Verbesserungsvorschläge » Many of these mediocre companies are

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Part of the reason so many organizations aren't really customer-focused is because their managers don't know the difference. They're innocently ignorant. These managers don't understand what intense customer focus really looks like. And they don't fully appreciate the why and how of balancing their focus on the final or ultimate customers with their focus on external partners, such as distributors, retailers, dealers Jaden Schwartz Shirt , agents, suppliers, physicians, and such.


The following chart illustrates the vast differences in customer and partner focus. To make our teams or organizations into high performers Vladimir Tarasenko Shirt , we need to get all of our focus and activities into the "Intense" column.


Casual?The needs and expectations of markets, customers and external partners (like distributors or suppliers) are lumped together


Moderate?A few segments and partnerships have been highlighted


Intense?The needs and expectations of key marketcustomer segments and partnerships have been prioritized


Casual?Infrequent market, customer, and external partner data collection and analysis


Moderate?A trickle of data helps to focus improvement activities


Intense?Major strategic and operating decisions are based on a heavy stream of continuous data


Casual?Managers and internal production or support teams occasionally see customers or partners


Moderate?Visits from and visits to customers and partners are becoming more frequent


Intense?The boundaries between customers Vladimir Sobotka Jersey , partners, and our organization has blurred


Casual?Some customer and partner expectations are occasionally collected


Moderate?Expectations are prioritized and weighted along with effectiveness ratings to identify performance gaps


Intense?Customer and market gap analysis provide competitive benchmarks and broad market comparisons


Casual?Productservice development, improvements, and innovations are pushed out to the market


Moderate?Customerpartner input and pilot testing help identify and shape innovation and improvement


Intense?Customers Colton Parayko Jersey , partners, and people working in the field explore, experiment with, and guide improvements and innovations


Casual?Budgets (primarily through sales and marketing) focus on customer acquisition


Moderate?Increased investments in servicequality research Carter Hutton Jersey , development, and improvement


Intense?Customer retention and partner improvement is a key investment focus


Casual?Departmental organization structure follows internal logic and needs


Moderate?Process improvement and re-engineering and refocuses and restructures the organization


Intense?A decentralized, team-based organization is build around key markets, customerpartner priorities Jake Allen Jersey , and strategic processes


Casual?Training teaches everyone how to smile and ?handle? customer and partner complaints


Moderate?Training teaches how to trace the root cause of errors and eliminate them


Intense?Training provides the tools to identify internal and external customers and partners, prioritize their expectations, analyze performance gaps, and make improvements


A useful exercise is for management teams to individually assess their position on each section of this chart. Comparing answers and discussing differing points of view can reveal plenty of improvement opportunities. Better yet Kyle Brodziak Jersey , are ratings from customers andor internal partners.


A shake out of technologies companies will continue to give us plenty of examples of what happens when servicequality levels are only Casual or Moderate. We've all had our fill of dealing with companies who provide a useful service or technology but can't even answer the phone or provide the most basic customer support. Trying to get service support from one of these companies is about as much fun as being poked in the eye with a sharp stick.


Many of these mediocre companies are one-technology-wonders who developed a specialized product or found a narrow technical niche and have never really had to compete for business. They haven't had to worry about service because there were always more customers to replace those lost through careless neglect. Their casual levels of servicequality make them causalities in company graveyards.