Customer Perception = Reality
Kate Zabriskie coined the above term which neatly encapsulates what is often the main cause of tension between customers and suppliers.
We’ve all heard phrases such as “The customer is not an interruption of your work, they are the reason you have work,” and so on but it was only when I saw this that light dawned for me.
Many businesses are organised “Around themselves”, that is, they produce goods or services according to processes that they have designed to deliver those goods or services.
Only a few think about how the customer may want to obtain or access those goods or services. This is where the “customer experience” concept comes in. Its objective is to make life as good as possible for customers using the following criteria:
- The product or service must meet the customer’s needs.
- It must be easy to use.
- The customer should enjoy using the product or service.
The problem is that, if we’re lucky, the product or service will meet our needs.
Easy to use? How do we have to fill in? How many fields do we need to complete online? How many steps to complete the process? Does our password need a minimum of 8 characters, at least one of which should be an uppercase letter, one a number and one a "special symbol"?
Enjoyable? How do we feel after completing endless forms and waiting in a queue for 30 minutes?
Very few organisations can achieve all three.
Once we know what the customer wants, and how they want it, we’re on our way. The only way to get this information is to talk to customers themselves. Unfortunately, the way many organisations do this is to use “focus groups” or “market surveys” that aren’t designed to elicit what the customer wants so much as to reaffirm that the processes are “right”. Even the use of the latest trend – “persona” that are meant to represent the “typical buyer” (there’s no such thing, buy the way) of that product or service look at the buyer from the business’ point of view rather than the buyer’s.
Once we get our heads around the difference that’s needed, we can start to understand how customers want to engage with us, what products they need to do what, and how they want to access them.
Until business leaders realise this, there’ll always be a conflict between their perceptions and those of their customers.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Productivity, Selling, Strategy
Blame Games
It always interests me to see how people react when things go wrong. Do they try and shift accountability to someone else or do they accept that, perhaps, they may also have been at fault?
The phrases I most often hear are “You should have told me that,” or “That should be in your contracts”.
Every interaction involves risk. In some jurisdictions, organisations are expected to be completely “transparent” in terms of the goods or services they offer, the conditions on which they will offer them, pricing and any exceptions that may result in a different outcome.
In others, the old Latin adage “Caveat Emptor” (let the buyer beware) is more applicable. In these cases, the opposite happens: product or service providers volunteer little information and let the customer ask the questions.
In a culture where “fairness” rules, one expects more of the “transparency ethic”. In that most recently described, one must learn fast or be disappointed/lose money until one learns better.
Going back to how I started, when we deal with a new party, we need to:
- Understand exactly what we want.
- Understand what expectations we have concerning service standards from the other side.
- Develop a list of questions designed to elicit from the other party that what we want is achievable.
- Be ready to ask the questions and to continue probing until satisfactory answers are received.
In our business, we’ve seen a few episodes where, in hindsight (that marvellous thing!) we could or should have asked certain questions. In these cases, all we can do is “chalk it up to experience” and learn our lesson for the next time.
What many fail to accept is that, whatever happens, there will always be new situations and new suppliers with whom we deal who may not understand or appreciate the standards we expect. Some larger organisations have developed a complex process to assess any new supplier, usually one that revolves around asking a lot of intrusive questions. Such processes are cumbersome and time-consuming both for new suppliers and for the organisation that then has to go through the answers to ensure that their standards will be met.
Where does this leave us? Honestly, the more experience we gain in dealing with new suppliers, the better. Most of them are looking for profitable and (they hope) long-lasting relationships. A minority are out to grab whatever they can get before moving onto the next “victim”.
As long as one does not become the latter in too many cases, I’d consider that a win.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Productivity, Risk, Strategy
Managing Meetings
There’s an African saying, “if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”
Meetings, as we’ve often found to our cost, can be value destroyers by taking up too much of our time.
Since COVID ended, more meetings may be held “virtually” with attendees from all parts of the world joining in from different time zones. This means that collaboration gets more difficult as not only are people more spread out than they used to be in the past, they’re also “cognitively disconnected”, meaning they don’t necessarily “think the same way” and see others as "faces on a screen".
Not only do we have team meetings, we also have one-to-one meetings with our managers (and our direct reports) to discuss our individual objectives and status of current projects that we’re working on.
I read recently that office workers can spend up to almost 15 hours a week in meetings (reclaim.AI). That’s almost 2 full working days out of five.
The modern office worker is increasingly asked to work on different projects with different people. This results in them feeling that they’re constantly being pulled in too many different directions. It's also mentally taxing. Science has proven that the human brain isn't really designed to multitask in the way that many organisations require.
The result? People maintain a semblance of productivity by focusing on small quick tasks that don’t require too much concentration (e.g. dealing with emails, answering the phone, updating lists). This is what we call “busy work” but what it does is prevent our teams from focusing on their more challenging tasks – the ones that are strategically important for the organisation.
How can we as leaders make sure that meetings are well spent? The first priority is define the objectives of meetings to make sure our people don’t feel they’re wasting their time.
Ensuring the efficient spread of internal knowledge and information is also vital. Rumours are one thing; facts are another. In a modern world it’s even more difficult to find the information we may need to be effective (there’s just so much!).
Finally, we need to look at how much we’re putting on peoples’ shoulders. There are “humans” in “Human Resources”, not just “resources” …
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Leadership, Productivity, Teamwork
