You may hear a CEO speak proudly of their customer service focus but often this is in reality code for cost reduction strategies where the customer is the last thing they are really concerned about.
However, building a business that has a customer centric focus is the core of competitiveness in the 21st century. Understand this approach and get this right and your competitors will never catch you.
Efficiency and effectiveness are often at opposite poles in business strategy when efficiency is code for cost reductions without much regard to customer value and effectiveness is code for improving customer value at a greater cost. It need not be and businesses should be seeking to deliver greater value whilst at the same time driving down costs. I’ll come back to a strategic approach to cost reduction in another post as today I really wanted to nail this principle of a customer centric business.
Today’s continuing business pursuit of digital strategies and technology is in many instances leading the disconnection of businesses and customers.
Technology should be a connector but in many cases it is the cause of disconnection. Let’s consider some examples:
- The most obvious, but certainly not recent, is automated telephone services which companies continue to employ in managing customers enquiries. Customers are led down a path of choosing options to often be met by a final automated response that didn’t answer their question anyway.
- Text messages and emails can be useful alerts but can also be an annoying occurrence of ‘junk mail’ that are deleted in frustration especially when supported by unsubscribe links that never seem to work.
- FAQs, online guides, community forums and alike are the online support service structures that can be useful for some customers and the most frustrating experience for many others who are simply looking for someone to speak to in person for the answers they can’t seem to find.
- What about the growth of online stores from which you can buy anything? Is there a limit to what customers will buy from a website and can the convenience of the online experience outweigh in the longer term the experience of buying in store? Will the trend of explore in store and by online continue or will the in store experience begin to outweigh any price difference? Online retailers now seem to be establishing physical outlets, look at Amazon as an example.
All of the above service features have their place in business but many are simply overused and are directed at cost reduction and not customer service or value. There is a good and short article in Inc. magazine titled ‘Want to Help Your Business Prepare for The Future? Go Retro’ by Vanessa Merit Nornberg which draws this point out and I believe poses the question of whether there is a tipping point at which customers will turn against these technology disconnectors.
There is of course another point at which technology and customers integrate and that is in the product/service itself. The classic example of this done well is Lego. Lego is all about building. It used to be about building with the hands which stimulates creativity and play. Now this experience has been extended into the digital realm but building and play are still at the core. A recent article in Fast Company magazine titled ‘LEGO CROSSES THE DIGITAL DIVIDE’ by David Lumb makes the point that Lego learnt its lessons the hard way but now firmly places at the centre of its developments ‘putting kids – and the fun of building – first’.
