The following post was written and sent to me by John Coldwell, Managing Director of InfoQuest CRM Ltd. in Huddersfield, England. John travels around the world in pursuit of satisfied customers and clients, and I found his latest tale to be particularly relevant to my own experiences.
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I have just come back from running one of our full-day post-survey workshops with an international IT firm. The results of the survey weren’t good, but the management team was motivated and came up with a bunch of ideas, which were prioritised so that the low-cost quick-wins came first. All in all it ended up being an excellent session, but the best part (for me, anyway) was the transformation in attitude of the CEO as the day progressed.
Early on the CEO’s focus was asking questions about statistics and benchmarking. Perhaps following the boss’s lead, some of the directors shared the same focal point. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against statistics and benchmarking and comparing and contrasting results. All of those things are important and valuable and can provide additional “below the radar” points of perspective, so it can all be good stuff. But, I thought I was also seeing a case of a group of managers who were getting so focused on the view of the trees that they could no longer clearly see the forest.
As background, here we had a company with just over one hundred clients. Each of those clients had, at most, two or three key contacts at each. To me, that is a 250-person Christmas card list.
From that Christmas card list, we had just carried out an international customer satisfaction survey on three continents in five languages. Just over 72% of the people to whom we delivered surveys had responded.
I looked at the results and saw people, but as the management team looked at the results, all they were seeing was numbers. I decided it was time for a bit of intervention.
I asked the CEO, directly, how many of the customers he knew. He looked at me somewhat quizzically at first, then started going through the report, looking not at numbers, but at names. At his fingertips, of course, was a report section containing all the names of who responded; another which listed out the serious issues, by customer; yet another which contained a page for each and every respondent, in alphabetical order, showing everyone’s responses; and a fourth section which contained open-ended written comments.
Starting at the top of one of the lists, the CEO indicated he had spoken to the first customer “a couple of times”. On the second one, he somewhat sheepishly asked if e-mails counted. The answer was yes. He then denied knowing the third customer on the list, but the people on either side of him immediately said, in unison, “yes you do”. And with that, amid smiles and a few red cheeks, the debate was underway.
The point they soon came to see was that the survey was not an amalgamation of segments or statistics or numerical denominators. It was a detailed snapshot of the opinions of people; the very people who kept their business alive and thriving.
Yes, benchmarks can be part of the overall informational mix, an additional detail to consider, another perspective from which to view the bottom line, but they can also be a HUGE distraction. More often than not, you need to forget about how you compare with ABC or XYZ. The best companies that are at the top of their game focus on long-term continuous improvement; not by worrying about what another company is doing, but by creating a singular, system-wide focus on delighting each and every customer. Or as I call it - the Toyota mountain of a thousand little ideas. Every customer who impacts your level of business is totally satisfied, or they are not. If they are not, you need to do something about it. End of story.
By the end of the workshop my new best friend the CEO was setting a target for the overall satisfaction question – “On an overall basis, how satisfied are you with our company?” The directors and senior managers (15 of them) were balking at the target being proposed by the CEO, who suggested a 20 percentage point increase by the time they repeated the survey next year. His team said that was too tough and it should be reduced. Listening to their debate, he came out with a marvelous statement.
“To get the 20 percentage point increase,” he said, “we simply have to move 30 individuals who are currently Somewhat Satisfied into the ranks of those who are Totally Satisfied. That’s just two contacts for each person sitting round this table. Who’s telling me that we can’t do that?”
That was the end of that debate.
I’ve had clients that have segmented their customers between desktop and mainframe applications; those that have received consultancy in the past year and those that haven’t; new customers versus legacy customers; Gold, Silver and Bronze customers (whatever the hell they are); and those where there is between 12 and 24 months of a service contract left to run. They are all useful to an extent (well, nearly all) in that they provide labels that my clients are sometimes comfortable with.
But in business to business, where there aren’t that many customers, and they all need and want slightly different things, forget the slicing and dicing, don’t worry about the benchmarking and comparisons, put aside the charts and graphs and rationalizations. Instead, just treat your customers as individuals! Identify your Christmas card list, understand and provide uncompromisingly for their needs, and everything else will be taken care of.
