Customer strategy - a means to an end?
Over the course of 2008, I have attended a number of customer strategy and call centre executive forum roundtable discussions on topics about customer service and customer experience. The attendees come from a variety of firms in the UK, across all different industries: financial services, telecoms, media, retail, pharmaceuticals, etc.
I often approach these sessions with a degree of trepidation, uncertain as to the gulf in approach and performance between my company and the others around the table. What has struck me more than once though is that we’re about on a par with them - in other words, we are all about as bad as one another when it comes to putting customer strategy at the core of our business focus.
Lots of companies are focussed on delivering shareholder returns, yet few seem to realise that if they actually focussed on understanding and then satisfying their customers’ needs, they would inevitably deliver said returns - because their customers would remain loyal (dangerous word, I know!) and keep coming back.
The other big challenge is demonstrating (in numerical terms) what having such a customer-oriented focus would actually do for the bottom-line of the business. There are a number of books that have been written on the subject now but still, a leap of faith is needed by senior management if a business is going to really embrace putting the customer at the centre of everything it does.
Have you any thoughts on this?
September 1st, 2008 at 11:59 am
Loyalty focus is hard to get consistently! boards intelectualy agree but need a curancy they understand to translate customer sat into EBITDA or revenue.
it is possible to link the 2; it requires some serious data mining, looking at your customer base behaviours over a long period of time and check how these behaviours are influenced by the service they have received at certain point in their life cycle.
but data doesnt replace your own capacity to persuade your board; in my experience, stakeholder management and your own passion are even more important than the hard facts!
good luck with that.
JM