This concludes our conversation with Jaynie Smith, author of Creating Competitive Advantage.
Tom:
As we move from the recession to recovery, and as we attempt to acquire new customers, gain market share, where do customer and client disconnects occur?
Jaynie:
Again, our research shows that 90% of companies have no internal agreement on what matters to customers. We always ask our clients to guess which three attributes came in 1, 2 and 3 in their customer research. Not only don’t they guess it right, they have no agreement amongst themselves. So how can the market-place receive what it values when the internal team is riding off in 25 different directions. The answer is simple: It can’t. We must have internal agreement based on the voice of the customer to know where to concentrate operationally and in alignment with our sales and marketing messaging.
You can find Jaynie’s book Creating Competitive Advantage at Amazon.com.
Since 25 people generally don’t deal with one customer, this seems to imply that we could internally agree that the same thing matters to all customers. That would be great to have affirmed feedback in that regard.
My experience in b2b is that different customers and different members of the customer’s staff don’t agree on what matters. Even when they agree to CSF’s they still emphasize different things, so it is often a shifting landscape that you best be paying attention to or you will be focused on the last item that mattered.
Assuming what matters to the customer is the beginning of the snowball. We are taking an unnecessary risk of applying our resources in a haphazard fashion. Determining what the customer values by listening to the voice of the customer helps us to focus on those items that not only satisfy, but delight the customer. It is not up to me to decide what is important or even agree to what is important, it is up to me to listen to what the customer says is important.
In the service industry, we cannot meet all of the needs of every customer. Using the Pareto principal, we can understand the most important items from a customer’s perspective and apply resources where we will have the greatest impact.