Chip R. Bell, Author, Kaleidoscope: Delivering Innovative Service That Sparkles

“You can pretend to care but you cannot pretend to be there,” wrote Texas Bix Bender in his book, Don’t Squat With Yer Spurs On! It sums up the power of leaders as customer intelligence officers. And any smart military intelligence officer will tell you that real truth is found in the field, not in the tent!

Acme Company (not its real name) is a large, privately-held business-to-business company with marketplace dominance in their industry. Why? Acme leaders know that financial prowess is a by-product of great customer service. Since customers’ needs and expectations constantly change, leaders must be in the field, not in the “tent.”

Acme hired a car service to transport visiting customers from the airport to corporate headquarters and back. Drivers were instructed to always ask visiting customers about their visit to Acme. While the company would never encourage drivers to eavesdrop on passenger’s private conversations, Acme knows drivers get a level of candor someone from the company would not get. Leaders hold quarterly focus groups with drivers to learn what their passengers think of the service they receive.

Acme leaders visit the customers of their competitors. How do they get in the door? They refuse to turn the meeting into a selling encounter positioning it instead as a forum to learn what Acme lacks their competitors have. Acme leaders periodically don the uniform of a front-line employee to personally serve customers. These face-to-face learning’s are brought back to inform service improvement initiatives. 

Acme leaders have long known the very best source of customer intelligence is front-line employees who hear customers’ hopes and concerns. Leaders not only make rounds to watch the front line in action, they hold informal meetings to learn about the good, bad and ugly. These candid sessions are popular because employees are kept abreast of changes their input triggers. The more they see improvement, the more they share. The more employees are asked for feedback, the more they learn from customers.

Acme leaders use customer forensics on lost customers, probing for reasons that might disclose lessons learned. When a large customer deserted Acme, they “deputized” four employees to be service detectives. They interviewed customer contact people, finally hitting pay dirt when a security guard solved the mystery: the customer, when leaving one of their district offices, complained his last shipment containing time sensitive material had arrived one day late, dramatically reducing its impact on his customer. Acme added security guards to its key sources of customer intelligence. They also added a question to their order entry process that determined if “time of delivery” was important or absolutely critical. They ultimately won back the lost customer.

Customer centric leaders know that customer behavior is the source of their success. And, behavior is vibrant evidence to be encountered, not a statistic or specimen to be researched. 

[author] About the Author: Chip R. Bell is a renowned keynote speaker and author of several best-selling books. His newest book is the just-released Kaleidoscope: Delivering Innovative Service That Sparkles. He can be reached at chipbell.com. [/author]