Great Customer Service is Key To Sustaining Profitable Growth

No company can fuel profitable growth and multiple innovation cycles without excellent, high quality customer relationships.

You’re just a commodity to customers without two key elements: delight and innovation. Yet many firms have failed or are on the path of oblivion by adopting a shrink-to-the-right-size strategy, becoming a disciplined machine designed to crank as much operating margin out of existing assets as possible. This creates a low-margin, intensively competitive industry that short-changes the future and puts their companies into irreversible downward spirals.

Relationships, not operating margin or commoditization, are what drive economic advantage.

Why? Because organizations don’t buy. People do. When you add delight to your offerings, your customers rave about your products and encourage others to buy as well. They pay their bills on time, maximizing your cash flow (decreasing DSO). They keep buying more of your products or services, upgrade to higher-priced products and respond to cross-selling efforts. They become great references, spurn the competition (they are too busy working with you), and remain, creating an annuity stream: the business version of a state of nirvana. They will cost less to serve and bring in new customers. Keep in mind that referred customers are generally better, more profitable customers. They are also more likely to become fans, accelerating the upward spiral of referrals. They will become members of your sales force at no cost. As an additional bonus, they will become part of your R&D department, helping you develop the next generation products or services and creating a brighter, more predictable future for your company. They will help you generate high margins. These are terrific customers to have.

Equally importantly, focusing on delight fosters a healthy, upbeat environment where the best talents want to work, grow and make a difference in the world. If it is not about delight, you are merely pitting your functionality and efficiency against your competitors’. Your selling proposition won’t be unique. Your value proposition won’t be compelling. The best way to gain market share in a crowded field is to be the vendor to whom customers turn for the consistent home runs they need.

Relationships are the crucibles in which value creation takes place. The growth of an organization is simply the accumulated growth of the individual relationships that make it up. This is the only type of growth that can be sustained over the long term. This approach to customers boils down to a simple and classic precept, the Golden Rule: treat them the way you would like to be treated. The more an organization adopts the Golden Rule and makes it part of its DNA, the greater its opportunities for sustained growth will be. And these relationships must be continuously nurtured. It’s much like maintaining a great marriage; treat each customer as if you were still on your first date. Every day you’ll gain a stronger hold on their loyalty. The customer experience must feel seamless, fast, and easy.

Every company needs to develop the ability to find innovative ways to delight customers, day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year. In doing so, you will surprise them, turn them into loyal fans, and inspire them to sing your praises to their friends, clients, and colleagues. The greater the delight, the more you’ll differentiate yourself in the customer’s mind, the harder it will be for your competitors to copy it. As word-of-mouth communication shifts into overdrive, it will create a sustainable competitive advantage and profitable growth for your company.

Delight also dissipates poisonous emissions from unhappy/unsatisfied customers, keeping you from falling into the Doom Loop. Unhappy customers will always find ways to get even. They damage your firm’s reputation and diminish its ability to recruit the best customers. They complain more frequently, are more price-sensitive and costly to support, consume your resources, and are less likely to repurchase. In short, they can suck the life out of a company and strangle its growth. It’s a sure way to run any company into the ground. Imagine searching for a school for your children after you’ve moved to a new city. If you hear negative comments about a particular school from a trusted friend or colleague, the chances of you visiting or considering that school (or even its neighborhood) are very slim.

Building great customer relationships helps you expand your core business, uncover new sources of value, open the door to successful new innovations and incursions into adjacent markets, and discover the future before your competitors do.

At Innovyze, great customer care has been the pillar of our success. It has led us to sustain a 20-year run of industry-leading double-digit profitability, a stellar brand, a culture of continuous improvement and innovation, great compelling products, and a mutually rewarding partnership with our customers, our employees and our communities. We are helping build a better world for the greater good.

A company can outperform its rivals only if it can establish a difference it can preserve. Foster customer intimacy and focus on adding delight to your products or services and your competitors will not pose a threat. As Peter Drucker reminds us, “There is no business without a customer.” Customers have the ultimate power to help your organization succeed or fall into bankruptcy. Your goal must be to create happy customers, for life.

If every company took this approach, businesses would compete on value rather than simply on price — and benefit not only their stakeholders, but the industry and society as a whole.