Do your Customers Smile When They Think About You?

Peter Drucker said, "The function of business is to attract and maintain customers."

Based on our experience with all types of organizations, this is true in government and not-for-profit organizations, as well as traditional businesses. We would add the following to this quote: "...to make a profit or to be financially viable or best serve their community".

Making certain that your customers get what they want and come back for more is of critical importance to the long-term success of any organization. All factors that impact negatively on the customer, (unfriendly policies, inappropriate response time, untrained employees, etc.) must be identified and corrected if you wish to compete effectively and profitably now and in the future. Customers are the most important ingredient, and it is quite challenging to conduct a business without them.

Your organization's leadership team has several critical functions as it relates to your customers. The leadership team must develop appropriate customer-oriented strategies, design and implement customer-friendly policies/processes, develop your employees as it relates to creating and sustaining customer relationships, and constantly monitor and continuously improve progress on the issues that are defined as most important to your customers.

So, managing and measuring your customer interface must be made an important function. There are two concepts that will help you understand and manage your customer relationships: customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Currently, it seems that the majority of leadership teams are focusing on customer satisfaction to determine their customer service measurements; therefore, their level of success. This focus falls short of actionable expectations. Satisfaction surveys are unable to predict customer behaviors because they are built on faulty foundations.

Many organizations assume that high levels of satisfaction translate into customer loyalty when, in fact, customer satisfaction ratings are more closely linked to your customers' perceptions of your products or service attributes, rather than to the value gained by those products or services. Satisfaction is a measurement of, "I expected it and I got it; therefore, I'm satisfied." If this were translated into a grading system, satisfaction could easily translate into a grade of "C" on any report card.

The desired score is obviously an "A" and A's always equate to loyal customers. A's imply that customers got more than they expected and their expectations were exceeded in some way. Based on what is truly important to customers, they received more value from you than from your competitors.