Surveillance: There Are Simple Ways to Find Out What Customers Think

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Co-author: John Patterson, president of Atlanta-based Progressive Insights, Inc.

“You can pretend to care, but you cannot pretend to be there,” wrote Texas Bix Bender in his book, Don’t Squat With Yer Spurs On! (Peregrine Smith Books, 2000). It sums up the power of senior leaders as customer intelligence officers. And any smart military intelligence officer will tell you that truth is found in the field, not in the tent!

A large, privately-held business-to-business company that we’ll call Acme Co., has marketplace dominance in its industry. Why? The senior leaders live Peter Drucker’s advice: “The purpose of an organization is to create and retain a customer.” Acme leaders know that financial prowess is a byproduct of great customer service. The balance sheet is a rearview mirror, not an informed battle plan. Because customers’ needs and expectations constantly change, leaders must be in the field, not in the “tent.”

Acme hired a car service to transport visiting customers from the airport to corporate headquarters. Drivers were instructed to always ask visiting customers about their visit to Acme. While company leaders would never encourage drivers to eavesdrop on passengers, they know drivers often overhear cell phone conversations in which Acme is the subject. So Acme holds quarterly focus groups with drivers to learn what their passengers think of the customer service they receive from Acme.

Acme leaders use customer forensics on lost customers, probing for reasons that might disclose lessons learned.

Many companies have their senior leaders visit key customers. Acme leaders visit the customers of its competitors. How do they get in the door? They refuse to turn the meeting into a selling encounter, positioning it, instead, as a forum to learn what Acme lacks that its competitors seem to have. Several Acme leaders periodically don the uniform of a frontline employee to personally serve customers. The face-to-face learning is brought back to Mahogany Row to inform service improvement initiatives.

Acme leaders have long known that the very best source of customer intelligence is frontline employees who hear customers’ hopes and concerns. Leaders not only make rounds to watch the front line in action, but also they hold informal meetings to learn about the good, bad and ugly. These candid sessions are popular because employees are kept abreast of changes that resulted from their input. The more they see improvement, the more they share. The more they are asked for their feedback that triggers betterment, the more they listen to and learn from Acme’s customers.

Acme leaders use customer forensics on lost customers, probing for reasons that might disclose lessons learned. When a large customer deserted Acme for a competitor, they “deputized” four employees to be service detectives. They sorted through records, interviewed customer contact people, finally hitting pay dirt when one of their security guards solved the mystery: When leaving one of the company’s district offices, the customer had complained that his last shipment containing time-sensitive material had arrived one day late, dramatically reducing its impact on his customer.

Acme added security guards to its key sources of customer intelligence. They also added a question to their order-entry process that determined if “time of delivery” was important or absolutely critical. Acme ultimately won back the lost customer.

The late Sam Walton, a practitioner of CEO as CCIO (Chief Customer Intelligence Officer) was fond of saying: “There is only one boss—the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” Customer-centric leaders know that customer behavior is the source of their success. And behavior is vibrant evidence to be encountered, not a statistic to be researched.

Chip Bell
Chip R. Bell is the founder of the Chip Bell Group (chipbell.com) and a renowned keynote speaker and customer loyalty consultant. Dr. Bell has authored several best-selling books including The 9 1/2 Principles of Innovative Service and, with John Patterson, Take Their Breath Away. His newest book, Sprinkles: Creating Awesome Experiences Through Innovative Service, will be released in February.

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