Give More for Less

You must give customers what they want ‒ the highest cost/→ benefit ratio, because if you don't, somebody else will.

Both the cost and the benefit should be approached holistically.

→ More benefits come from more value, more → care, more → empathy, more responsiveness, better delivery, higher → quality, better service, and more loving relationships.

Less cost comes from lower prices, time saving, less hassle, simpler procedures, and less sales pressure.

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→ Innovation is Love

Customer Expectations

Customer expectations are continuously increasing. Brand loyalty is a thing of the past. Customers seek out products and value producers that are best able to satisfy their requirements. A product does not need to be rated highest by customers on all dimensions, only on those they think are important.

Customer Satisfaction – a Critical Component of Profitability

Exceptional customer service results in greater customer retention, which in turn results in higher profitability. Customer loyalty is a major contributor to sustainable profit growth.  >>   Example

To achieve success, you must make superior service second nature of your organization. A seamless integration of all components in the service-profit chain – employee satisfaction, value creation, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and profit and growth – links all the critical dynamics of top customer service.

Sadly, mature companies often forget or forsake the thing that made them successful in the first place: a customer-centric business model. They lose focus on the customer and start focusing on the bottom line and quarterly results. They look for ways to cut costs or increase revenues, often at the expense of the customer. They forget that satisfying customer needs and continuous value innovation is the only path to sustainable growth. This creates opportunities for new, smaller companies to emulate and improve upon what made their bigger competitors successful in the first place and steal their customers.

Getting Right Customer Feedback

Don't get customer feedback only from surveys and answers to casually posed questions: "How would you rate your satisfaction with our product or service?" The same results of such surveys can be interpreted in completely different ways. Surveys and focus groups don't analyze customer feedback with precision, and their results are notoriously susceptible to distortion.

Customer connection comes from customer intimacy, involving customers, partnering with them. Partnering with customers represents your firm's "capacity to anticipate what customers need even before they know they need it"⁴ or to create customer needs... More

Process-managed Enterprise

 Dell

"We learned to identify our core strengths," writes Michael Dell⁷, Founder of Dell Inc. "Pretty early on in the company's life, we concluded that we wanted to earn a reputation for providing great customer service, as well as great products. The idea was that building a business solely on cost or price was not a sustainable advantage. There would always be someone with something that was lower in price or cheaper to produce. What was really important was sustaining loyalty among customers and employees, and that could only be derived from having the highest level of service and very high-performing products."

"We put a great deal of emphasis on understanding what drove customer satisfaction, whether it was response times on the telephone, quality of products, valuable features, or the ease of experience in using the product. Engaging the entire company – from manufacturing to engineering to sales to support staff – in the process of understanding customer requirements became a constant focus of management, energy, training, and employee education."

 Apple

"I get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal. It's not because they belong to the Church of Mac! That's ridiculous," once said Steve Jobs, Founder of Apple.

"It's because when you buy our products, and three months later you get stuck on something, you quickly figure out how to get past it. And you think, "Wow, someone over there at Apple actually thought of this!" And then three months later you try to do something you hadn't tried before, and it works, and you think "Hey, they thought of that, too." And then six months later it happens again. There's almost no product in the world that you have that experience with, but you have it with Apple products."... More

 Case in Point  Wall-Mart

In his → 10 Rules for Building a Successful Business, Sam Walton, the Founder of Wall-Mart writes: "Exceed your customer's expectations. If you do, they'll come back over and over. Give them what they want – and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don't make excuses – apologize. Stand behind everything you do. The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign: "Satisfaction Guaranteed." They're still up there, and they have made all the difference."... More