MalcolmSays

Being consistent in everything that we do in life is one of the hardest things to achieve. For example none of us like “junk mail” but often we do marketing that is viewed by some of our targets as “junk mail”. Thinking from a customers point of view is a challenge for most people.

“Honesty” is even more difficult because its harder to define and our definition of what is honest changes based on circumstances. For example stealing pens from a shop is dishonest but what about stealing pens from your employer? Would it be OK to steal pens from your employer if he had not paid your salary for a few weeks? Hmmm…

Personally and in business I aim not to do to others what I would not like them to do to me. It’s a useful principle but there are always times when sticking to it becomes quite hard.

In tough economic times it’s very tempting to deliberately cut costs. The secret is to ensure that those cuts do not negatively impact your clients. An often bigger issue in tough times is that staff get de-motivated and incapable of delivering the service that they did in the past. Put these two factors together and you end up with the type of bad service scenarios that many of us experience. The net result is often lost customers through poor customer service and lack of attention to detail.

No one wants to be around de-motivated people. The challenge for business is not to nit pick the details of customer service but to ensure that their staff are highly motivated to get things right. That will ensure that customers do not have to complain and they might just recommend them to their friends and stay as customers.

You could sit down and discuss how bad things are or you could grasp this major opportunity to do things differently for your clients. Now is the time to ensure that you fully understand what your clients value rather than what you think they value. Armed with this information it should be possible to reduce costs (headcount and other things) in areas that clients do not care much about. At the same time you must maintain or even improve the quality and standards that your clients do really care about. The worst thing to do is to randomly cut costs or headcount and expect the same levels of service to be delivered. Unless the organisation has been very inefficient customer service levels will fall and can make the situation even worse.

As an example in the hotel business you might discover that it would be quite acceptable to cut the number of options on the menu, use a fast checkout system, cut the wattage of some light fittings or any number of other things. Just be very sure to check with your own clients that these factors are not the key reasons why they choose your hotel over the competition in the first place.

There are two sides to this question. The first is about the mechanics of collecting feedback and the second side is about motivating people to give you feedback. To me the motivational aspect is much more important that the methods of collection.

Customers and staff will give you feedback if they perceive that the information they provide will ultimately be helpful to them. If you don’t have a relationship with a customer or you only have a poor relationship they are very unlikely to give you feedback. The main exception is when they believe you have really messed up and are not giving them the product/service that they expected. A tool to help is my RET factor approach. The higher the RET factor rating the better the feedback. (More on www.simpleplans.co.uk ). RET stands for Relationship, Expertise and Trust which I measure using a survey and produce simple numerical results. I have one client with a very high rating who gets 80% return whenever he asks his customers for feedback. Others with much lower RET rating are lucky to get 10% to respond. As a quick indicator simply ask yourself about how your customers feel about each of the RET factors (Relationship, Expertise & Trust) in dealing with your organisation. It will give you an indicator about what level of results to expect.

Finally to be helpful to the person giving you the feedback you must tell them upfront that you will share results with them. You then must share those results along with what you will do, or will not do, based on the results you have received. Organisations that don’t do this will get declining levels of feedback from staff and customers.

Malcolm Says
Listening to customers and acting on what they say ia easy. Here is the secret of sucess.Step 1 The CEO spends a lot of time going out talking to customers and tells his senior staff team what he has heard and asks them what they are doing about issuses that he’s discovered.Step 2. The senior management team not wanting to be caught out by the boss go out and listen to lots of customers and fix the problems before the CEO finds out about them.Step 3. This process is repeated through all levels of the organisation.

Tesco are the masters of this approach.

Malcolm says:

The problem is that almost all organisations have too many processes that are no longer appropriate for today’s business environment.  Even worse, in some organisations staff hide behind the processes and use them as an excuse for their actions or inactions.

I’m been working with the new Managing Director of a company who during his first 90 days is personally reviewing and rewrite the major SOP’s (Standard operating procedures) of the £50M company. He believes that it’s the best way for him to really understand the business and make very clear what he expects of his staff. It’s going to be fascinating to see the result. Needless to say he is coming from a very customer centric way of thinking.

Whatever situation you are in it’s always good to look at existing processes and ask two simple questions.

1) How does this add value to our customers?

2) Does the manner in which this process is carried out fit the objectives and strategies of the organisation?

Interesting discussions always follow.

Malcolm says:

Innovative management is the most important skill in a climate of uncertainty. Leadership is the way to get people to understand and use innovative management.The test question before taking any key actions is: “Will this add value to my customers or does it have a negative impact on them?” Resolving this type of question often demands new thinking which needs innovative management before it can happen.

Malcolm says:

I’ve discovered that vision and mission statements can sometimes bring more confusion than clarity. Many people don’t understand the difference between the two and things like tag lines add to the problem. All organisations need some type of touchstone to test the validity of plans and ideas and some “curb stones” that will guide decision making across the organisation. I’ve found in many cases the effective term is the Purpose of the organisation. It’s what people understand.

I’ve listed before a few examples that I’ve developed for some of my clients. Looking at them raw like this only tells part of the story and you need the context to see their full value. (Call me if you want more background).

Building strong dependable vehicles for the community

Supplier of fire engines and other vehicles

Making media work for Retail

Specialist media company

The right supplies to the right location

Medical supplies logistics

Software to simplify real time back office processes

Specialist software company

Hands on training for hands on people

Training company specialising in engineering apprenticeships

Finding the right people with the right technology skills

Niche recruitment company

Here are a few more that I wish I’d help create.

The ultimate driving machine

BMW

Proclaim to all peoples the everlasting gospel in the context of the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14:6-12, leading them to accept Jesus as personal Saviour and to unite with His church, and nurturing them in preparation for His soon return.

Seventh-day Adventist Church

Our core purpose is to create value for customers to earn their lifetime loyalty

Tesco

Malcolm says:

Customers, even in strained economic times, don’t just buy based on price.  In broad terms they buy based on perceived value but in selecting one supplier over another a different set of factors come into play. It’s not necessarily the best price and best perceived value supplier in the market that is always selected.

The other set of criteria that comes into play is what I call the RET factor. This stands for Relationship, Expertise and Trust. If you already have a very good relationship with an existing supplier you might well want to stay with them even though they are not the lowest cost or provider of the best value. In some cases you may not even have a direct relationship with a potential supplier but you may want a relationship with them. An example of this could be a shop local campaign or a major brand that you want to be associated with such as Apple.

People are prepared to pay for demonstrated or perceived expertise. Would you buy the very cheapest tyres for your son’s car? The top aspect is Trust. Even if a supplier ticked all of the other boxes if you don’t trust them to deliver as promised you will not buy from them.

I believe that the after-crisis economy and the in-crisis economy favours organizations who can demonstrate high perceived RET factors in the minds of their customers.  To me the RET factor will be much more important than price in gaining Sales

Malcolm says:

The only way to understand the end-users experience is to ask them. You need to identify areas for improvement and subsequently measure if improvement has taken place. A survey is useful to set a benchmark but its only when you do another survey with exactly the same questions to a similar audience that you can measure change. A raw score number is of very limited value without a benchmark.

Questions have to be worded well to take out bias but the most critical point is to ask the same questions each time. Resist the temptation to “improve” them because it will likely skew the results when you repeat the survey. The questions will tell you what’s wrong but individual comments will tell you why. It’s therefore vital to give plenty of room for comments.

If you can do some face to face surveys use them to test out the possible questions. I’ve found that with well worded questionnaires I learn a lot about customer experience. To me the biggest challenge for organisations to recognise what they have discovered and to take appropriate actions based on those findings. That’s often where outside help can add significant value. The final point is to ensure that you tell your end users what you have done, or not done, as a result of their feedback. Only about 5% of surveys do this.