All Posts Tagged With: "Voice of the Customer"
What Do Your Customers Require?
It’s a fundamental question that demands a profound knowledge of who your customers are and what each individual customer is seeking. B. Joseph Pine II, one of the pioneers of the mass customization concept, recently wrote an insightful article for HBR that bashed the notion that most organizations are customer-focused. “They focus on markets rather than on any real, living, breathing individual customer,” he wrote here.
Pine offers a fresh perspective on what it means to be truly customer-focused with a list that could be a how-to for understanding what your customers require:
- Every customer is his own market. Every customer deserves to get exactly what he wants at a price he’s willing to pay, and companies must make that happen in a way that makes them money.
- Recognize that every customer is multiple markets. Customers want different offerings at different times under different circumstances.
- You must modularize your capabilities. Break your offerings apart into modular elements like LEGO building blocks, and then create a design experience that helps each customer figure out what he wants.
- Don’t overwhelm your customers with choice. “Fundamentally, customers don’t want choice,” says Pine. They just want exactly what they want.”
- Recognize that mass customization is not being everything to everybody; rather, it is…
A Baldrige View of Customer Experience
The Baldrige Criteria ask: How do you create an organizational culture that ensures a consistently positive customer experience and contributes to customer engagement?
Adam Richardson defines “customer experience” as the sum-totality of how customers engage with your organization and brand through the entire arc of being a customer. In “Understanding Customer Experience” (HBR, October 28, 2010), he suggests three layers of customer experience to consider:
- Customer Journey. The journey a customer takes with your organization from first contact to providing a product or service to supporting that product or service and extending the relationship with the customer.
- Touchpoints. All of the points where the customer interacts with your organization.
- Ecosystems. By Richardson’s definition, the integrated ecosystems of products, software, and services that offer more than isolated touchpoints.
Have you ever used Zipcar? It’s the largest car-sharing company in the United States (it’s also in Vancouver, Toronto, and London). Here in the Twin Cities, the Zipcar locations are all in or near the University of Minnesota; college students are big Zipcar customers. Richardson touts Zipcar as a great example of a company that used its understanding of the entire arc of the customer car-renting experience to turn car-sharing into a mainstream business—and help the environment in the…
1Nov2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedPay Yourself First
It’s easy to acquire tunnel vision. There are jobs to do, projects to complete, and meetings to attend. Your organization is probably running lean, which means you’re responsible for your job as well as big chunks of work from coworkers who’ve moved or left. It’s hard to find the time to do anything well, much less learn and grow. Like the organization, you are sacrificing long-term considerations for short-term necessities. Focus on what’s in front of you. Get through the day.
Financial planners tell their clients to pay themselves first with every paycheck. Take a small amount from each check and put it in savings. Even when money is tight. Even when you have urgent needs in front of you. Don’t squander your future by being short-sighted. Pay yourself first.
The same concept applies to your work life. Take a few minutes from each day and use it to increase your value. Step back from the tunnel and broaden your understanding of how your entire team, department, and organization work. Identify your customers and what they require and how you can make them more satisfied and loyal. Learn how the processes you are part of function and how you can improve them.…
28Dec2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedKEYSTONE: Customer Knowledge
An organization exists to serve customers whether they are called customers, clients, patients, students, constituents, or another name given to people who come to you for your products or services. A key measure of your success is how well you meet your customers’ requirements: Meet or exceed them and you improve satisfaction and loyalty with the benefits these provide; fail to meet their requirements and you lose customers, revenue, or support.
The first order of business, then, is to make sure you know exactly what your customers require. Most organizations don’t. They think they know. After all, they interact with customers every day. They may even be able to produce a list of customer requirements, which should really be called a list of assumptions about customer requirements because few organizations take a systematic approach to identifying, validating, and communicating key customer requirements.
I once worked with a manufacturer that was the worldwide leader in its industry. After completing its award application, I was asked to share my feedback on the application with the senior leadership team. My first bullet said: You do not have rock-solid understanding of customer requirements.
Boy, did they lay into me! “We’re the market leader,” one said, “of course we know…
22Oct2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued9 Ways to Get Closer to Customers
Am I missing something? In the Organizational Profile, the Baldrige Criteria ask for the key requirements and expectations for your products, services, programs, offerings, etc. I was ready to link that question to the question about how you determine those requirements but it doesn’t exist. I’m pretty sure it used to.
Instead, Category 3 asks several questions about specific areas where you need to understand customer (patient, student, etc.) requirements, such as with product, service, and program offerings; support; customer life cycles; transactions; and complaint management. The Criteria also ask about customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
The answers to these questions come from your customers. Here are nine ways Baldrige Award recipients and other high-performing organizations listen to the Voice of the Customer:
- Interview them. Sit down with current, former, and potential customers and ask about their requirements and expectations.
- Survey them. Ask customers what is most important to them in addition to how satisfied they are.
- Do focus groups. Pull together representatives of a specific customer segment to discuss their needs.
- Get feedback on recent transactions. This has become an effective step in healthcare with the use of post-discharge phone calls.
- Collect information from your sales and service people. Be specific about seeking information that will help…
Creating a Positive Customer Experience
Few companies face the levels of customer dissatisfaction that Comcast confronts every day. Web sites have been created solely to document the horror stories of aggrieved customers. In June, Comcast ranked second in MSN Money’s Customer Service Hall of Shame, and it ranks second to last among cable and satellite TV companies on the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
After years of poor performance and faced with growing competition, Comcast decided to take customer satisfaction seriously. It started by monitoring blogs and Twitter to find and assist unhappy customers. Next, as a StarTribune article documents, it developed a new Customer Care program that features:
- Giving Comcast technicians handheld devices that can test a home’s entire network
- Expanding technicians’ hours to include working on Sundays
- Giving employees “Make It Right” cards to a hand out to anyone with a complaint; the cards have a phone number to call for priority assistance
- Training technicians and call-center agents to listen and be respectful and to help solve problems the first time
- Promoting a new customer guarantee that promises to handle problems quickly, respect the customer’s time, and offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on all services
Listening to the Voice of the Customer is the first step to improving satisfaction and building loyalty.…
26Aug2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
