Your CUSTOMER INTEL "machine"
Here's to a successful week!
I'd really like you to consider this...
Imagine you had created a “machine” of customer data and intel that helps you hone your strategy to deliver outstanding customer experiences….
The truth is you can do this EASILY. Think about every member of your team being able to (as part of their “day job”) gather customer data and intel. You can “process” this practically to tweak, enhance, and/or pivot your product/service offering! More about this below!
I’m a pretty intense guy. I have a ‘bent’ for analysing everyday things and considering how they may be more effective, efficient and better for the customer.
My first post-COVID overseas trip last Monday had me inching my way through Sydney airport border control AND then security. It was a 2 hour journey that I had never experienced in Australia before. There were many airport staff members doing their best, for what was absolute chaos. Along the way, as I stopped alongside many of the stewards, I considered offering them some suggestions about how to perhaps direct things a little better, or to at least pass on some of my advice to their management. I’m speculating here, but I don’t think they would pass it on ever. And this IS the opportunity! Imagine if everyone in your business saw an interaction with a customer – a problematic one or a successful one – as an opportunity to inform the business how it could enhance the customer experience and positively impact your business too!
Verne Harnisch’s Rockefeller Habits has 40 best practice prompts for execution in a business. Four of them relate to your CUSTOMER. One of the four suggests that “EVERY employee is involved in collecting customer data”. When I discuss this point with each of my clients each quarter, they unanimously balk at this suggestion, saying that it’s “impossible”. Perhaps 100% is pushing it. However, imagine if just HALF your team were able to contemplate the experiences they have observed from your customers, and fed that back in a meaningful way. Consider how meaningful this intel is, and how it can guide changes your business ought to make to enhance the customer experience?
Here is my practical suggestion as to how to make this work….
Add a SINGLE agenda line item into your WEEKLY MEETING to cover off Customer Feedback.
Allow 5 minutes (no more!) to hear the following: What SPECIFIC feedback the team has received from your customers. NOTE: An easy way to collect this is in the form of “what are we hearing we should start doing, stop doing, or continue doing?”. We are after SPECIFIC feedback not opinions or perspectives. If your team have NOT spoken to a customer about this, or had a conversation with a customer relayed to them, they don't have a chance to weigh in here.
From these inputs you can then agree (as a team) on the single biggest impact action item we should take
Have someone take on accountability for this. This means that they will be ACCOUNTABLE for closing the loop on the feedback, and making/suggesting the necessary change(s). This COULD also require further investigation. If this is the case, set clear timeframes and scope for what needs to be investigated, and what you’re trying to achieve.
If your business has multiple “levels”, there is no reason why this Customer Feedback agenda item should be institutionalised in EVERY team’s WEEKLY meeting.
Once changes to your processes are made, ensure someone is ACCOUNTABLE for COMMUNICATING the changes across the organisation. There will most likely be numerous methods to communicate this effectively to ensure changed behaviours result.
Keep some sort of “log” of these changes, and reinforce these at your Town Hall sessions, emphasising the need to gather real-time feedback from our CUSTOMERS!
If we accept that our CUSTOMERS are the single biggest reason why our business IS in business, imagine the value from making this discipline a habit!
Keep this really SIMPLE.
TRY IT!!!
See you soon, and GROW WELL.
Adam