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Learning the hard way
Just as companies are dealing with plummeting sales and sinking employee morale, skittish customers want more attention, better quality, and greater value for their money. Those same customers are also acutely aware that their patronage is of growing importance to companies as others decrease their spending.
There is not a day that goes by where I am not preaching, begging, and to some extent cajoling would-be and current clients to devote the needed resources to study customer attitude and insights.
Too often I hear about budget cutbacks, a lack of belief that information will actually help the bottom line, and that more pressing projects are in need of funding.
Knowledge is power, we all know this. If your customers are not happy, and you are not on top of this, how much longer will they be your customer? If employees are not "on board" or unified in the company's mission, how productive and beneficial will they be to your business?
As this article demonstrates, firms like Hertz and Bank of America are learning their lessons the hard way. Others, such as JW Marriott Hotels, BMW, The Ritz-Carlton, and L.L. Bean get it.
Learning what triggers your patrons, pro or con, is crucial to any business. Intuition alone is not enough to risk large sums of capital, or customer loyalty on. If you do not have scientific facts and proven methodology to help guide your business decisions, you are making a huge, and most likely a very costly mistake in your business. Thanks to "free" (nothing is really free) and low cost web survey tools, any firm can conduct a survey. Unfortunately, most of these surveys have little value as they were not assembled by people professionally trained in the area of market research.
Are you a product or service company? In my view, there is no differentiation. Simply stated, you can make the greatest widget in the world, but if you lack the understanding of your customer's needs, as well as what drives them, and support their needs with excellent customer service, you will fail whether the economy is weak or strong.
Whenever I am interviewed about my own company and asked to describe what we do, my first sentence is always the same: "first and foremost, we are a service company." These aren't just words, its who, and what we are.
Later this week we will be releasing a list of customer service and satisfaction tips. If you would like a free copy, drop me a note.
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