The dominant force in the seller-customer relationship has shifted. Sellers no longer have the upper hand, customers do. Customers now tell suppliers what they want, when they want it, how they want it, and what they will pay. This new situation is unsettling to companies that have known life only in the mass market where the needs of the masses are more or less the same. The mass market has broken into pieces, some as small as a single customer. Individual customers, an individual or a large corporate, demand that they be treated individually. They expect products / services configured to their needs, delivery schedules that suit them and payment terms convenient for them. Customers have gained the upper hand in their relationships with sellers also because of the easy access they have to all the data available and other suppliers through clicking the mouse.
Customers who know what they want, what they want to pay for it, and how to get it on their terms do not need to deal with companies that don't understand and appreciate the importance of the customer-seller relationship. An extensive study by Deloitte Consulting and Deloitte & Touche indicated that companies who have focussed on these relationships have out performed those companies who have not. The research indicated that companies who have geared their total organisation towards attracting profitable customers and retaining them for life were 60% more profitable and far more likely to exceed their goals for shareholders value than those companies who do not.
In order for companies to become a customer-centric organisation they need to use the customer relationships as their organising principle and synchronise their business strategy, technology, people and the way they measure things in order to maximise those relationships.
Ensuring a full house
The cornerstone of achieving customer loyalty, or put in another way, to create and maintain the customer relationships, is without any doubt the people within the company. Customer-centric organisations have an exceptional internal communication process throughout the organisation to ensure that employees understand the goals, strategy and overall business plan of the company. The employees in customer-centric organisations have bought into the vision of the company and are trained and developed to make decisions that are in the best interest of the company's most important customer. The total workforce knows who their most valuable customers are. It is not only the management that needs to be satisfied, but also the entire workforce. Satisfied employees are motivated to want to please the customer. Satisfied employees are more likely to stay with an organisation and the business benefits from a more informed and experienced workforce.
The Villains
Any company moving from a product-centric or service-centric approach to a customer-centric approach will experience major organisational changes. The easy part about creating a customer-centric organisation is to install the new IT system, work processes, etc. while the more difficult part is to obtain real commitment from employees. Management is normally surprised about the support they get from the organisation. Franklin Roosevelt once said, "It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead - and find no one there."
Interaction between customers and any organisation or its employees is an emotive process. The new system is not enough - it is how the system interacts with customer that is the issue. That interaction takes place between people which means that the customer is never a system that orders on demand, so even Internet buying is human interaction.
"Men believe that society is disintegrating when it can no longer be pictured in familiar terms. Unhappy is a people that has run out of words to describe what is going on." - Thurman Arnold. During change employees normally have a lack of understanding regarding the bigger picture, the reasons why the changes need to take place, what the future will look like and how it will impact them. The change will expect of the employees to stop the old way of dealing with (and thinking about) the customer, and introduce not only new systems and processes but also new behaviour. Unfortunately, employees are not always (and especially during changes) able to see how they are behaving inside the organisation and towards customers.
It is not the change that will be the barrier, but the process people need to go through to come to terms with the new situation. This process that the employees need to work through is full of different emotions, different assumptions and different attitudes that individuals will portray, experience and believe in. Therefore this process is normally left to the employee to solve and it then becomes the beginning of the failure.
In summary one could say that the employee might well be the cornerstone in creating customer loyalty but the employee will also be the biggest villain in creating it -.or maybe the villains are those who do not provide support to employees - and the employees are the victims?
The best dramatic performance
In order to create the cornerstone it is essential that the employees have the opportunity to understand the context / bigger picture of the changes and what the future picture will look like. Employees need to be assisted or mobilised through the emotional process of change. What is even more important, is that employees need to understand how they are currently behaving and how they need to behave in future in order to evaluate which behaviours need to stop and which new behaviours need to start. You need to burn a picture about the appropriate behavior on visual, auditive and emotive levels in the minds of the employees.
The success of addressing the above mentioned issues would depend on how the messages are depicted. It is essential that employees have the opportunity to look at themselves in a mirror, see their own behaviours, emotions, assumptions and thoughts about the changes. The mirror should also show them how the future will look like and what customers think, feel and want and their opinions and perceptions about the company.
It is the detail behaviour that needs to change - employees do not understand what they are doing wrong - but if it could be dramatised and demonstrated so that they can see and hear and experience the difference it could have a long lasting impact. Industrial Theatre could be used very effectively to create such a mirror image to an organisation. Unfortunately people fear new learning methodologies and experiences but in the words of D.H. Lawrence - "The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences…. The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience."
Depending on the need within the company, different types of theatre could be used to create a dramatic experience to ensure that employees are mobilised towards a customer-centric culture within an organisation. Get it right and the customers and shareholders will shout encore for the performance - and other customers will come and see what the noise is all about.
References
- The Reengineering Corporation, Michael Hammer & James Champy, 1993.
- Making Customer Loyalty Real, A global manufacturing study by Deloitte Consulting and Deloitte & Touche, 1999.
- Re-engineering your business, Daniel Morris & Joel Brandon, 1993.
- Managing Transitions, William Bridges, 1991.
