REPORT ER Robert Craven is an author, consultant and founder of The Directors’ Centre Experts YOUNG BUSINESSES FOCUS ON THE CUSTOMER...
Every business has salami-sliced its costs, cutting back on non-essentials and trying to get more effective. But the result is that most are now identical.
Most start-ups suffer from the problem of being so very similar to the rest. Similar prod- uct, similar service, similar website, similar price, similar business model, similar benefits. Yawn, yawn, yawn. All so very boring for the customer. Not all, but most!
I would like to argue that if your business cannot compete on process or features then that only really leaves one thing and that is customer service. This is especially true for the start-up or early-stage business.
You can hear the potential customer of a young business as they ask questions of the potential transaction. ‘This young business has no track record. I don’t know who you are, what you have done or what you can do. I don’t know whether you can deliver or wheth- er your proposition, your offer, is all smoke and mirrors. In fact, it would make more sense to buy from someone with a decent track record so why should I risk buying from you?”
One answer to all those doubts in the poten- tial customer’s mind is to blow them away with legendary service, showing more attention and more care than the run-of-the-mill, aver- age, tired and listless competitor would ever provide. This will separate you from the rest. Also, it will get your word-of-mouth marketing machine going. And I would argue that it is word-of-mouth marketing that is what really matters to a business like yours (despite what the marketing gurus try to tell/sell you!)
Customer Service is the next big battleground. Companies have cut as lean as they can so the only thing that’s left for them is differenti- ation... not by price but by the quality of cus- tomer service and the customer experience.
As you can imagine I was delighted when I saw this from Jerry Gregoire, former CIO, Dell:
‘The customer experience is the next competi- tive battleground’.
My ‘Thought for the Day’ has to be that the race is now on. Ignore this at your peril.
No-one says that you have to put your cus- tomer first. You are not obliged to. The whole Customer is King ‘ology’ is not just some- thing to pay lip service to. We need to put our customer at the centre of our business. After all, without customers we are nothing. And too many businesses focus on their own processes and systems and what works for the business rather than what works for and excites the customer.
Surely it is blindingly obvious that you must understand what your customer is thinking and feeling about you…?
But is it blindingly obvious why so few busi- nesses and industries get the simplicity of the proposition? Is it because they are making too much money to care? Is it that they are just too big to care?
Most new businesses have been built around a specific promise. This promise is that the ‘customer is in charge’. The reality is that customer service has reached the pits. Call centres in the depths of the countryside leave us hanging on while we listen to more piped music.
As customers we feel betrayed. It seems re- markable that an entire business philosophy, a mantra chanted across the modern world, is so obviously without substance. Most organ- isations patently fail to deliver. The customer is not king. The customer is left waiting to be heard (again!).
One of the promises of the new economy evangelists was that the customer would final- ly be in charge. We weren’t supposed to need to call the customer care department because everything would be right first time!
The reality is somewhat different. How often does the call centre tell you ‘We are experi- encing higher than usual call volumes’ or ‘all our customer service operatives are currently busy’ or ‘you are in a queue’? This first state- ment is almost always followed by the second (incongruous) comment, ‘We value your call’.
Basically, the new economy was meant to make service better, quicker and more effec- tive for customers. At the same time it was meant to make it easier and cheaper for the companies. So much for the theory.
Most customers do not feel ‘in charge’.
So, see what happens if you do put them in charge…
Robert Craven (@robert_craven) is an international Keynote business speaker, author, consultant and owner of The Directors’ Centre, a consulting and training company which helps owner-directors run the business they want to run.
His latest book, Grow Your Digital Agency, which provides the business fundamentals that every growing agency needs to address is out now!
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