Category: When Customers Rule!
Customer Centricity Survey
There are many utilities that claim to help you find out how customer centric your organization is. Here is another one sruvey from Round (UK) Limited.
The questions in the survey do point in the right direction & help in defining a customer centric organization. Do check it out.
PS: A UK firm using baseball to explain something!
Bose delivers customer delight
Just came across this post on the Fast Company blog about how Bose is delighting their customers individually one after the other w/o the hype & hoopla around product recalls.
My thoughts on this incident –
- Anyone rooting for companies to be more customer focused should be spreading the word about such positive actions taken by any company.
- What Bose has done here is to introduce an excitement factor (from Prof Kano’s Customer Satisfaction Model) into their customers experince. They proactively took reinforcing action that most customers wouldn’t have expected. Any organization focused on their customer initiatives ought to be treating product shortfalls as opportunities to try the excitement factor & thus increase loyalty.
- Bose not only replaced free of cost the product short coming, but have also promised additional goodies to make up for the initial pain. Now how many companies that we regularly buy from would do this!! Good gesture – but they have to deliver on their promise. If they don’t, this would be a good example of someone digging their own grave.
Also check an earlier post with more information on the Kano Model.
Customer Service in Professional Services
I have come across very little documentation regarding customer service in the professional services sector – IT services, law firms, hospitals, audit firms, business consulting, etc.
Some characteristics of these sectors that might set the sector apart in this respect –
- driven primarily by knowledge workers
- services delivered are complex & highly customized
Having taken on the responsibility of the customer centricity program in my IT services organization, you should be seeing more information on this subject here. Watch this space.