This post concludes the train of thought that I shared in an earlier post – Why culture is the Achilles Heel of your customer experience efforts (Part I). – I encourage you to read it to get the most out of this post.
Let’s forget morality and focus on ‘workability’. By ‘workability’ I am addressing the pragmatic dimension. For example if you want to fly a 747 from London to New York you simply need an airworthy aeroplane, the right fuel, experienced pilots, the right staff etc – these are the conditions of workability for the flight. If you do not have these in place then your plane may get off the ground but it is highly likely to make it to New York. So what are the conditions of workability for a customer-centric orientation that builds customer loyalty?
The foundation of customer loyalty is earning and cultivating trust
In a world full of suppliers who offer pretty much the same goods who would you choose to do business with? If you are like most of humanity then you will instinctively do business with the one that you trust the most. Don Peppers & Martha Rogers have taken a good look at the whole trust thing in their book ‘Rules to Break & Laws to Follow’. So allow me to share their wisdom with you. Here are the laws that they recommend that you follow:
1. Earn and keep the trust of your customers
The key point I want to stress here is the word ‘earn’. Yes, you need to earn it by doing the right thing (honest, fairness, integrity) as well as doing things right (competence, ease, access, efficiency…). It means paying as much attention to the social and moral aspects as it does the economic aspect. Are you a fit and proper person/organisation? Which is another way of asking: can you be trusted to act honorably/ethically?
2. Really taking your customer’s point of view means treating each customer with the fairness you would want if you were the customer.
At a philosophical level you can look at this either through John Rawls veil of ignorance or refer to some of the oldest philosophies used to guide human relations. Using the lens of the ‘veil of ignorance’ ask yourself how would I design the system (roles, rules, interactions….) if I did not know if I would end up playing the role of the customer or the enterprise? I used to use this with my two children when they would quarrel over cake: one of them got to cut the cake into two pieces and then the other one got to choose (first) which slice he wanted. This system ensured fairness.
If we turn towards the world’s great religions then with Christianity you have the Golden Rule. Rabbi Hillel when asked about the Torah replied “Do not do unto others that which is hateful to you, the rest is merely commentary.” Confucius stated “What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others.” Mohammed said “None of your truly believe until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” And in the holy book (Mahabharata) of the oldest religion (Hinduism) you have “This is the sum of duty: do naught unto others what you would not have them do unto you.”
At a practical level it means taking off your shoes and walking the shoes of your customers. It means experiencing how it feels to pick a mobile phone plan when there are so many to choose from, so many conditions, so many variables? It means experiencing what it is like to set-up and use the product with instructions that occurs as being useless? It means experiencing what it is like not to be able to get hold of helpful human being when you have an urgent need and having to navigate a ‘hard to make sense of’ IVR and so forth. Not reading a report about it – actually experiencing it by doing it for real.
Don and Martha say it best when they write:
- “Honestly taking the customer’s perspective is really at the heart of understanding the customer’s experience with your brand or product.”
- “…the very concept of being trustworthy that the company will not be acting solely in it’s own short-term interests. On one level, this might involve simply giving a customer a fairer deal than she would otherwise have know about. Or it could mean providing the information to allow her to compare competing offers directly – your competitors best offers included. It might mean being completely open with the customer when talking to her about the merits of buying a product or service….”
3. To earn your customers’ trust, first earn your employees trust.
Your employees can be the source of customer insight, competitor intelligence, ideas, creativity, innovation and judgement. They are also the source of flexibility: they can judge the situation and respond appropriately. And there is world of difference between giving the minimum and put our ‘heart and soul’ into your work. The difference is called ‘discretionary effort’. Tapping into it is like tapping into an inexhaustible gold mine. Still not convinced? Name one technology, one artifact, that has not been ultimately created by a person or persons working as a group.
If you want your employers to treat your customers well you have to model that behaviour: you have to treat your employees well. In services heavy industries (such as retail, telecommunications, hotels & leisure…) your employees are absolutely critical to any form of service excellence. To earn the trust of customers you absolutely have to earn the trust of your employees. You do that by treating them well: the ‘veil of ignorance’ and the Golden rule applies just as much to your employees as it does to your customers.
You would be wise if you were to apply this ethic to your suppliers and your partners. I have been a supplier of professional services for most of my working life and my teams have given our all to those clients who have practiced the golden rule. The rest – we stuck to the contract and did the minimum we had to do. When disaster strikes your suppliers/partners can be your saviours or the source of your ultimate destruction: more than one company has experienced this. When disaster struck Toyota survived because it’s suppliers did the right thing because Toyota had a history of doing the right thing by suppliers. In the UK I once heard the CEO of the best known Indian food company share (emotionally) how his suppliers pitched in to save his business when his only manufacturing facility burnt down overnight. Why? Because he had treated them honorably.
4. If being fair to customers conflicts with your company’s financial goals, then fix your business model or get a new one.
To cultivate customer trust you must put in place a culture that calls everyone in the company – each and everyone – to genuinely consider your customers perspective and well being in each and every decision that your company makes. Here is how Don and Martha put it: “Whenever your employees are solving a problem or undertaking an initiative, at some point they should ask themselves the question: What’s in the customer’s interest here?” And you have to act on that interest.
If we are truthful then it is highly unlikely that you have this culture today. Your challenge is to create that culture; your biggest obstacle is likely to be the Tops, your business model and short-termism. If you company does not create that kind of culture then you are leaving the field wide open for new entrants who build a business model around treating your customers fairly, cultivating their loyalty and reaping the benefits: think Netflix v Blockbuster (late fees) or Google v Yahoo! or Zane’s cycles v other bike sellers.
Final words
Archimedes said “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”
Culture is the lever and the CEO (as leader) is the fulcrum: if you have do not have the right leader and the right culture then despite your best efforts you will not succeed in cultivating customer loyalty and harvesting the benefits. At best you will win minor battles like reducing customer service costs or improving the ROI of your marketing campaigns. And in the process of seeking ‘customer gold’ you will simply make the pick axe and shovel sellers rich.
