Recommended E-Book

J. Christian Andersen

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 77

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Satisfied customers are good — but not good enough! Going from customer satisfaction to customer loyalty requires a deeper insight into the mechanics of loyalty and a new perspective on customer service. Combining theory with solid and inspiring case stories, this book will help you to gain a deeper understanding of the approach to customer service that has brought massive success to some of the world’s leading businesses. Read the book before your competitors and become the company that customers will love to recommend.

Leseprobe

“Success is built of a series of sometimes small improvements. Celebrate and acknowledge progress.”

Sue Glotfelty

Senior Director of Marketing Services, Cintas

Contents

Foreword

Part 1 – From Satisfied to Recommended

1 – Make your business a philosophy

2 – A new goal

3 – Change management

4 – Companies undergoing change

Conclusion

Foreword

London, summer 2013

Dear reader,

A year ago I stumbled on an article from Bain & Company – one of the world’s largest consultancy firms. The firm had created a new methodology that was producing fantastic results: the companies that were the pioneers of this new paradigm grew on average more than twice as fast as their competitors.

At a time when everyone is dreaming about growth, you can blame other factors for lack of success, or listen and wise up to what growth companies are doing right.

The genius of Bain & Company’s methodology lies in its simplicity. In a simple yet highly effective way, businesses can grow by aiming at a single goal.

The goal is to gain more customers who are prepared to recommend the company to others.

At the same time, it is a very healthy learning process for employees. Everyone continually learns how to ensure that more and more customers are willing to recommend the company in the future. Simply put, this methodology puts an end to short-sighted goals and employees with self-satisfied overinflated privilege.

Instead, a corporate culture is created where all employees take responsibility for customer experience. This is a culture where customer service is not seen as an expense, but as an investment – and where the customer is a person treated with respect.

This book is the first step towards a better corporate culture.

At Relationwise, we would like to partner with other companies that want to grow by cultivating a corporate culture with a focus on the customer.

We hope that this book will inspire, and that we can share our experiences and help each other along the journey. This is why Part 2 is dedicated to the readers’ own experiences.

I wish you luck!

Christian, partner at Relationwise A/S [email protected], www.relationwise.com

Part 1

From Satisfied to Recommended

1 – Make your business a philosophy

A common goal

It’s about time everyone in your company – you and your colleagues, management and the rest of the organisation, both back-office and frontline employees – had a common inspiring goal:

Find out how to make a difference so your customers will say:

”I like doing business with them.“

”I’m going to choose them again next time“ and

”I’m going to tell my friends and colleagues about them!“

Do your customers remember you? Are your customers takling about your company? Or are you just another one of those irrelevant suppliers customers do business with and then unceremoniously drop with the passing of time? Are you remembered at all?

The fight against fat-catism

If you adopt the philosophy you must do something for your customers instead of simply treating them like cash cows, you’re already ahead. But all too often the focus is elsewhere. If things are going badly, it is often due to external situations. Then you can start blaming others. Of course, this is the easy way out; you are removing focus away from yourself. This is a part of what we call fat-cat-ism.

In Denmark, we actually have an official dictionary word for fat-catism: selvfedme. The closest we can get in English is the slang expression “fat cat”, meaning a person who has become lazy or self-satisfied as the result of privilege or advantage. Sure, it might carry connotations of the arrogant city banker, but in our very important context of the theme of this book, it can mean anyone who takes an attitude of self-satisfied, overinflated privilege.

Being responsible for your customers

“Being responsible” doesn’t just mean being more polite or baring a wider smile. It’s all about taking responsibility for your customers.

You are here to make a difference. Instead of distancing yourself because you’re always too busy hunting for new customers, you should focus on being responsible for and responsive to every single customer, both existing and potential.

It’s about time businesses injected a human perspective into their operations, rather than following a short-sighted and clinical approach. It’s about time we rediscovered the fundamental value of loyalty.

This is not a CSR strategy. This is an attempt to make the lives of our customers a little bit better.

This way of thinking can really pay dividends, but more about that later.

A mission statement and internally distributed newsletter are not enough. This approach demands full focus and engagement by the entire company – including those who don’t have direct customer contact. As we will discover later in this book, the galvanisation of employees and transformation of the entire corporate culture are the keys to creating a great business.

When loyalty is misunderstood

Why should you even be bothered about customer loyalty? Companies today are increasingly faced with a fundamental challenge: lack of customers.

Many businesses are finding they are not growing in the same way as they used to, and there are now considerable challenges to gaining new customers. Every company that has done the calculation knows it is far more economical to retain existing customers than gain new ones.

But many businesses appear to have a problem even understanding what customer loyalty actually involves. Customer loyalty is often approached one-dimensionally: businesses expect customers to be loyal to them, yet they themselves are not loyal to their customers. A good example is a newspaper subscription. As a loyal customer to a particular newspaper for a number of years, you learn one day that your neighbour (who previously subscribed to a different newspaper) has switched to the same one as you – and is only paying a third of the price you’re paying! Why are new customers rewarded but not loyal ones? From the newspaper’s perspective, it has gained a new customer – but he is not loyal: in other words, it is economically sound in the short term, but will hurt the business in the long term.

Maintaining the hunger

Rasmus Ankersen, an author and international speaker, has written a couple of books, one of which is entitled Leader DNA. In this book, he writes about how businesses and employees can perform better. His focus is predominantly on the world of sport; he has travelled around the world and, among other things, decoded why they are so good at golf in South Korea and why so many of the world’s best runners come from the same little village in Ethiopia. Some very interesting stories have emerged from his research.

Rasmus was visiting Nokia in Finland. When the iPhone started taking over the market, their CEO said, “The iPhone will always be a niche product.” He firmly believed Apple would never become a real competitor and Nokia would retain their dominant position in the market.

They were smitten with fat-catism. The entire company was patting themselves on the backs and proclaiming they were the best in the world and nobody could topple them. They were too busy focusing on what was happening within their own four walls and completely forgot to look at what was happening in the market and with the customers. It seems obvious that you should listen to your customers – yet many businesses are so into fat-catism that, as Rasmus Ankersen explains, “They lose their hunger.”

When Lars Løkke Rasmussen (former Danish Prime Minister) wrote his book The Danish Dream, Rasmus Ankersen contributed a chapter entitled “How to create hunger in paradise.” When things are going really well, how do you keep your drive and your hunger alive? And from a business’s perspective, how can it move its focus from itself to its customers?

This is done by constantly asking customers: “What can we do better?” Not just whether or not they are satisfied, but asking them what it would take for them to have a “wow experience.”

Sometimes you just want to shout, “Listen to your customer, damn it! Listen to what they’re saying.” It is this that should be driving your business. It isn’t about approaching the customer with an attitude of self-satisfied arrogance. You shouldn’t treat your customers in a conveyor-belt-like fashion. You must fight for every customer you get, and give the best of yourself every time. There is no longer a place for businesses that are only chugging along at half steam.

Old-school customer satisfaction surveys lead to laziness

Something that is common for many businesses affected by fat-catism is that they use inappropriate analysis methods. The classic mistake is to measure using the five-scale rating method (Very dissatisfied – Dissatisfied – Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied – Satisfied – Very satisfied). Many companies tend to lump the categories of “Satisfied” and “Very satisfied” together and claim (for example) a ninety-five per cent customer satisfaction rate.