I always like to check my assumptions, so let me ask you: do we need our customers? If I didn’t check first, I might assume that none of us is in business without them! But of course we all have customers. After all, if no one purchased our products or services, we would have to close the doors and liquidate our assets.
This is why paying attention to customers is a strategic driver for any organization, not just something we have to do keep everyone employed. The continuum for Customer Needs runs from React to customer requests to Anticipate future customer needs. Again, there is no right or wrong place to be on this continuum; the importance is knowing where your organization actually is.
Strategy is executed through company mindsets in both external relationships, how your firm relates to the rest of the world, and daily operations, how your firm develops your people to execute.
For instance, when you consider your firm’s mindset on Customer Acquisition, are you more inclined to work to retain current customers or to acquire new ones? My favorite examples of each are not from our industry, but from one well known to us all. DirecTV, at least in my area, is much more concerned with acquiring new customers. I am bombarded weekly with offers to install DirecTV at ridiculous prices. My cable company, on the other hand, works hard to keep my business and actually has real people to answer the phone. What a concept! Granted, I’m no longer captive of one of the giants; my little regional supplier gives me most of what I need at $100 a month less than I had been paying.
Small companies (like yours?) can and will seek a market that meets their strategic need.
From my examples, it might seem as if I favor customer retention as my mindset, but of course, mindsets are also on a continuum. In the case of Customer Acquisition, it runs from Retain to Acquire New. Most companies favor a more balanced approach than DirecTV!
On the people development side, where is your organization when thinking about Learning Focus? Do you emphasize a customer focused approach to learning, or a non-customer approach? That is, does your firm train to customer needs or to general and technical needs?
Do you emphasize building relationships with your customers? Are your people trained to listen and respond to customer responses to your offerings, or do they actively engage your customers in seeking out what additional features or benefits they want from your products?
Further, do you train your people to become better craftsmen, draftsmen, or engineers? Or do you train them to become better listeners and better communicators? Where is your internal emphasis? Again, there is no correct answer. You need to know only two things: where are you on the continuum, and where do you want to be?
When the answers are the same, keep doing what you are doing! And where they are different, think very carefully about why.
If you don’t know the answer, then you have to discover the disconnect that created this situation. Is training lacking in some manner? Did you fail to send a clear message about where you want to be on the continuum? Did you change your mind about where you want to be?
The good news is that understanding where you are will help you improve your performance. If you’ve failed to keep your strategy and message clear to your folks, you can fix that immediately. If you’ve decided to make a strategic change, you have the opportunity to get some help to guide the change through your entire organization in a manner that will let you instill the new strategy and mindset as the new normal behavior.
Either way, you are taking positive steps to improve your company’s performance, which is your primary job, taking care of your customers to protect the health of your business.