Put 'customers at the heart of everything we do' in a search engine and see what you get. The highest number of related comments I got when search was 99 million.
What made me smile more wasn't the quantity of material, but the range. On one page I saw that both Thompson Reuters and William Hill the book keepers put customers at the heart of what they do. Along with tanning salons, cake makers and of course, your business.
I believe that 'putting customers first' etc. has become another platitude.
three reasons I think it's a 'fail'.
1. If you are putting customers first, you don't need to tell them.
2. Customers is a generic term. No two are the same and although a few may be groups because they all want the same loan (or car, or t.v, or fake tan) they did so for different reasons, their friends will give them different comments and 5 minutes later, you can bet (on William Hill) they'll want something else that differs to each other.
3. If every business achieved this customer utopia, then there would be no effort in the world needed at the customer end to discriminate and discern one quality of service from the other; think about it. It's because some offerings are poor that the customer chooses you over another - but then if such were the case we could do nothing and wait for everyone to make mistakes right? if only life were THAT easy.
But putting customers etc. almost creates a platform that no-one can own and thus you're setting the conditions around yourself that you can't satisfy.
odd one this.
I've been asked to think about a 'customer centric brief' and as such feel it's worth a longer explore to get to know the brief.
if only we did the same with all our customer requests...
What made me smile more wasn't the quantity of material, but the range. On one page I saw that both Thompson Reuters and William Hill the book keepers put customers at the heart of what they do. Along with tanning salons, cake makers and of course, your business.
I believe that 'putting customers first' etc. has become another platitude.
three reasons I think it's a 'fail'.
1. If you are putting customers first, you don't need to tell them.
2. Customers is a generic term. No two are the same and although a few may be groups because they all want the same loan (or car, or t.v, or fake tan) they did so for different reasons, their friends will give them different comments and 5 minutes later, you can bet (on William Hill) they'll want something else that differs to each other.
3. If every business achieved this customer utopia, then there would be no effort in the world needed at the customer end to discriminate and discern one quality of service from the other; think about it. It's because some offerings are poor that the customer chooses you over another - but then if such were the case we could do nothing and wait for everyone to make mistakes right? if only life were THAT easy.
But putting customers etc. almost creates a platform that no-one can own and thus you're setting the conditions around yourself that you can't satisfy.
odd one this.
I've been asked to think about a 'customer centric brief' and as such feel it's worth a longer explore to get to know the brief.
if only we did the same with all our customer requests...
No comments:
Post a Comment