Just because you have good customer service people doesn't make you a customer-centric company.

Paul Greenberg of The 56 Group wrote an article for customerTHINK of which I am quoting parts, because I wholeheartedly agree.

Around the clock, in just about any venue in the world, in almost every industry imaginable, company executives are deluding themselves into thinking they are highly focused on their customers because they have a few shining stars in their customer service department.

I run across this problem continually with clients and in conversation with executives who want to prove to me that they are the epitome of customer service. Their discussions are peppered with the phrases, "customer-centrism," "customer retention," "customer satisfaction" and pretty much anything using "customer" as a preceding adjective.

But typically, they don't see the returns, especially when it comes to identifying advocates from their customer base or increased purchasing through up-selling and cross-selling—or even lower churn rates—that justify a self-designation of customer-centrism.

What these people don't understand is that, in an era when the customer has control, the customer is expecting to participate in the decision-making around his or her future. A sufficient level of transparency is necessary for those customers to make intelligent decisions around something related to their future.

For a company to provide that transparency takes a lot more than just a friendly smile and some bits of useful knowledge from top-flight customer service people. It takes knowledge of the customer, gathered through analytics and data mining and by listening directly to the customer, aka the voice of the customer. It takes sales and marketing programs that are attuned to the conditions of the era, one dominated by an empowered customer who, as an individual, not only has unprecedented choice when picking where he or she is going to acquire products and services but also has unprecedented range in affecting what others think—both positively and negatively—about the companies providing those products and services. Customers as a class (if you can call them that) have the tools and reach to affect what any company does or says. And this will be increasingly powerful as the 21st century progresses.


What say you? Comments? Ideas?


Eric Fraterman
eric@customerfocusconsult.com
www.customerfocusconsult.com