6 Key Components of a Customer-Focused Business

Customers don't want Good Service, they want Service Excellence. Do you agree?

But delivering service excellence just once, isn't going to turn a customer into a Brand Ambassador. Service excellence must be consistent, but how is it achieved?

Consistent service excellence, across the business = Customer Loyalty

How can your business ensure all customers receive a level of service that will result in customers wanting to tell others, often by social media, how fantastic your business is?

The answer is to ensure that all 6 of the following key components of your business are all customer-focused.

How does your business perform against each component? This article provides some key questions to consider and may help you identify opportunities to improve.

It also shows that equipping your customer service teams with great communication skills, alone, will not result in service excellence if other key components are not effective

1.The Customer

Of course, a customer-focused business, must have customers. Without the customer, there is no reason for any organisation to exist.

Here's some critical questions to ask yourself:

1. Do your employees have a good understanding of who their customers are and what they need?
2. Do you put your Employees at the heart of your business, so that they will want to put Customers at the heart of everything they do?
3. Do employees consider their colleagues as customers? If so, how do they treat their internal customers?

Many non customer-facing employees think they don't work in a customer service role! The truth is every employee works in a customer service role.

1. You're either a person who helps external customers
2. Or you're a person helping the people who help the customers.

And therefore ensuring every person within an organisation truly understands the part they play in delivering the outcomes required by customers, is critical to ensure customers receive consistent, service excellence.

We are all customers. I'm sure we have on at least one occasion, seen staff arguing in front of us, or blaming another department for an error, by saying "it's not our fault"

Service excellence happens when internal customers work together effectively, understand the impact they have on each other and provide a service which meets internal customer needs as well as external customers.

Internal Customers: team members, employees of other departments/offices, sub-contractors and suppliers.

External Customers: Current or potential customers/clients who are interested in buying your products and/or using your services.

Customer Needs & Wants

Customer Needs: These are the things that customers require as a necessity in order to achieve their desired outcome, such as receiving the product they ordered in perfect condition.

Customer Wants: Represent the touchpoints in a customer journey that are likely to exceed expectation e.g. Receiving the product in perfect order, and a personalised thank you card with an unexpected discount voucher to use, with their next order.

Consistently giving your customers what they need is essential for the sustainability of your business.

But also giving customers what they want is essential to differentiate yourself from the competition.

A Customer Focused company knows who its customers are and they continually talk to them in order to keep up to date with what they need and want!

2. The Organisational Culture

This is what the customer experiences. A culture includes the values, beliefs and practices of an organisation. Policies, procedures, actions or inaction contribute to a service culture

Questions for your business to consider:

1. Do company values represent a focus on Service Excellence and are they understood and demonstrated by all, every single day?
2. Do teams take ownership to resolve customer problems, avoiding a blame culture?
3. Are teams empowered to take ownership and make decisions to be service-orientated? It's very frustrating for customers if members of staff advise that they have to gain authority from their manager in order to provide an effective solution and meet the customer's needs.
4. Is there an opportunity within your business to extend the levels of authority within your teams and create an empowered culture where team members can do 'the right thing' for the customer, without a delay on Service Excellence and are they understood and demonstrated by all, every single day?
5. Do teams take ownership to resolve customer problems, avoiding a blame culture?
6. Are teams empowered to take ownership and make decisions to be service-orientated? It's very frustrating for customers if members of staff advise that they have to gain authority from their manager in order to provide an effective solution and meet the customer's needs.
7. Is there an opportunity within your business to extend the levels of authority within your teams and create an empowered culture where team members can do 'the right thing' for the customer, without a delay?
8. Are there effective processes and systems in place to seek customer feedback and then act on it?
9. Do employees give and ask for feedback in order to continuously improve? When I deliver customer service training, team members will often speak out and tell me that it's very annoying or frustrating when another team member does something, which has a negative impact on them. However, they also tell me that they don't feel comfortable to provide constructive feedback to another team member, because they don't know how to provide the feedback in a way where it will be well received.

I'm a great believer that colleagues don't do things to deliberately frustrate another colleague. The reality is that they don't know the impact their actions have had, unless they are told. Therefore creating a culture of honesty, where employees are equipped with great feedback skills, helps to ensure that all employees welcome giving and receiving feedback, in order to improve.

10. Is there a culture of teamwork across the organisation, or is there a Silo mentality? Do teams have opportunities to spend time in other areas of the business to fully understand what other departments do, but also to gain an insight into the impact their role has on another department?

Another great way of creating a teamwork culture, is to hold regular cross-function focus groups/meetings, enabling teams to understand challenges across the business, but also to share best practices.

3. Human Resources

Care must be taken in recruiting and training qualified people. Without motivated, competent workers, and effective policies and practices in place, customers will not receive Service Excellence.

Questions to consider:

1. Does your business have an effective recruitment process in place, to ensure you're recruiting the right people in the right roles? Or is there an opportunity to improve?
2. Are there training opportunities for individuals to continuously develop their knowledge and skills? This could be a blended approach of online, virtual and face-face training.
3. Do employees attend regular training with a positive mind-set and take on board what they have learned? All too often, companies invest in training but do not provide follow-up coaching support to help embed new skills. Therefore, individuals slip back into old habits.
4. Are there processes/systems which act as a barrier to service excellence? Customers want an effortless service, not a long-winded and complicated process.
5. Do employees use the most appropriate form of communication to keep customers informed about current and future services? Perhaps team members are over reliant on emails, rather than picking up the phone, when there is a customer issue, because they are not confident to handle a difficult conversation.
6. How motivated are employees to deliver Service Excellence? Do they feel valued and recognised for great work? Employees who feel recognised and valued for the work they do and the effort they make, are more likely to be customer-focused.
7. Do managers know what motivates their team members and inspire and empower them to deliver service excellence?
8. Do managers coach their teams, rather than rely on a 'Directive' style of management?
9. Do teams communicate effectively and have a 'team mindset' which leads them to help each other to deliver the needs of customers?

4. Products/Deliverables

Products are tangible items manufactured or distributed by the company. It also includes services available to the customer. There are two key areas of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. They are: Quality and Quantity. If your customers receive what they perceive as a quality product or service, to the level expected and within the timescale promised or viewed as acceptable, they are likely to be happy

Questions to Consider:

1. Are your products/services meeting current customers' needs and how do you know?
2. Do you monitor customer experiences and proactively put things right, without waiting for a complaint? Only 4% of customers will make a complaint, the rest will just take their business elsewhere. So doesn't it make sense to ensure you put solutions in place, to resolve potential issues, before your customers decide to leave your business?
3. Do you meet agreed timescales, or are customers subjected to too many delays?
4. Are there opportunities to improve on product quality? If so, how?
5. What processes are in place to obtain customer feedback about Quality and Quantity of Products/Services? And does your company act on it promptly, before thousands of customers are impacted?

5. Delivery Systems

Industry Standards: How is the competition currently delivering? Are your organisational delivery standards either in line with, or above those of competitors?

Customer Expectations: Do your customers expect delivery to occur in a certain manner within a specified time-frame? Are alternatives acceptable to your customers?

Capabilities: Do available systems within the organisation allow for a variety of delivery methods, which meet/exceed customer requirements?

Costs: Will providing a variety of systems and options add real or perceived value at an acceptable cost? If there are additional costs, will customers be willing to absorb them?

Current and Future requirements: Are existing methods of communication, such as phone, email, web-chat, social media or face-to-face, meeting the needs of your customers and will they continue to do so in the future?

6. Service

The manner in which you and other employees treat your customers and each other, as you deliver your company’s products and services.

Questions to consider:

1. Do employees, take a proactive approach to 'Put things Right' for customers without waiting to be asked?
2. Are employees encouraged to follow up customer contacts, to ensure customers' needs have been met?
3. Do team members have effective questioning skills, to help them identify customer 'Needs' and 'Wants'. As mentioned earlier, customers require their needs to be met e.g. accepting and paying out on an insurance claim. However, if a business also fulfils a customer's 'Wants', e.g. A quick and simple process, whilst demonstrating empathy and proactively keeping customers informed every step of the way, then this is how they will feel they have received service excellence. If this service level is delivered consistently, at every point of the customer's journey, your customer will become a Brand Ambassador.
4. Are individuals solutions-focused i.e. do they focus on what they can do, rather than what they can't?
5. Do individuals effectively listen to your customers to find out exactly what they want, or do they allow listening barriers, such as making assumptions, have a negative impact?
6. Do teams take ownership and focus on 1st time resolution for customers? Customers don't want to chase and chase - Do you?
7. Are your teams pro-active? Do they keep customers up to date if a service is interrupted/delayed, so that customers don't have to make a 2nd or 3rd contact to find out what the problem is?
8. Do teams manage their emotions effectively in order to maintain a good service when things go wrong, or when they're under pressure?
9. Are teams confident to deliver difficult news to customers effectively without passing on blame?
10. And do your teams, thank customers for their loyalty? Loyal customers won't remain loyal if their loyalty isn't acknowledged and recognised.

If you're interested in finding out how I can help your business be truly customer-focused, and turn your existing customers into Loyal Brand Ambassadors, message me

Email: info@turnercorner.co.uk

Phone: 07834838521

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About the Author

Jacqui Turner is a very well respected and multi award-winning Trainer and Coach who works with clients to help their employees deliver exceptional customer experiences.

She also supports Managers to become Leaders through the delivery of engaging and thought-provoking leadership training programmes.

If you want to find out more about Jacqui's experience, please connect or follow her.