Imagine yourself a business entrepreneur. You have
a valued product, your costs are equal or below your
competition, and you have the best technology available.
But your market share is flat … you are not gaining against
your competitors. What do you do next?

Whip out the customer satisfaction survey and
send all your employees to "smiles" training. That ought
to do something …. wrong. Companies today cannot
use the old tried and true customer service ploys
that worked in the past. You must be far more
sophisticated in providing quality service to be competitive.

In my 20 plus years of working with organizations
to improve customer care, I have seen companies
like Nordstrom, Union Bank of California and
In-N-Out Burgers gain customers, while companies like
Robinson’s-May, Wells Fargo Bank, and Denny’s lose
customers.

After interviewing over 2,000 customers
we have found that there are eight
critical elements that allow some companies
to provide competitive customer care.
Are you doing the following in your company?

1. Engage the customer quickly and effortlessly.
Wherever your customers are, they must be able
to access you easily to do business.  You must immediately
recognize them and begin talking with them to initiate
the business transaction.  Whether on the phone, in
person, or on the Internet, your employees must quickly
greet every customer and recognize them as individuals.

How many times have you called a business, only to be
put on hold, listening to endless menus?  How often
have you entered a store, and no one ever offers
to help you.  The customer should not have to work
at getting you to serve them.

2. Value the customer's time as much as yours.
Whenever you can, reduce the time it takes for you
to complete the customer’s request. Every minute
the customer has to wait is lost competitive advantage.
Use technology, or simplified processes to lessen
the time involved.

Why is time important? The value of time to most
customers has increased enormously in the last
decade. Time the customer uses to do business
with you … is lost opportunity to do something else.
It is a cost to the customer, just like the dollars
they pay you.

When a customer places an order, there should
be immediate gratification or benefit received.
Customers should receive that product or service quickly.
The longer the customer waits, the more the customer
perceives a cost of doing business, rather than a benefit.

3. Learn the skills needed to deliver quality care.
Many organizations mess up by using
customer care positions as entry or apprentice positions.
They take people off the street, make sure they
can work the cash register … give them a 3 minute
speech on the importance of good service, and then
turn them loose. The result is disaster.

Employees need to know what the organization means
by quality customer care. What do they need to
do to provide quality care? If you don’t define quality
care, and you don’t teach people the skills to deliver
it, you get a clerical approach to customers. All that
employees end up doing is taking orders and processing payments.

4. Treat customers differently.
Only when you become skilled at delivering customer
care do you fully recognize that not all customers
are the same. Some customers are more valuable
than others, and deserve extra special care.
Each customer also has different needs and expectations.
All customers have their own view
of success …and what will solve their problems.

The trick is to identify those customer differences
and be able to react to them. PC makers, such as Dell
and Hewlett-Packard are now manufacturing computers
to individual customer specifications … rather than making them all
the same. Dell uses its Web site to allow customers to customize
their own computers. Then Dell builds each computer to individual specifications.

Why do airlines offer special lounge facilities
for frequent and corporate customers? Because those customers
expect different customer care, are repeat customers and
purchase a relatively more profitable ticket. Your organization
must be able to provide a customized service to different customers.

5. Learn as you work with customers.
You need to develop a relationship with your customers so that
you are constantly receiving input and feedback from them. You
must use the feedback to continually learn more and more about
customer needs and preferences. Customer needs are always
changing, and if you are learning as you go, concentrating on
what your customers are telling you, then you will be responsive
to changing needs. It will allow you to be more innovative and
bring new products and services to the market faster.

Why has Saturn been effective in changing the way they sell
and service automobiles? Why has Amazon.Com revolutionized
the sale of books? They are listening and learning from customers.

6. Focus on developing repeat business.
Providing customer satisfaction once is not enough. You must provide
the level of care that causes your customers to come back and
repeat their business transactions, over and over again.

The key to being competitive in the year 2000 will be to develop
customer loyalty. Begin measuring how many customers come
back and repeat their business with you. If you are losing customers
you are losing market share and profits.

7. Design your organization around customers, not functions.
A trap that many organizations fall into is to design their work force
to operate in functional groupings. This may be efficient, but if carried
too far will cause you to handle all customers the same, regardless
of their unique needs and preferences.

Why should a nation-wide customer who buys your product in bulk
quantities go through the same process as a low-volume, first-time
buyer? Be sensitive to the differences in your customers and orient
your organization to what is easiest for the customer, not what is
easiest for your employees.

8. Leadership
Of all the improvements mentioned above, this is the most crucial to
you developing customer care and becoming competitive. If you
don’t do this correctly, all the other seven items will fail.

Leadership isn’t a theoretical concept or intellectual process. Effective
leaders not only express what needs to be done, but they do more.
They demonstrate quality customer care in all that they do, so people
can see it. They carefully measure the customer care being delivered
by their organization. And when they see successful customer care,
they recognize and reward individuals for doing a good job.

These eight critical elements to providing customer care are not easy
to do. They take effort, attention and persistence to make them happen.
But if done successfully, these elements can distinguish your organization
from your other competitors. They are the competitive edge that can
gain you market share.