Embedding the customer in the center of our organizations

In a world where product differentiation is no longer an advantages it is very important that an organization differentiates in how good it delivers the promised customer services.  Most customers today are expecting only the very best service, even if that price for service is dirt cheap. Let's say I dine in an Island in the Philippines, I pay 10$ for an excellent meal coupled with an excellent friendly service so if I dine in London and spends 100$ I will expect the same level of service. If I don't get a good service I might not come back again or might give a bad rating for the place in Yelp or any other social channels. You see I am not the only one with this way of thinking. Do you think the same? Talking of London, I have been to Nobu and to Ramsey's I was surprise to spend less in Ramsey's where the service was a lot better and the food was excellent… Now I can say that Ramsey's is a very good example of providing a wonderful customer service, you leave happy and want to be back again as soon as you can.

All customer experiences are rooted to the people who provides them. When it comes to businesses, the customer experience is all that matters, most specially on service industries like Telecom. So the question to most if not all executives is "How do you embed customer centricity in your organizations?". There is no easy answer to this, there are no shortcuts. Its true that we train our front line staff to deliver a good service, but delivering a good service is no longer just a service, it is giving a positive experience that counts. To ensure that we provide positive experiences, our customers expects us to take the extra mile, go a bit further to give them delight and happiness. Doing should not break the bank either, after all as a business we aim for profitability and as executives we are judge on profitability by our shareholders. In April, at the CEM Summit in Dubai, Liz McSorley of du (VP  Customer Experience) will share how they do it in du.

For a product and technology led company like AmanziTel, we ensure that customer centricity is embedded in our corporate DNA by ensuring that each and every one of us understand and embrace customer centricity and the importance of ensuring happiness to our customers. We do this in various ways

• Customer centricity starts from the top, from our board members to our CEO down to our software developers.

• We hire resources who are naturally service and innovation oriented, so no matter how difficult our deployments get we continue to strive to provide happiness to each and everyone of them.

• It is embedded in our product and service design. When we design a product, especially new innovations and ground breaking product, in every decision we take our customer needs and happiness are taken into consideration. We call that customer driven development.

• We treat every customer request with utmost care and respect. Its like having your own baby being born when customer request arrives and ensuring that he or she is always happy and that he or she is raised and developed the right way.

• In times when we are not perfect, we ensure that we make up for our shortcomings by continuously delighting our customers in our own little ways and make that extra effort.. Walk the extra mile…

• We empower our front line resources to make key decisions in delivering customer happiness when they are put on those awkward situations.

• We always keep in mind that our customers are serving Billions of subscribers that at the end of the day each of our customers will have to deliver that happiness to their billions of subscribers

• For each and every one of us in the company we will always ensure our customer's happiness in our own little ways

And since its Valentine's day let me say we love our customers and we love the billions of subscribers they have.

Who needs customer centric transformation?

Today Blackberry announced that the market should expect 1B$ loss...

and more to come with its smartphones not selling very well and a burn rate of 500M$ per quarter. Its 2.6B$ cash will be gone in a year.  What will they do?  What went wrong with Blackberry? What did they forgot? Why did they not transform their business?

 

For BlackBerry the end of the road is very close indeed. For those who still have time to turn around they must do so and avoid the same pitfalls.


On my previous post I mentioned that companies who care about good customer experiences performs better than the ones who do not. Having said that how can a company turn it self around and become more customer centric? Such a transition would mean several changes, first and foremost with the organizational strategy, its thinking and more importantly for employees who will have to have to provide a better customer experience. For any organization to adopt a customer centric approach, that has to start from the very top. Company executives must be the sponsors of such transformation programs and more importantly for the program to succeed executive pay should be tied to customer experiences. It is also important to have customer experience champions within the organization, this are company directors who takes the lead in driving the entire workforce toward customer centric thinking.

To achieve a sustainable and constantly improving profitability a company's products and services should evolve to cater for its customer and take market share from its competition. At the end of the day increasing profitability means better market penetration and positioning. This can be achieved by addressing customer needs starting from product or service design and most importantly when providing customer support services. Any new Products and Services should be designed to ensure that it  is better than the competition not only on pricing but also on how customers will experience the product and the services. The question is how can you offer a value proposition that competitors can not match? For most of us that unmatched value preposition is the holy grail. When it comes to mobile communication technology, the world I know most   where for some time Nokia knew that advantage then lost it  and  more recently Apple knew that secret until Samsung figured it out and starting to match it…. In my little world it is an excellent customer experience that provides that unmatched value proposition. Great customer experience is embedded in a product, it is entrenched in a service delivered, it is the main difference maker…

In the Customer Experience Summit Asia,  there is a panel discussions that focus on embarking on a customer centric transformation. The aim is to improve customer experience, achieve sustainable growth and above average profitability. Some highly respective executives will be in the panel headed by Mahesh Fernando   of Airtel, and Rimzie Ismail   of Dubai Airport and Ritesh Chatterjee   of SKS Microfinance. They will explore he impact of customer centricity on revenues, profitability and growth. They will also impart their knowledge in identifying, measuring and making the most of all customer channels for long-term profitability.

Transformation as I mentioned above starts from the organization it self, from the top. Once that happens the top executives can sponsor various programs to get the organization to put customers first, all the time. Customers first from product design to delivery of support services. Having said that putting customers first is not enough, we need to give them the best customer experience they can ever have on the product we sell and the services we provide. Once we do that then we are truly a customer centric organization.