Do You Own Your Customers?

It's a legitimate question -- many companies spend a lot of time passing the buck to one department or the other while customers give up on getting service. It was a provocative comment to one of my posts a couple of weeks ago by Becky Carroll at Customers Rock! that made me think about it.

This is the subject of my weekly FC Expert post on customer conversation. After you read that post -- it's brief, I promise -- let's come back here and think together for a moment.

How can companies executive teams get in touch again with their customers and the issues they are facing?

In a recent Q&A with Paul Levy, the President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Toby Bloomberg discusses how Levy respects the mantra of social media by using transparency, authenticity, honesty and passion in his blog. He shares thoughts on customer service concerns, his views on social issues and health insurance from a personal perspective. This, in other words, is his own publishing tool, not the hospital's.

While he makes no secret that he is the CEO of a Hospital, Levy feels that is easier to have an open dialogue through a personal tool that allows him to gather feedback from a variety of people throughout the world. This got me thinking. At Fast Company I use Mendoza, the President of NetApp, as an example of how to reach out to customers. Mendoza is such a good listener, that his customers and employees tell him the truth. Part of the compliment they pay him is that they want to talk with him in person.

These are two high ranking company officers from different worlds/businesses who understand the value of having an open conversation with their customers. The question is not who owns your customers. The question is who will make sure that the customers are heard and cared for?

Comments

[Joe Raasch]

Hi Valeria,

When I am working with senior-level executives, I start by getting the answer to three questions:

1. Why does your business exist?
2. How does your business make money?
3. What are your top two core processes?

Few know the answer. Once we have our CEO/CFO/CMO/CIOs understanding their businesses, the customer care part becomes obvious - because 'customer' is part of the answer to all three questions.

[Lewis Green]

Valeria,

Great take on the subject. Not only should executives pay attention to their customers (own the responsibility) but customer service should be ingrained throughout the company culture, no matter the department. Just as everyone should be responsible and evaluated on the success of sales and marketing, so should they regarding customer relations.

[gianandrea facchini]

there is no comparison between the cost of retaining a client and the one of recovering one.
the focus on customer care is as crucial as the one on cost control.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Joe -- I have found that taking the conversation to how we make the money is good. One would think that once understood that customers would become the most important piece.

Lewis -- customer conversations should be part of every organization's DNA.

Gianandrea -- when I saw the study I thought it would make a good case. I am very passionate about developing meaningful, long term relationships with my customers. Even if at some point I need to acknowledge that someone else is offering something better. The relationships is in fact the number one product -- or it should be.

[Daniel Sitter, Idea Seller]

What wonderful wisdom Valeria. We dare not ever have the audacity to believe that we own our customers!

Yes, we absolutely need to have ongoing conversations with our customers and we better be paying attention to what we hear from them! If not, they will find someone else who will.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Daniel:

What I found astounding was the percentage of senior managers who do not understand the value customers.