Are You Listening To Your Customers?

The holidays have come and gone. Many people are returning to their business routines. January is a good timeframe to review/refine your goals and objectives for the upcoming year. Establishing and maintaining customer loyalty is a key area of focus for businesses; especially since many companies suffered financial setbacks in 2009.

What’s the value in actively listening to your customers?

Implementing this initiative often requires a change in your company’s culture. In order to shift the mindset and approach for relating to your customers, the senior management team needs to be engaged and visibly demonstrate their commitment to this initiative. This approach offers several key values to the firm including:

1. Enables you to develop a long term partnership with your customer.

2. Empowers your firm to transition from being a vendor that provides basic services or products, to a true business partner in helping position your customer to take advantage of future opportunities.

3. Enhances your knowledge of your customer’s business and creates a channel for generating new product and service ideas.

Reasons companies don’t activity listen to their customers.

There are a number of reasons why firms don’t actively seek out ideas and feedback from their customers. I travel frequently for business and interact with a variety of service providers such as airlines, rental car companies, hotels and restaurants. Based on my experience, here are some observations:

1. The service provider behaves in an arrogant manner during customer interactions. In the background, there is an attitude of “We are the experts and possess all knowledge about our service. Therefore, our customers cannot add value to our offerings because they don’t understand our products to the same degree that we do”. Or more a more ominous reason…”As a customer, you don’t really have a choice. You must accept our service as it is.”

2. The firm believes they do not have the resources to effectively implement this new product or service.

3. Employees assert this is the way we do things here at our company. Our success has worked in the past and it will work for us in the future.

Companies that provide high quality, customer-centric interactions stand out in a crowded marketplace and garner loyalty from frequent customers, such as myself.

How can we implement this culture change?

Implementing a change in culture can be challenging. It requires courage, determination and servant leadership. Here are some recommendations on implementing a program in which your company listens to your customers:

1. Ask your customers for candid, constructive feedback on your products and services. This could be accomplished formally through a survey, or informally through a one-on-one interview approach.

2. Schedule a meeting with your customer to discuss their goals/objectives for the upcoming year and brainstorm new ideas to help your customer expand their business.

3. Create a level of trust with your customer. Spend time getting to know your customer and their business. Find out their pains (visible and latent). Evaluate their processes. Look for opportunities to help them work more effectively and efficiently.

4. When a customer shares an idea, utilize your critical thinking and facilitation skills to fine tune and enhance the idea. Ask your customer quality questions to uncover their needs and desires.

5. Facilitate a networking/idea exchange group with a group of your customers. It has been my experience that customers like to network and meet others with similar ideas and interests professionally. This is a great way to build a community of loyal customers. This can be accomplished virtually through social media avenues like twitter or skype, or in person via a group meeting setting.

Your customer relationships are a valuable asset. Like all relationships, they require time, effort and commitment. Forging strong customer relations is similar to exercising a new muscle. As with any exercise program, you need to continuously exercise that muscle to maintain physical fitness. In order to grow your business and attain a healthy position in the market, you need to exercise your customer relationship muscle. Start by actively listening to your customers.