The cliche of the moment is "customer-centric" but most businesses that claim to be focussed on customer satisfaction will only in fact do what the customer wants if it fits within the business' own policies and processes.
Want help? Sure, but not between 1 and 2, that's our lunchtime. Want a fixed meeting time? OK but we might have to keep you waiting for 30 minutes.
I recently saw a presentation by Gail Kelly the CEO of St.George Bank. She said her bank was totally focussed on her customers. How did she know? She said that independent surveys of banks measured how many customers were thinking of switching to another financial institution. Whilst the average was around 18% , the result for her bank was NIL! She described how her bank was structured to achieve that goal. She talked about how she got the right people for the right job.She talked about her role as a leader to ensure the customer focus continued. And of course it reflected in continuing increasing profits.
If a bank can do it, why can't professional service firms?
Matt Homann has 3 great posts by Ron Baker : 1 on what it means to have a customer and 2 on repositioning professional firms (starting with pricing in The firm of the past and The firm of the future) so that they are truly customer focussed.
And even though Baker discusses the need to move from hourly billing to value pricing, it's not just about the money element. It's about looking at things from the customer's point of view: what are they getting from you, not time but a result. Not efficiency but effectiveness. A customer's measurement of satisfaction is different from that of most professional service providers. Until a business's KPI's for customer satisfaction are the same as the customers' how can they claim to be customer-centric?
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