Fast Guide to Creating a Customer Focused Culture

One unfortunate side-effect of a busy company is that sometimes employees are so focused on the tasks at hand that they lost their focus on the customer. If you want to be truly successful you need to sharpen your focus on how to create a customer focused culture within your company.

These six areas will help you get the customer back where they belong within your organization.

Model What You Expect
If you want to change or redirect the culture in your company you need to make sure that it is emphasized from the top of the chain of command all the way down to the entry level clerk that was just hired. Your employees need to know that you are as focused on the customer as you expect them to be. If they see you modeling the behavior, they are much more likely to buy into your philosophy.

Make Knowing Your Customer a Priority
If you want to really serve your customers you need to know what they need. That means that you must get to know them. You should make an effort to know how large they are, who their customers are, how they prefer to do business, etc. The more you know about them, the better you will be able to understand their needs and customize what you are offering them to best meet those needs.

Listen to Your Customers
One way to really get to know your customer is to really listen to what they are telling you. Do not go to them with preconceived notions of what they need without first listening to what they are telling you they need. Many conflicts can be avoided, and complaints resolved, if you only take the time to listen.

Hire and Train Good People
Hiring the right people can be a time consuming process, but it is one that is necessary to be successful. The wrong person dealing with your customers can destroy everything that your company is doing that is right.
By training your employees about the proper procedures and policies you can better assure that those employees will respond appropriately with your customers.

Empower Your People
Many times there are easy solutions that are available that would handle a customers concerns. You companies relationship with your customers will improve if issues are resolved quickly. The quickest way for that to happen is for your employees to have the power to make decisions regarding how issues are resolved.
When your employees have to put a customer on hold while your employees track down a supervisor to make a decision, it is wasting your customer's time. They will have a better experience if everything is resolved as quickly as possible with few inconveniences.

Respond Immediately
In this era of instant communication there is no excuse for a customer to have to wait several days before having your company respond to them. This is especially true when dealing with complaints. Do not give the impression that you are avoiding the issue. Respond to your customer as quickly as possible.
It may be that you do not have an answer when you respond. It is appropriate to respond and let the customer know that you are working on their problem. Once you have a resolution, you can contact them again to let them know how you plan on addressing their issue.

Knowing how to create a customer focused culture is basically adopting an attitude where the customer is the most important asset your business has. You should do everything within your power to protect that asset. Without your customers, you have no business.