websites such as www.ripoffreport.com, www.planetfeedback.com and www.gethuman.com give customers a place to gripe and navigate their way to companies who can serve them better.  And they are doing it actively, loudly and in great numbers. However, as internal leaders of each silo report and recommend customer actions separately, CEOs react to the random issues landing at their feet, rather than focusing on key issues eroding customer experiences, loyalty and customer profitability.

How to Inspire and Drive the Very Best Customer Experiences and Customer Service
10 Actions that Won’t Cost a Thing but Your Personal Passion

Inspired customer leadership in the very best companies on earth came from the heart and soul of the impassioned leader of the organization who had an instinct on where to take the business for customers, and absolute clarity on how to inspire the organization to make it happen.  These companies all started small, and it was the personal mission of the person at the helm who inspiration drove the business to where it is today.  Lands’ End, for example, when it began started in a humble walk up building in Chicago’s sailing hardware district – and it was Gary Comer’s personal vision that moved the company forward.  In fact, even as we grew, he pulled us back to our roots, saying “Think small, think one customer at a time…the rest will take care of itself.” And it did.

Customer leaders have two traits that set them and their companies apart – they have gut and guts.  As taken from Chief Customer Officer:  Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action, here’s what they have and what they do:

Gut leaders know the higher purpose they want to have for their customers.  They have sharpened radar for seeing what’s right and wrong and what’s getting in the way.  They have a clear line of sight for where they want to take the company which they’ve thought about it, stewed about it, and suffered over it.  Their idea of what and how they will define themselves in the marketplace is so well understood that they become a lightening rod for the company.  There is an internal compass inside their head that guides reactions to ideas and proposals.  They use that skill like a sculptor, chiseling out the company’s customer relationship by steering and driving decisions throughout the company.

Leaders with guts will absolutely take the hill to get there. They will make the customer agenda a priority of the organization.  There will be no settling for mediocrity.  They’ve got the chops to stick their neck out and will do it to make things happen.   They will push the company and push back on the company until they get it right.  Customer priority and issues will be known, understood, and thought through at all levels.    Customer leaders need the guts of a salmon.  Think about it.  The salmon goes head first against the current.  It pushes on to its destination, unscathed by resistant forces.  The salmon leader turns the company from facing itself to facing its customers.  Salmon leaders use business meetings to guide and challenge people to understand how what they’re doing affects the customer.  Salmon leaders constantly ask if the tactics being served up are connected across the organization.  Salmon leaders are not afraid to trade short-term profits for long-term gains with customers.  They know how to explain the commitment to the board and the company so that they can transfer this clarity to everyone else.

Taking a page from the actions of passionate customer leaders, take these ten actions to put your personal stamp on your relationship with customers:

1. Take the time to know absolutely what you want to be to your customers. Your business otherwise will continue to run on auto-pilot, the functions of each of your operating areas (service, support, marketing, operations, sales, etc) churning out what they do – without much real conversation about what it all means to customers, and how it affects them.  Like the leader with gut, take the time to stew about it and gain the clarity of how you want your customers to think of you and what greater purpose you are performing for them.
2. Communicate that purpose for your business. This may sound obvious, but it’s amazing how many companies have every part of their company defining what they do separately – the parts don’t add up for customers.  For example, one emerging home builder changed his mission from ‘building contractor’ to ‘delivering on the American Dream.’  That was as much for his internal team (probably more) than for customers.  Do this litmus test to see how connected your company is in knowing the higher mission they all collectively serve for your customers. The next ten people you speak to, simply ask them; “What’s your job?” and “What’s our collective job?”  You’ll be surprised at the varied answers you’ll get.  No wonder – if you haven’t been the beacon for them telling them where you’re headed, they’ll chart their own course.  They’ll decide on their own where they’re taking your company for customers.  
3. Establish your own set of guidelines for how to treat customers. Consider the various dimensions of your business and make a set of statements about how each one of them should show up to customers.  Be clear about what the frame of reference should be in people’s minds for making decisions about each dimension and what your standards for customer treatment are.  
4. Listen to the Front Line and Talk to Customers Regularly. The frontline is talking to your customers every day.  On a regular basis, sit yourself down in the center of them and ask them what the key issues are.  But don’t just listen.  Write down the issues and get someone assigned to taking care of the major ones.  Then personally reach out to customers to understand at a greater level of granularity just what is happening so you know what to do about it.  Then fix the issues. This is simple, it works, and it puts your skin in the game.  When you let your company and customers know of your direct understanding and involvement in resolving these issues it will have an impact and it will set a standard and an example people will emulate.
5. Track and trend complaints and do something about it. Beyond the conversations you have with the frontline, give them some sort of tool to track and trend those issues.  By doing this, you have an immediate “hand on the throttle” management device for steering your company.  As you track this feedback month after month and year after year, the trends will help you understand in more detail what your customer needs are.  Most importantly, this type of discipline will let you take “real time” action on resolving issues that may be sending your customers away.  I know that everyone wants to survey their customers – but really – we’ve exhausted our customers with the mass that goes out with no apparent action that follows.  If you must survey to get that statistical data we all crave, you will find that it validates what you will have already found out by trending and tracking customer complaints and issues.  In fact, if your survey is telling you new things you don’t know – you’re just way too distant from your customers – and in a most precarious position in your relationships with them.  
6. Know your customer segments and how their needs vary. Especially where resources are tight, you will want to cluster your customers by how much revenue they generate and their profitability.  From these clusters, you should identify commonalities in what they need from you.  The intention is never to under-serve those with lesser profitability potential – but you must absolutely be aware of those power players on whom your livelihood may be most dependent.  Once you know these clusters, you can come up with creative ways for serving them – allocating resources in sync with financial outcomes.  For example, you may have a wide number of smaller customers who, rather than sending out an individual to call on them separately, can be brought together for a networking event that benefits them all and reduces your cost for servicing them.  
7. Give the front line the training, support and tools to do their job. The frontline is the company to your customers.  This is not the place to cut costs.  Ensure that you allocate ample resources to ensure that they have what they need to give your customers what they need.  This means ample communication from you (that won’t cost a thing), but also the right training, skill development and technology resources.  There’s nothing worse, for example, than putting a customer through watching their sales rep struggle with slow response time or inadequate support materials, or listening to a service operator struggling with a system to find customer information.  
8. Conduct a quarterly or monthly customer loss review meeting. This is a potent profit management technique you can begin today.  To prep for this meeting, compile the data on customer defections so that you know which customers you lost and why.  In addition, assign your key lieutenants to make outbound calls to up to ten customers who have left during the month or quarter to find you why they left.  There’s nothing quite as compelling as a customer speaking right to someone who has accountability for making something happen.  Customers are often so amazed by the effort that they consider trying the company again.  After the calls have been completed, convene the meeting to discuss what’s happening with your customers and what is driving them away.  In that meeting get alignment on how to prioritize the issues and assign accountability.  Use subsequent loss review meetings to track progress on resolving issues, continuing the process of calling customers who defected.  
9. Keep track of your customers. You should know the flow of your customers in and out of your business. It’s the easiest way to make customers in terms of a ‘score’ people can follow and you can constantly keep top of mind.   Find a way to figure out how to constantly track, actively discuss and manage these five things about your customers.  These are called “Guerrilla Metrics” in my book, Chief Customer Officer:  Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action, because they help you power the customer onto the agenda of your business. For example: a business to business company was counting the number of customer accounts but not the flow or the quality.  The sales team was led by an ex-fighter pilot who sent off the sales force on what they actually called “speed kills.”  They were fired up to get as many customers as they could, as fast as they could.  But they weren’t keeping track of the difference in the value of business each new customer would bring.  To them, one unit was one unit:  customers had become widgets.  Each speed kill carried the same weight on the tote board used to measure success.  The sales team exceeded their goal for new customer accounts that year, but sales became a drag on profits, which actually declined. This is because they didn’t focus on the profitability of customer accounts, just the number of them.  And no one actively identified, prioritized and eliminated issues driving profitable customers out the door.
10. Prove it with your actions. Finally, take the actions that are good for your customers.  Make clear decision decisions that put the customer first – then let EVERYONE know what they are.  Your customers, your suppliers and most importantly, your company all need to know that you are taking action and listening to the feedback that is coming in daily from your customers through inbound calls, through the web, and through conversations.  This is what people are looking for – to see if there’s more behind the customer commitment than lip service.  You need to prove that there is.  You need to market hope. When you do this – you’ll see – the tide will turn.

About the Author

Jeanne Bliss is the founder of CustomerBLISS (www.customerbliss.com ); a consulting and coaching company helping corporations connect their efforts to yield improved customer growth.  She is a world-wide speaker on the subject.  Jeanne spent twenty-five years at Lands’ End, Microsoft, Allstate, Coldwell Banker, and Mazda corporations as the leader for driving customer focus and customer growth.  Her best-selling books are; Chief Customer Officer:  Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action, and I Love You More than My Dog: Five Decisions for Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad. Go to www.customerbliss.com to get a reality check audit on your customer commitment and ability to make customers an asset of your business.