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The customer is the King! The customer is always
right! We have been hearing these sentences so often now that they
have become more of a cliché or an assumed fact than a necessary
principle. On the flip side - the client has heard about it too
and he tries every which way to prove it right!
In this essay we will try to find out what are the things that the
elusive breed of individuals more commonly known as the customer
expects out of your product and your service.
Isn't it obvious?
What do clients expect? Isn't it obvious? As some
wise guy truly pointed out, "..the client expects the moon, the
stars, the sky…and everything below it! What's worse, they have
a lot of choices when it comes to companies who are willing to give
it to them."
Think Customer!
In fact that's the kind of competition that's taking
place these days. Companies are growing all over. They are growing
in quantity; the ones already here are building up on their quality.
Every company wants to grab a greater piece of the customers' mind
share and also his heart share. In such a case if one wants a client
to be loyal and stick around, the company will have to excruciatingly
focus on the consumers. You have to listen what he's saying and
what's he's not! DELL had an interesting way to instill this principle
in its employees. In one of its premises, it hangs a huge billboard
saying "Think Customer" - very aptly driving the point home
in the minds of their employees!
And that's where it starts - instilling consistent
customer focus in the minds of everybody in the organization. Very
often one finds the management being very gung-ho about its customer
focus strategies and vision; however the actual people that meet
the client face to face or the ones who actually develop the product
for him do not share the same level of enthusiasm towards delivering
a superior product and service to the customer. It is imperative
that employees at all levels in the organization be focused towards
the client - clients often form impressions about the company just
by meeting a single person or a single branch of and organization
and very quickly universalize it to the whole corporation.
Who's my customer?
To make sure that its employees treat customers well,
an organization itself needs to looks after them. Employees are
called a company's internal customers! If your internal customer
is happy with you, then he or she will be motivated to share that
joy and value with your actual, external customer. The authors of
the book "The customer comes second!" even say that a company should
focus more on the employees than the actual customers if it has
to earn profits!
A short list
Clients expect different things at different times.
While there are not many lists of what are all the things that a
client expects, most of them will include some of the following
points. Having a sound product or a service is not included below
as that is something very essential for the client- vendor relationship
to work. The following list focuses on customer service:
1. Convenience and comfort
First and foremost, the client expects that doing business with
a vendor will be convenient and comfortable to him. He has his own
business to look at and concentrate than running around the vendor
trying to see if the people are doing his work properly or not.
The client should not be asked to spend his time trying to understand
how we do business and then adapt himself to it.
A very well known international bank introduced a state of the art
(read expensive) automated customer interaction system that allows
the customer to check his accounts and credit card information via
the telephone. Earlier the customer used to dial in to the telephone
help desk and discuss his problem after giving some verification
details. Today he has to go through multiple levels of the system
(choosing the language, then the product, the problem etc), key
in a 10 digit PIN (add to that a 16 digit credit card number and
you have to have a terrific memory for that) and ultimately after
the long ordeal get to talk to a representative who asks him the
same verification he earlier used to give. This makes one think
whether the system put in place was meant to deliver value to the
customer which in this case was practically nothing (- it just wastes
more of his time) or just help feed the company's data bank for
its marketing campaigns!
2. Understand their business and adapt to their
business cycle
Clients expect that vendors should understand their businesses and
business cycles. Marketing executives who make an effort in getting
to know business processes of the client and working with them to
arrive at the best solution are more likely to end up getting the
client's nod than the ones who just spread their array of services
in front of the client to pick and choose. Besides just knowing
the client's business, it's an added benefit to understand and adapt
to his business cycle (e.g. the client company may have a different
payment cycle to their vendors than the one you prefer - and it
may pay to adapt his).
3. Communicative... in their language
Companies have to be communicative towards their clients first.
This means that the customer always should be in the know what's
happening with his project or order. Keeping constant contact with
the clients makes a vendor look credible and trustworthy - and a
regular feedback also avoids any unpleasant surprises later on in
the project. Further more, vendors have to be communicative to the
customer in the language he understands - sans jargon! Clients trust
and value vendors who understand their problems and explain solutions
to them in a way they will understand.
4. Speed
Today businesses run with tremendous speeds. How many times have
we experienced a client who says, "I want it done yesterday!" And
he has his customers breathing down his neck which is why he insists
you to work fast. The client expects speed - speed in communication
and execution of work. Responses to queries, feedback, complaints,
proposals. One of the Big 5 consulting firms to capitalize on the
benefits of speed, had brought down its proposal generation time
to a matter of 6 hours! Speed in execution has similar benefits.
This does not mean doing work hastily in a rash manner but in a
properly planned way reducing any unnecessary time delay.
The Hyatt chain of hotels has a very prompt service mechanism for
its resorts. When a guest enters his room, he sees a survey by the
resort screened on his television that he is asked to fill. Minutes
into filling the survey the respective attendant calls up the customer
thanking him for the survey filled and addresses any problems that
the customer may have highlighted in the survey.
5. A good price
Every client expects a good price for the service or product he
buys. Good does not necessarily mean cheap but customers associate
the price of a product or service to many other attributes of the
kind of product delivered and other customer service quality as
described above - because of which this point does not feature at
the top of the customer expectations list.
6. To be treated with respect
This seems like an obvious one. After all, who would not want to
be respectful towards the client? However as pointed out earlier
it is not uncommon to find that all the employees in the organization
do not share the same level of excitement and importance of client
service as much as the management does. It is for this reason that
customer focus should be instilled throughout the company. A respected
customer takes the goodwill and shares it with others leading in
the most profitable marketing tool a company could ask for- the
word of mouth!
7. More than deliver the second time around
This is a tricky one! More often when a vendor delivers quality
service to the client, the next time when the client has to do business
with the company, he subconsciously expects the level of service
earlier provided and takes it as a given. So this time the vendor
has to try and deliver better than last time to capture the fancy
of the customer. On the other hand it is also seen that sometimes
customers forgive and overlook an occasional flaw in service if
the vendor has been providing a consistent service to them so far.
What they assume?
So much for client expectations. However a customer
today has come to 'assume' certain things in business that every
vendor should not overlook and make every attempt not to default
from:
1. You know your job well.
The client expects that you are experts in your domain - at least
the particular kind of service being offered to him. While this
seems very obvious, many a times employees are found to be lacking
in different aspects of their job by the client - be their functional
or technical expertise or knowledge about their own company. The
client also assumes that you are efficient (- that's the reason
he hires a vendor!) and it would do great harm to prove the client's
assumptions wrong.
2. That you will listen
The client assumes that you will listen when he's talking - this
is so far from the truth where in a client interaction many a times
marketing executives are busy thinking how much more in terms in
dollars would the new client requirement be and the technical staff
is thinking the same thing in terms of added number of screens in
the software!
3. All you communicate is all that's happening
As stated above consistent communication is of prime importance.
A practical reasoning for this is the customer does not know what's
going on with his order or project unless the vendor tells him.
So you may be working hard over the client's project but if you
fail to communicate it to the client, he might think you are just
wasting his time and money.
4. Consistency
Consistency is the name of the game. As pointed above, after a span
of time the client not just expects but assumes that the vendor
is consistent in his work (unless he of course is not!) and this
puts extra pressure on the vendor in servicing the client.
How to anticipate & surpass their expectations?
1. Be customer - centric nay obsessed!
Through out the above article this point has been repeated to prove
its importance. Companies have to be obsessed towards their customers.
As Philip Kotler the marketing guru pointed out - every company
is a customer services company...and it's the customers that make
or break it!
2. Know thy customer
It pays to study and research each customer differently. For consumer
products companies it's a difficult task to do, though they still
try with various customer management and relationship systems, but
for businesses catering few customers it is often possible and very
helpful to know each customers buying habits, the kind of questions,
problems they face, their business processes, their payment cycles
etc.
3. Be perfect in your responsibilities whatever
capacity you are in.
Whether it is to the help desk executive or a middle level manager
or the CEO of the company, Each should be perfect in his or her
capacity - where technical or functional expertise is concerned.
Moreover, every employee of the company should have a thorough knowledge
about the working of his own company and its services.
4. Be punctual
Punctuality is highly valued - especially if it is consistent. Delivering
a service on time improves the vendor's credibility and trust in
the eyes of the customer. Strangely enough there has been a study
claiming that customers are more happy when the service is delivered
on time than before it - probably indicating that a before time
delivery might indicate haste and lack of completeness in work to
the client.
5. Communicate whatever you do
This point has already been covered enough above.
6. Innovate and standardize
Companies can bring in innovation in their services or process and
standardize it to achieve high productivity and more customer trust.
It could be allowing the customer inside your intranet to help him
find some answers to his questions from your knowledge base or tracking
their project status from your website. The essential thing is to
as Philip Kotler puts it "…to industrialize the service". Cisco
Networks put up a comprehensive FAQ on its website and reduced customer
calls to up to 70% of the original figure making way for huge savings.
7. See problems as opportunities.
It is advisable to see problems as opportunities of customer interaction
and a way to gain back his trust. Companies who are able to solve
most of the customer complaints promptly experience a greater amount
of customer confidence towards them.
8. ASK THE CUSTOMER!
Finally - something many companies fail to do or fail to do it right!
Asking the customer is perhaps the most important and practical
thing to do. Customers realize and value the vendors' want to serve
them better and more than willing to give a frank feedback. Acting
promptly on these feedback gives a great plus to these vendors and
paves way for a better customer vendor relationship.
To sum up, customer expectations is serious business!
Companies that are able to surpass or fulfill these expectations
find themselves on the favorable side of their customers' preference
lists and companies that don't, well …are seen busy hunting for
new customers!
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