What is Customer Focus and Why is it Important?
This 4 minute video explores what customer focus is, what customer-focused organizations do and why it is important. You can watch this video or read the full text below.
Some people call it customer focus. Others refer to it as customer centric or customer culture. These terms are synonymous. But what is customer focus, what do customer focused organizations do and why is it important?
Customer Focus is an aligned organization-wide approach to customer satisfaction and service, leading to customer loyalty and advocacy. The result is sustainable profitability.
In a Customer-Focused organization, Leadership, Products, Processes and People are customer-aligned. This requires that:
After all – you are doing all the work. You have the opportunity to Satisfy, Dissatisfy or Impress–and two of these are bad. Delivering below expectations is obviously bad, but in the context of creating loyalty, so is simply satisfying customers, because they are getting nothing more or less than they expect.
- Every action is shaped by a relentless commitment to meeting and exceeding customer expectations regarding product and service quality.
- Customer touch points and supporting internal processes are constantly evaluated and improved to meet or exceed those expectations.
- Every employee understands what he/she must do in order to maintain and add value to every relationship with both the paying customer and those within the organization that rely on them for the work they do.
- Everyone constantly listens to the voice of the customer and changes the way they do business in order to continually make it easier for their customers to do business with them.
The Characteristics of a Customer-Focused Organization
Research shows that organizations which have been recognized by their customers as leaders in customer focus have achieved this by:
- Embedding a shared vision of service and defining a set of clear service values.
- Communicating and reinforcing a deep commitment to the customer among employees.
- Recognizing that every function in the company has an impact on the customer.
- Training managers, supervisors and employees to reinforce service behaviors.
- Developing and implementing support functions that reinforce service behavior.
- Defining the unique and pivotal role managers and supervisors play in reinforcing quality and service, and training them to be customer-focused leaders.
- Recognizing that Customer Satisfaction is a reflection of Employee Satisfaction.
- Aligning their processes and procedures to ensure a quality customer experience.
- Defining performance standards for staff that illustrate service behavior and expectations.
- Utilizing pro-active service recovery as a means to strengthening customer relationships.
- Providing recognition and reward for employees who exemplify stellar service.
- Listening to the voice of the customer and using these data to measure the efficiency of processes.
Go From Good to Great!
Why is this Important?
The research over the past 30+ years clearly shows that a customer-focused strategy will at the very least:
- Build long-term revenue
- Win customer trust and forge long-term relationships
- Keep customers when times are tough
- Attract new customers
- Differentiate the organization from their competition
- Bring out the best in employees
- Maximize operational performance
- Reduce operating expenses by eliminating the cost of poor service
I don’t know about you but this seems like a pretty good idea to me.
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