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More is Said Than Done About Improving Customer
Service
By Jim Clemmer
"Customer demands are getting harder and harder to meet.
That's great because it's getting tougher for our competition to survive."
— comment from the CEO of a very successful company
Effective teams, organizations, and leaders exist to serve others.
And those who provide the highest levels of service/quality enjoy the
richest rewards. That's not just some platitude or warm and fuzzy theory;
it's become a well-proven fact. In Firing on All Cylinders I reviewed
much of this evidence. I showed that those organizations with the highest
service/quality levels have the highest levels of growth in revenue, customer
satisfaction and retention, market share, productivity, safety, and employee
morale while also reducing costs. So it's not surprising that the best
service/quality leaders are also profitable leaders.
Since writing Firing on All Cylinders, the research continues to pour
in. My files are bulging with study after study showing that outstanding
service/quality performance is one of the key contributors to outstanding
financial performance.
It's nothing new. Peter Drucker has been reminding us for decades now
that the only reason for the existence of any business is to get and keep
customers. Winston Churchill once said, "If you aim to profit, learn
to please." A century ago, Russell Conwell would conclude his famous
"Acres of Diamonds" speeches by urging his listeners to start
their search for riches by "first knowing the demand." He continued,
"You must first know what people need, and then invest yourself where
you are most needed."
Understanding and managing to current customer expectations means having
both the will and the way. We must first agree that our customers' expectations
and perceptions of the value they receive from us is a key driver of our
business. Then we need to systematically turn soft customer expectations
and perceptions into hard, manageable data. That calls for the discipline
of a rigorous management system and process.
A service/quality improvement systems can be boiled down to three major
steps: (1) Identify Current Customers/Partners; (2) Prioritize Expectations;
and (3) Gap Analysis. These steps are part of the rigorous goals, measurements,
and standards we need to continually improve our current products and
services to our existing customers.
But these management steps need to be counterbalanced with the leadership
actions of exploring, searching, and creating tomorrow's markets and customers,
innovation, and organizational learning.
Lots of Customer Talk, Little Action
"Ninety-five percent of managers today say the right thing. Five
percent actually do it." — James O'Toole, leadership professor,
quoted in the Fortune article "The New Post-Heroic Leadership"
We have spoken to, or worked with, hundreds of management teams interested
in becoming more "customer-driven." Many aspire, some understand,
but only a few truly do. Despite all the proclamations, catchy advertising
slogans, and customer service publicity, service levels have improved
only marginally in the last few years. As Harvard Business School professor
Rosabeth Moss Kanter puts it: "Despite the recent media coronation
of King Customer, many customers will remain commoners...most businesses
today say that they serve customers. In reality, they serve themselves."
Jim Clemmer is a bestselling author and internationally
acclaimed keynote speaker, workshop/retreat leader, and management
team developer on leadership, change, customer focus, culture, teams,
and personal growth. During the last 25 years he has delivered over
two thousand customized keynote presentations, workshops, and retreats.
Jim's five international bestselling books include The VIP Strategy,
Firing
on All Cylinders, Pathways
to Performance, Growing
the Distance, and The
Leader's Digest. His web site is www.clemmer.net.
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