Are You Easy to Do Business With?

How well do you read your customers? In a recent survey by Bain & Company, a strategy consulting firm, found that eighty percent of companies believe they deliver a superior customer experience, but only 8 percent of their customers agree. Why this big disconnect?

Everyday your organization's policies, procedures and processes send messages to your customers, clients or constituents. Do these messages say: "We're here to serve you?" "We value your time." "We care about you." Or do they say: "We don't trust you." "You are not really important." "Stop bothering us."

What messages are you sending to your customers every day? Here's are four way to determine if you are easy or difficult to do business with.

1. Be Your Own Customer.
This is a must. Shop in your stores; eat in your restaurant; call your 800 number; place an order. Try to get something returned, explained or repaired. If you are easily recognized send in a "mystery shopper". But find out how it feels to be a customer of your organization. Would you return or go somewhere else?

There must be a routine in place that continually asks questions like: How can we make our products easier to use? How can we become easier to deal with? How can we make ourselves easier to understand? It won't happen by itself. Therefore, set aside time at every staff meeting and "walk in the customer's shoes".

2. Go Where The Action Is.
Direct personal contact with customers is probably one of the most valuable and most overlooked and least expensive methods of learning how to serve your customers better. Every few months spend a week dealing with your customers, waiting on them, answering customer service phone calls or making sales calls. You may learn something, not only about that particular customer, but about how to serve him and others better. That's free advice. So take advantage of it.

Consider requiring all managers, not just the front line ones, to interact regularly with customers so they know what the customer and the employee face each and every day. As one production manager said to me,

"I learned about the customer's frustrations in getting a straight answer from a sales and I also learned that the specs we give are not very clear. I'll need t do something about it."

3. Rate Your Customer-Friendliness.
Check out your front end. How long to your customers have to wait to make a purchase or get a question answered? How quickly and conveniently do you process customer returns? Are your people empowered to resolve customer complaints promptly and completely to your customer's satisfaction?

Check out your back end. Do you always deliver your customer's order completely and accurately? How well do you keep them updated on the status of their order or application or inquiry? Are you able to deliver and install when it's convenient for your customers? Are all your support people committed to friendly, helpful, customer service? If not, then train them to be more customer or user friendly.

4. Tap The Brainpower Of Your Experts.
That means listening to everyone who helps get your products to market or your services delivered. Your front line people are an important and overlooked source of valuable information about the customer's experience. They have the most direct and most frequent contact and probably have excellent ideas of how to reduce hassles and increase smiles.

There may be no single motivational tactic more powerful than freeing competent people to do their jobs better, faster, smarter. Our QEW's program has demonstrated time and again how all kinds of employees---from hourly workers doing the most routine tasks to high-ranking professionals --- have improved day-to-day operations that immediately led to higher service quality and ultimately to greater customer satisfaction.

No matter how good your product is or the service you deliver, your customers will decide to buy again, return for additional assistance or recommend you to others based on how you treat them, how you handle their order and most importantly how you resolve their problems. Therefore, be easy to do business with.

Here are resources to help you build powerful leaders and powerful organizations / have powerful leaders at all levels: Coaching 4 Results, Planning 4 Change, Speaking 4 Impact, W.O.W.W. Tools.

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Copyright 2006-2008, Marcia Zidle. Will you have a bright future? Are you ready to make your organization stand out in the crowd in competing for customers, clients, funders or community awareness? Contact us and let us show you how to make that happen.

Would you like to reprint this article in your trade journal, newspaper, website, company newsletter or e-zine? See Note to Editors.