Are You Beating Yourself?

"I am more afraid of our own mistakes that our enemies designs."

Pericles - Ancient Greek Statesman and General

A client recently sent me a picture of a whiteboard he saw in the entryway of a business. One, I assume, every employee would walk past on their way into work each morning. Here's part of what it said:

Amazon didn't kill the retail industry. They did it to themselves with poor customer service.

Netflix didn't kill Blockbuster. They did it to themselves with ridiculous late fees.

Apple didn't kill the music industry. They did it to themselves by forcing people to buy full length albums.

There were more examples, but I'm sure you get the idea. You can probably come up with a few of your own. The final two sentences on the whiteboard were:

Technology by itself is not the real disrupter.

Being non-customer centric is the real threat to any business.

On the proverbial scale of 1-10, how would you rate your businesses customer-centricness? (I know, I just invented a word.) When you come up with the number, ask yourself, how do I know? Many a business has thought they were doing a good job,,, until they began to measure it.

Business owners and CEOs will often play the victim card. Blaming the economy, competition, lack of capital etc., all while merrily doing themselves in with average or poor customer service. We'll spend a lot of time and money on things like new technology and the latest sales training fads yet never spend a minute thinking about how we can be constantly improving the customer experience.

So if we like being treated well when we're the customer why don't we spend more time making sure our customers are happy and feel appreciated? In my experience there are a couple of things at play here.

1. It's hard to measure the results. When we buy new equipment or find a way to cut a fixed cost we can easily show it on a spreadsheet. Making your business more customer friendly is something that doesn't easily or immediately translate to numbers. I call it lazy accounting. Any company that has gotten serious about being more customer friendly will tell you it does, in time, make a big difference on the bottom line.

2. It requires a longer term commitment. Many of us like being busy. We feel if we're not checking things off our list every day we're slackers. Building a company that offers a great experience for the customer takes time. You won't see results the same day you begin. But if you as the owner/CEO don't start and own the process, who will?

While Amazon, Netflix, and Apple have been used as examples in this article it isn't just the big boys that can do this. As a matter of fact, great customer service is often your best competitive advantage competing against the goliath companies of the world. Their bureaucracy is usually their Achilles heel. How often have you been caught up in, Push 1 for this or Push 2 for that? Only to get an uncaring person reading off a script on the other end.

I'd like to finish by using a local example. Our family regularly goes to Altoona Family Restaurant. They have good food and fair prices. But then so do many restaurants in town. So why are they always packed? For us it's because even though we don't know anyone there by name, we're always made to feel like we're their favorite customer in the world. A smile, a handshake and a, good to see you again goes a long way. We're made to feel so welcome we go back often. In a business that's as competitive as they get, their customers keep coming back time-after-time. Coincidence?

Where are you letting your competition have an advantage with your customers? Free up part of your days to think about it. There are very few things truly more worthy of your time for building a strong organization. Stop beating yourself.