We studied Customer Strategy in the last article. The Customer Strategy
starts a Customer alignment and culture at all functions and levels as part
of our Customer-centric objectives. This establishes what we call ‘Customer
Conduits’, which are a top-down approach, driven by the CEO to make the
organization Customer-centric.
Here is an example of how a bottom-up approach to Customer focus called Customer-Centric-Circles. This is a
powerful way of getting front end people to become Customer Centric.
Godrej Pest Control instituted Customer-Centric-Circles in their 15 Mumbai
centres. Each centre housed sales people, technicians, order takers and
dispatchers. The Customer Centric Circles consisted of people from all
these sectors. They started to discuss why customers got angry and found
solutions to this.
Most of the reasons were coming late or not prepared to
handle the job. The circles quickly discovered that late arrival at a
Customer’s was caused by incorrect address taking or poor sequencing of
visits. Thus technicians had to spend time finding the Customer’s house, or
the distance between two Customers was large due to poor sequencing of
technicians’ jobs. The communication on what the Customer wanted caused the
technicians to be better prepared.
The order takers and the dispatchers realised that they caused problems by
inadequate planning or poor address taking and corrected this. In addition
a courtesy system was used to get the staff to interact with each other
improving team work and communications.
Result was that the technician was able to make 6 calls a day versus 4
before the Customer Circles started. Sales per salesperson went up by 30%
because of better communications, causing the sales people to react to the
Customers’ need promptly. Customers were much happier and the relationship
between the technicians and the Customer improved, so that the Customer
started to ask for the technician by name.
How to Set Up Customer-Centric-Circles
Customer-Centric-Circles — Customer Circles for short — are a bottom-up
approach to Customer centricity. The term ‘Customer-Centric-Circles’ is
really a misnomer, because it is a company-sponsored group of people
(generally frontline employees, some managers and others from support
functions) mostly having regular contact with Customers, and people from
communications, IT, business development, environmental affairs,
manufacturing and product development among others. Customer Circles may
not necessarily have Customers in it per se, but this group of people will
focus on the Customer.
Ideally
we would like to have Customers in the Customer Circles. However, it is
difficult to get the right type of analytical Customers who could commit
the time to be in an ongoing initiative.
In any event, the Customer Circle
is a task force to run a Customer-focused project with targets,
responsibilities and timetables. The first step is to raise the self-esteem
and awareness of employees on Customers. The front line people develop
strategies for dealing with Customers at a local level. They devise ways
and means to make it easier for the Customer to do business with them. They
find methods to touch the Customer and to give the Customer a great
experience. Customer data, information, inputs, complaints or plaudits
should be made available to the Customer Circle, as and when it is
available, or an effort should be made to collect such feedback.
Running Customer Circles
The process starts by building the employees self–esteem. We want them to
feel good about themselves, and confident they can do positive things for
the Customer. Next, we want them to become generally aware of what is
happening around them, notice more, ‘see’ more, and what they hear. This
will build an awareness of the importance of the Customer. What you’ll find
is that the group will come up with better ways to handle a Customer.
Through this process, awareness of the Customer in the company and among
the employees will invariably increase. But before all this, we must
understand the Voice of the Employee, his pain points, and increase his
self-esteem, and awareness on the Customer. Along with this, we must
capture the Voice of the Customer and the Voice of the Competitor. We then
go into a Continuous Customer Improvement program
Basically, this is a bottom-up approach to energizing an organization
to become Customer Centric.
The Customer Circles must collect data on the Customer, plan on how to
track every contact and experience, and chart out future touches and
experience, keeping the retailer (in a B2C case) in the forefront. They
must talk to the Customer, get feedback from the market place and learn
what they can about the competition in both formal and informal ways.
Employee Empowerment
Customer-Centric-Circles are akin to level 3 empowerment described by Jan
Carlzon of SAS Airlines, where employees are self-managing and can make
decisions. They will take ownership of the Customer and the Customer
initiatives, because these are their own ideas.
Management does not
tell the front line people what to do. The front line people suggest what
they wish to do, and management asks what help the front line people need
to make them successful. Thus we make the employees the owners for Customer
focus. What the employees propose is common sense. What they suggest is
what the company would have wanted the front line people to do!
What we find is that if we can show the frontline people the results of
their actions through Customer feedback, and if this is positive, we notice
that the frontline people get a sense of pride and a sense of achievement.
The motivation level on serving Customers better goes up.
People will stop saying “these are our rules”, “didn’t you know our rules”, “you
should have known” and other irritating remarks.
Customer Circles and Shared Visions
Customer Circles engender shared vision and teamwork. They are a pillar of
a learning organization, where people work together for shared goals and
beliefs. They allow the building of promises, and working together to make
things happen. They lead to creativity, and making people think about
mastery, and in this case, mastery of habits, responses, approaches to the
Customer, of building systems and methods for better Customer delight and
Customer Value. A shared vision is not necessarily an idea but a desire or
a force in people’s minds and hearts that drives them to achieve
extraordinary goals; for example making Customers happy!
The group builds its own (its members’ or participants’) self-esteem and
awareness and decides on action steps, including building the Customers’
delight factors and Do Not Annoy (DNA) factors.
The problem with a top-down approach is that top management “dictates” a
vision, and does not build it with buy-in of key players at all levels, nor
is it built on personal and shared visions. Visions spread because of
commitment, enrollment, clarity, enthusiasm, reinforcement and
communication.
Understanding current reality and accepting it, without clouding it with
perceptions and blame avoidance, are important to shared visions and
Customer Circles. Cynicism, being ordered or told to do things, of being
taught rather than self-learning and organizational structure, all conspire
against success of Customer Circles.
Customer Circles and Team Learning
Customer Circles are inter-disciplinary teams. The success of Customer
Circles depends on individual excellence and learning, and how well the
team members work together. It depends on managing individual skills and
merit with team spirit. Unaligned teams waste energy. So teams have to
learn to align themselves and develop the capacity of the individuals in
the team effort.
Customer Circles help the team to deliver more than the individual can.
Teams are dependent on the members, who need each other to achieve more and
deliver. It requires listening and respect, such that you let your own
opinions be overridden. It teaches you to overcome conflict and use dialog
to work together, and it builds discipline of team learning. Dialogue makes
people observe and improve their own ideas and thinking.
Teamwork and team learning requires a facilitator or a catalyst, and
requires people to suspend their beliefs to listen to others and to regard
each other and colleagues who are present to help us.
These Customer Circles can become a self-learning system. With Customer
Circles, the organization is bound to become creative and innovative.
People want to be part of such an organization, and participate in the
innovation.
The principle has to be that no one should be too proud to learn. And not
too proud to learn from anyone. Continuous learning and participation will
lead to Customer excellence.
If you want to run a Customer Circle, you can get details on participants
and frequency, methodology (please see my book Total Customer Value
Management).
Do It Yourself
Total Customer Value Management helps all departments and executives to
have a Customer focus. It is the foundation of building a Customer culture.
Customer strategy and Customer Centric Circles are building blocks of the
Customer culture and a Customer mind-set. This gives the company a great
competitive advantage. Do you find your executives talking about how to
improve Customer Value? Have you attended such meetings?
- How much work is done on processes and systems in your company versus mind
set - Does your management believe training can change mind sets or is it a
self-directed change in people - Rate the mind-set of the front line people, of the executives and the top
staff on the Customer - How could you get someone who is loyal to your competitor to become loyal
to you? Give a generic answer and another answer specific to the context - Are companies loyal to Customers? To employees? Should they be?
- If they are, what are the benefits and the downside?
- How will you set up Customer Circles in your company?
- Do you need more than one circle?
- Should there be an apex circle consisting of top managers and Customer
Circle leaders of front line Customer Centric Circles?