April 2007

Great products aren't enough. Your customers need more.


Dear GetMoreCustomers Reader:

If you sell commodities in the marketplace, you run a special risk. More than any purveyor of services or customized solutions, you can be lulled into forgetting that good products aren't everything. Your customers' needs and desires can change overnight—and if you’re not listening, your competitors will be glad to.

Here’s a powerful example. Read this story and answer this question: How are the manufacturers of power-saving fluorescent bulbs—and the husbands in this story and the editors who printed it—missing the “customer desires” issue? Answer in the P.S. below.**

Yet you face significant barriers—both organizational and people-related—when trying to shake a product-focused organization out of its complacency. At least four broad types of strategies can help, according to the HBR Spotlight in the May issue of Harvard Business Review:

• Change how people work together. If you're like most other product-focused companies, your organization has likely developed some silos in its structure. People at all levels with X responsibilities flock together and don’t interact a lot with people with Y responsibilities. And then there are those Z people... Try these:
  • Share customer information between departments
  • Either break down existing silos and create new ones based around customer needs, or reorganize processes and mechanisms so people can easily reach across without fear of stepping on toes.
• Create a culture of cooperation. The softer side of business has far greater influence than most of us realize. Consider these ideas:
  • Celebrate customer-service victories, no matter where in the company they occur. Regularly bragging in this way helps people appreciate each other—and can improve the ever-present misunderstandings and even hostilities that sometimes develop between, for example, floor workers and logistics, or technical people and sales/marketing folks.
  • Promote customer-oriented values; use symbols, logos, stories that celebrate successes with customer solutions—tell those stories internally as well as externally. Consider special terminology—Disney and Target call customers “guests.”
  • Treat your employees as you want them to treat your customers. What goes around definitely comes around in this area. Don’t stress hierarchy; make employees feel respected.
• Cross-train staff. Delivering customer-centered solutions means you need to have generalists on staff.
  • Make sure at least some people in each area of your company understand and can deal knowledgeably with customers on more than a single product line.
  • Help people develop relationships across departments within the company. You want them to be able to quickly find help from anywhere to solve customer issues.
• Connect with more external partners. Outsourcing non-core services (not necessarily overseas) and developing close relationships with partners can do a lot for you:
  • dramatically increase your efficiency
  • allow you to cut costs
  • expand your ability to respond creatively to customer needs

In short, breaking down boundaries will help you serve customers better. And it seems these are some of the same lessons we're learning about surviving in the global marketplace. Good to know they can work pretty well closer to home, too.

Sincerely,
Barbara

P.S. ** The answer to question above: How are they missing the point? They are trivializing the real issue that keeps many women from wholeheartedly adopting these bulbs. It's not about saving the earth--yes, most women care. It's not about saving money--yes, most women care. It's about how a woman feels about the atmosphere surrounding her. A sense of comfort here is critical to her optimal peace and productivity—and by extension, her family’s if she has one. No amount of good qualities in a light bulb can make up for giving off a light that makes a woman feel uncomfortable in her own home.

P.P.S. Want to reach your customers more effectively? Want help discovering customer issues that you may not be addressing? Give me a call. 216.472.8502 or 773.292.3294.