What the C Suite Should Know about Turning Customers into Assets

Jeanne Bliss,the founder of CustomerBLISS, wrote this blog entry which is oh so pertinent.

Despite a new understanding of the power and reach of customers, customer service continues to be a challenge for companies—even those who consider it their primary mission. Sometimes, the solutions seem confusing, bombarding the C-suite with duct-tape style solutions rather than proactive approaches.

The customer service front line can get caught in the middle of this frenzy. At one highly regarded financial services company, for example, an up-sell/cross-sell program was added to the customer service workflow. The program had an incentive to reduce call time; but followed on the heels of another initiative—one that encouraged agents to build personal relationships. The result? Agents trying to splice the two ideas together would try to build rapport and then, as their alloted time ran out, make rapid-fire offers to up-sell and cross-sell, alienating some of their best customers in the process.

Organic Growth Drives Customer Profitability

Since customer growth drives long-term profitability, it should be considered as important as quarterly sales goals. The customer commitment typically falls apart because easily understood and well-defined quarterly sales goals are more visible and immediately tangible. But these metrics don’t always line up with what’s good for customers.

Take the example of the B2B company that counted only the number of customer accounts, but not the quality. The sales team was led by an ex-fighter pilot who sent the sales force on “speed missions” to get as many customers as possible, as quickly as possible. Did they track the customer value? No, customers had become tote board checkmarks, all with equal importance. That year, there were an excess of new accounts, far beyond goals—but profits declined.

Progressive leaders understand the customer landscape and act on that understanding. Caesars Entertainment Corp, the casino and hotel company, has become a model for how to integrate metrics and increase profitability through customer service. They use a consistent set of “guerrilla metrics”—measurements that propel profitability. These include customer segment growth, successful host contacts (people who serve priority customers), first-year return on investment (by property), and overall priority customer (VIP) growth. They know that all customers are not created equal. They know who their VIP customers are and what they need to do to keep them loyal. Unfortunately, this level of enlightenment remains the exception and not the rule.

Customer Focus Questions

These five questions are for CEOs who want to place the customer front and center on the agenda:

1.How many new customers are you attracting—and what is their value? Track the volume and value of incoming customers as closely as sales figures. Understanding the quality of customers is critically important as the pool of profitable customers shrinks.

2.How many customers are you losing, why are you losing them, and what is their value? In addition to knowing which customers left, you need to know why they left, so you can find ways to retain them. Without this information, your team is running blind.

3.Why are your continuing customers loyal to you? Define customer behaviors that constitute a commitment to your brand. Without this metric, you won’t be aware when these reasons change, veer, or begin to erode. Once you have this information you can take a leadership role in demanding focused actions—even temporary point solutions—and create a strategic and focused customer service environment.

4.What is the profitability of each customer group? Understand customer migration from one profitability group to another so you can set a customer agenda. Concentrate on reducing cost and growing profitable segments. Demand accountability. The role of customers in your success justifies the attention.

5.Are your customers becoming evangelists and advocates? Customers can become key (and unpaid) members of your marketing team. Track referrals; gather information on these high-value customers. Once you understand them, you can meet them on their preferred channels and make it easy for them to increase your profitability.

What the C Suite Should Know about Turning Customers into Assets

Jeanne Bliss,the founder of CustomerBLISS, wrote this blog entry which is oh so pertinent.

Despite a new understanding of the power and reach of customers, customer service continues to be a challenge for companies—even those who consider it their primary mission. Sometimes, the solutions seem confusing, bombarding the C-suite with duct-tape style solutions rather than proactive approaches.

The customer service front line can get caught in the middle of this frenzy. At one highly regarded financial services company, for example, an up-sell/cross-sell program was added to the customer service workflow. The program had an incentive to reduce call time; but followed on the heels of another initiative—one that encouraged agents to build personal relationships. The result? Agents trying to splice the two ideas together would try to build rapport and then, as their alloted time ran out, make rapid-fire offers to up-sell and cross-sell, alienating some of their best customers in the process.

Organic Growth Drives Customer Profitability

Since customer growth drives long-term profitability, it should be considered as important as quarterly sales goals. The customer commitment typically falls apart because easily understood and well-defined quarterly sales goals are more visible and immediately tangible. But these metrics don’t always line up with what’s good for customers.

Take the example of the B2B company that counted only the number of customer accounts, but not the quality. The sales team was led by an ex-fighter pilot who sent the sales force on “speed missions” to get as many customers as possible, as quickly as possible. Did they track the customer value? No, customers had become tote board checkmarks, all with equal importance. That year, there were an excess of new accounts, far beyond goals—but profits declined.

Progressive leaders understand the customer landscape and act on that understanding. Caesars Entertainment Corp, the casino and hotel company, has become a model for how to integrate metrics and increase profitability through customer service. They use a consistent set of “guerrilla metrics”—measurements that propel profitability. These include customer segment growth, successful host contacts (people who serve priority customers), first-year return on investment (by property), and overall priority customer (VIP) growth. They know that all customers are not created equal. They know who their VIP customers are and what they need to do to keep them loyal. Unfortunately, this level of enlightenment remains the exception and not the rule.

Customer Focus Questions

These five questions are for CEOs who want to place the customer front and center on the agenda:

1.How many new customers are you attracting—and what is their value? Track the volume and value of incoming customers as closely as sales figures. Understanding the quality of customers is critically important as the pool of profitable customers shrinks.

2.How many customers are you losing, why are you losing them, and what is their value? In addition to knowing which customers left, you need to know why they left, so you can find ways to retain them. Without this information, your team is running blind.

3.Why are your continuing customers loyal to you? Define customer behaviors that constitute a commitment to your brand. Without this metric, you won’t be aware when these reasons change, veer, or begin to erode. Once you have this information you can take a leadership role in demanding focused actions—even temporary point solutions—and create a strategic and focused customer service environment.

4.What is the profitability of each customer group? Understand customer migration from one profitability group to another so you can set a customer agenda. Concentrate on reducing cost and growing profitable segments. Demand accountability. The role of customers in your success justifies the attention.

5.Are your customers becoming evangelists and advocates? Customers can become key (and unpaid) members of your marketing team. Track referrals; gather information on these high-value customers. Once you understand them, you can meet them on their preferred channels and make it easy for them to increase your profitability.

A Customer Focus Culture leads to Higher Financial Performance

The Seattle based Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) published a study: A Customer-Focused Workforce Leads to Higher Business Performance that reveals the power of a market-oriented culture.

What's the key to creating a customer-focused organization? Here's one of the answers from the trenches of a high-performance company: "A culture of accountability makes a good organization great and a great organization unstoppable."

That nugget of wisdom is part of i4cp's new major study on customer focus, conducted in partnership with the American Management Association. They found that accountability that starts at the top is critical to customer focus.

67% of respondents from high- market-performing companies that are good at focusing on customers say their organizations hold at least one corporate officer responsible for the customer experience. By contrast, a tiny 3% of lower-market-performing firms that are poor in this area hold an officer accountable.

Companies that excel in overall performance do something else about customer focus differently, too. They make sure that a commitment to customer service doesn't stop with senior leaders - or even with customer-facing employees. Leaders of top-notch firms create customer-focused cultures that suffuse their organizations, reaching from sales professionals with daily customer contact to production-line employees who may never have a conversation with a consumer but whose efforts are just as vital to company success. Nearly seven out of 10 high-performing organizations say they work to build such a power culture. Lower performers? Fewer than half.

"Alignment of the corporate mission, vision and goals with customer satisfaction" is viewed as a critical practice, according to one study participant from a high-performing company. "Bringing these concepts to the employee level and creating secondary visions that align their actions with the overall vision has increased [our] focus on exceeding customer expectations.

"Four out of five respondents from high-performing companies say that financial growth is the key driving force behind their focus on customers. Certainly, i4cp research has shown that market focus - which revolves around a focus on customers - is one of the five core attributes of high market performance. So it makes sense that a corporate culture centered on customers is likely to yield positive bottom-line results. But how does an organization seeking better performance bring about that kind of culture shift?

Along with accountability, communication and training are among the most vital components in culture-building approaches, the study found. "We are more actively sharing competitive data with lower levels of the organization," one business leader revealed. In addition, the company is "instilling a culture of innovation and customer obsession to drive behavior focused on the customer.

"Multiple respondents from high-performing companies described their firms' educational efforts. Customer-focused training "is part of our onboarding and new employee orientation," said one. Another cited "continuous training on customer care practices" and a third explained, "We run training on a different customer service topic every month."Companies that achieve high levels of performance in today's volatile marketplace demonstrate not only a dedication to customer service but also a commitment to anticipating customer needs and being proactive in meeting those needs. This type of forward-thinking mindset is one of the hallmarks of a culture that is truly customer focused.

i4cp's 4-Part Recommendation:

1. Include accountability for customer service and satisfaction in performance reviews for managers and employees alike. 40% of i4cp respondents say they hold their entire executive teams responsible for customer focus. Reinforce accountability by aligning rewards and recognition with customer-focus goals.
2. Build a powerful corporate culture that supports an organization-wide commitment to customer service. One study participant explains how: "We developed a new, customer-focused mission statement and had a bottom-up planning session to gain buy-in and establish critical success factors and SMART objectives. We will align our HR, organizational, management and communication practices to align with these objectives."
3. Retool internal communications to ensure support for a customer-focused culture. Share customer stories, feedback and insights with all employees. Involve senior leaders in modeling customer-focused behavior and in communicating the company's customer-centric values and mission.
4. Make customer-service training an ongoing commitment. Begin during employee onboarding and follow through with more training on a continuing basis. One company participating in the study demonstrates how to make the process enjoyable by offering a "Lunch'n Learn Customer Appreciation Program."