Focus on Customer Delight in 2012

Writes Ed Masau

Businesses across the country have enjoyed brisk business in December 2011. Walking around all the shopping malls showed the increase in buying power of consumers powered by the payment of bonuses by the majority of companies. Unfortunately for most businesses particularly in the retail business, they enjoy such unprecedented sales seasonally during the festive season. As January disease reckons consumers become very sensitive to how they spend their money and where they spend it. This cautionary approach by customers poses a challenge to most businesses on how they can tap into the customer’s wallet and enjoy the lion’s share in 2012. 

The focus as we get into 2012 should be simple. The business that musters ways to satisfy and delight their customers will succeed in the New Year. Today’s customer is a sophisticated being who values how they are treated when they do their purchase. The customer truly understands the value of the dollar and their right to be treated like royalty when they decide to do business with you. As the New Year begins it is time to make resolutions on how to treat your customers for continued success and creation of value for your business. What areas can you focus on during this year’s strategy formulation? The customer should be the focus for your business in 2012. Delighting them should be top of the agenda in the strategic meetings held in the corridors of power. Give it the high priority tag it deserves because it will make or break your business this year. It will provide the competitive advantage and the leverage your business requires to succeed.

John Tschohl the founder of Service Quality International (SQI) recommends a seven point approach to customer service strategy in 2012. The areas that he recommends businesses to focus on are:

·         Understand the power of customer service and the strategic value. Do research in the area of the power of customer service and how it can be harnessed to bring benefits to your business. Everyone in the executive committee should understand this and the strategic value it brings.

·         Eliminate stupid policies and procedures. These cost money, increase your cost of doing business, have NO value in the eyes of the customer and turn off customers. Policies and procedures should not prove to be the snare to customer delight. Customers should not leave your premises disgruntled because you have evoked the “it’s not in our policy” statement on them.

·         Be more selective with the people you hire. Look for “A” players, the kind of employees who are passionate about service delivery and demonstrate it through their enthusiasm and personality. Terminate the employees who are taking up space and no longer love their job. It is noteworthy to remember that passionate employees are the only ones who are able to delight your customers.

·         Empower all employees to make fast, empowered decisions. Empowerment is the most difficult attitude and skill to teach. Most managers and supervisors want to be the only ones with the power to make decisions that impact customers. They enjoy having frontline employees consulting them on everything pertaining to customers. This should stop in 2012, have all employees empowered to make decisions on customer delighting. Research around empowerment revealed that almost all employees think they will be instantly fired for making empowered decisions. This trend should be buried in 2011 and not be taken into the new year.

·         Train everyone on customer service with a new skill every 3 months. Refresher training every quarter helps employees to remember the anecdotes on customer service and create a service culture. Once a service culture has been created you are guaranteed that you will delight your customers at every opportunity that presents itself. One shot programs produce one shot results and are not recommended for 2012. Include the training costs in your 2012 budget and treat them as an investment not an expense.

·         Master Service recovery. When things go bad train your staff to take a customer from hell to heaven in 60 seconds or less. This is a great recovery approach. Acknowledge that things will go wrong at some point because they will surely go wrong. No one is perfect and that means your customer service will not be perfect, so invest in a robust recovery plan which will delight you customers at the end of the day.

·         Measure the results financially. How is it impacting revenue, brand, market share, profits, and customer complaints? An increase in the bottom line is the reason why you are in business so the quantification of any intervention in dollar value is essential. Create a dashboard which can help in measuring the results of the customer strategy for 2012.  

A focus on these and other customer improvement strategies will bring your business success in 2012. Some of the benefits that are envisioned in 2012 will include increased bottom–line performance, profitability or more efficient use of resources, retaining customers and earning their trust, lower costs per customer, customer endorsements and recommendations, staff satisfaction and a good reputation. Recharge your glass and raise it up to success in 2012. You deserve it.