Last Thursday night I had the honor of being on a panel for Cantillon to discuss Customer Obsession. The entire evening was electric…from the initial “happy hour” where people mingled and had some awesome food and drinks to after the speaking portion where everyone got to hang out and ask more questions! It was an awesome event…kudos to Dave Carroll for organizing and masterfully acting as the moderator.
But even with talking about Customer Obsession for more than an hour, there were still lots of questions to follow and many people asking me for more insights into this new way of running a business…putting the customer at the center of it and obsessing over making them incredibly happy to do business with you. So as a follow-up to the event, I wanted to share a few more insights that people were asking about in hopes it will answer some of your questions. But if you still have more, ask away…you can click on some links at the bottom where you can ask me whatever you want.
- Can you just “tweak” a few things and be more Customer Obsessed? A Word of Caution: You can’t just “tweak” a few things and expect big results. Often times companies decide to do a few things to make their customers happier. The problem is it is usually “not enough” and is “inconsistent.” Both of these will cost you money and deliver minimal (if any) results. For example, telling your employees we have to smile more and go out of our way to try and make our customers happy sounds really great…but it won’t deliver any meaningful results. It is a “tweak” or a “spot fix” and as such lacks two critical components…longevity and impact. If you want to make a difference, do something that causes your customers to be in “awe and shock” with how different you are acting and treating them…and do it every day. This requires a strategy and detailed plan to make this happen consistently…every day.
- What’s the single biggest thing a company can do to create immediate impact with their customers? Tough question because to really make an impact you have to have “commitment” from leadership and a “strategy” to execute. These aside for now, it is critically important to identify “who is your ideal customer” and then figure out what would “blow them away” if you provided it in a customer experience. Knowledge and understanding is the first place to start. Without having this deep knowledge and understanding as a foundation, it is guesswork. Invest some time to get these figured out and you will have much greater insight into next steps.
- What can you do to start increasing revenues and getting more customers? This is a two part answer in my opinion. One involves changing your “customer experience” so it is dramatically positive…so much so that your customers are willing to pay you more for it. The numbers from the research that say up to 89% of the people surveyed would pay you more for a much better customer experience. And the latest report from Price Waterhouse says your customers will pay you almost 20% more revenue for this experience…that’s pure profit! An awesome customer experience has to be the place to start to get these gains. The second part is more about “word-of-mouth” marketing. STOP MARKETING…at least in the traditional ways companies market today. When you are dialed into the right audience and can talk to them in ways that can truly help them, they tell others. They literally will help you market your business…for free!! Having a strategy to get more of this (and leverage it) is where companies really find a gold mine of new customers.
- How hard or easy is it to move a company from “product/service centric” to Customer Obsessed? This is probably the question I get asked more than any other from business owners…along with how much will it cost J. The simple answer is it that it is a process to change the way your company operates today to operating with a different core objective tomorrow…and revenue isn’t ever the objective, it is a result. Unfortunately, if it was super easy, everyone, including your competitors, would be doing it tomorrow and there still wouldn’t be any differentiation between you and your competitors. It takes work, focus, consistent execution, different processes, and unwavering leadership to stay the course. Those that have these elements and stay committed win…they reach the other side of the mountain where they stand alone from their competition. It isn’t an easy, take a pill today and fill better tomorrow…it is a steady climb up the mountain without giving up…and you reap innumerable rewards by being alone on the other side of the mountain.
- You talked about how businesses should “Stop Marketing” which sounds very counterproductive to being Customer focused…can you elaborate more on what this really means? Again, always a question people ask when I introduce this approach. Stop Marketing means to stop marketing the way you think it should be done or using traditional approaches and start focusing on helping your customer…an approach that is “customer friendly” and they want to receive content from you. I referenced Seth Godin and his book Permission Marketing in one of my comments at the event. Seth’s approach is spot on with the approach of stopping the way you market. In a nutshell, he says companies spend most of their marketing time and money trying to find new ways to “interrupt” their audiences…which causes them to “turn you off” because it’s annoying. But when you “earn their permission” to market to them where they actually want your information because it is highly relevant and helpful, they reward you with loyalty and word-of-mouth. The goal of “Stop Marketing” is to be so Customer Obsessed that you not only provide them with an incredibly awesome experience but you provide them with incredibly awesome content that they find very useful in helping to improve their lives or their business. When you combine these two key elements, customers market for you and you don’t need to waste the time and money on all the low return marketing most companies do today.
- I get how wonderful it would be to be Customer Obsessed now, so how does a business go about making this become a reality, or change their DNA as you call it? The process is straightforward but requires changes. Because these are companywide changes, it starts with revisions to the companies Vision, Mission, possibly Values, and adopting a Customer Obsessed Strategy. The Strategy breaks down into very tactical components that become part of the plan and get executed over time. For example, in the strategy, we identify your ideal customers, discover what is really important to them and would create a WOW factor (customer success) with them, and which areas of the business would impact them the most if we changed the experience in this area first, second, and so on. This gives us prioritization with both customer personas and areas that will have the greatest impact. These get mapped out (process and experientially) in great detail so all the employees can deliver this incredible experience. This continues throughout the company and just gets more awesome every day. Changing up your marketing approach to support this new experience can happen in parallel once we have the initial strategy and the plan in place. Without this structured approach, your changes become random and unpredictable…this is worse than if you did nothing. I coined a phrase early on that is more relevant today than ever, “Random Acts of Excellence and Chaos lead to Customer Confusion…which ultimately leads to Customer Defection (leaving).”
I know there are lots more questions out there…but these were some that most people were wondering about so I hope this helps answer a few more things. However, if you any QUESTIONS going forward, simply click on the GOT A QUESTION tab on the top navigation bar and you can ask me anything you want…I will get back to you with an answer usually within the same day! I would also encourage you to read through my BLOG since I have written a lot about many aspects of Customer Obsession. Finally, if you want to know how we make it happen for our clients at WOM10, you can visit THE SOLUTION page on the site to learn more about the four components necessary to be a Customer Obsessed Company. I hope this has been helpful…
