The Customer Revolution by Ronni T. Marshak & Patricia B. Seybold

Author:Ronni T. Marshak & Patricia B. Seybold [Marshak, Ronni T.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Customers.com Press
Published: 2001-02-27T14:00:00+00:00

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THE THIRD STEP: CARE ABOUT CUSTOMERS AND THEIR OUTCOMES

I

would never invest in a company that didn’t know who its customers are or one that didn’t care deeply about them. Would you? The companies with the “right stuff” to thrive in the customer economy have one key element in common: a corporate culture and a set of core values centered around caring about customers—not as revenue targets, profit contributors, or advertising magnets, but as people.

Customer loyalty and lifetime customer value are two of the key metrics that foreshadow success in the customer economy. You can’t build either one if you don’t truly care about your customers. Customers aren’t just looking for a good deal or convenience. Both consumers and business customers choose to continue doing business with companies that actually care about them as people and as businesses.

Caring about and for your customers isn’t the only requirement for success. It wasn’t enough to keep Toysmart.com alive. Toysmart employees cared deeply about their customers and did everything in their power to make toy shopping a wonderful, rewarding experience for them. Yet Toysmart lost its financial backing from its parent, the Walt Disney Company, in May 2000. Disney didn’t have the patience or the desire to continue funding a small e-tailer that sometimes refused

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to sell Disney products (because they featured weapons or had other characteristics that Toysmart’s customers didn’t care for). In hindsight, the Disney/Toysmart relationship was probably doomed from the start. The two companies’ agendas evolved in different directions.

Thus we see that a customer-caring culture isn’t sufficient to ensure success. A healthy cash flow and profits from operations are necessary prerequisites. Yet there are many companies with healthy balance sheets that won’t make it in the customer economy. They don’t actually care about their customers as people. They don’t take the time to learn who they are; determine what they want and need; and make them feel special, valued, and welcome.

You probably believe that your company has a pretty solid, customer-driven culture. But we want to show you some best practices— what others firms are doing to instill those customer-centered values in their employees and channel partners as guidance systems. These values enable employees and partners to truly embrace their customers.

In a minute we’ll take you behind the scenes to see what Schwab does to reinforce its customer-caring culture and to provide closedloop feedback systems. But first, let’s look at the basic principles involved in caring about customers and their outcomes.

DEEP COMMITMENT TO CUSTOMERS AND THEIR OUTCOMES

I was standing at the cash register in the Charles Schwab company cafeteria, juggling my tray as I tried to reach into one of the two bags slung over my shoulder to unearth my wallet. The cashier smiled at me, reached out with both hands to take my tray, and said, “Here, let me help.” That’s when it hit me: the people in this company really care about their customers. Never before in forty-five-plus years of standing in line to pay had anyone offered to assist me in that way.

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