Develop a plan to get your company to be more customer-focused

Companies that consistently deliver more value to their customers also consistently generate higher revenues. Companies should commit to becoming more customer-focused and should develop a plan to consistently examine the value proposition they are offering. This seems to be obvious, but many companies lose sight of customers in their efforts to generate new leads, optimize operations, and boost revenues. Marketers can directly affect the bottom line by developing a plan to become more customer-focused.

To get your company to become more customer-focused marketers should start by getting leader buy-in on the concept. It is critical to get leadership buy-in before launching initiatives and campaigns to the employee base. To get leadership buy in marketers should accumulate case studies where companies have found success by focusing on the customer. These articles and case studies will provide plenty of real-world examples of how customer-focused organizations are successful. Marketers should then develop a customer contact map that highlights how and when customer contact occurs at the company. Present the information to leadership explaining how improvements in the customer contact area and a commitment to become more customer-focused can boost revenues and growth.

With leadership buy-in, an advisory council should be assembled to review and improve all customer contact points. I would suggest that representative from sales and operations are included on the advisory council. Each contact point should be examined with a goal of identifying improvement opportunities. Additionally, ask some of your customers to meet with the advisory council to offer their feedback. Remember, you are trying to improve your value proposition to them so ask them directly what they value. The council should review all available information and then develop an action plan for improvement.

The plan for improvement should be open and celebrated. Tell customers and employees about the company’s new commitment to its customers. Keep people up to date with progress and let leadership know when milestones are met. A serious commitment to the plan will require an adequate budget to make the changes that the advisory council recommends. Also consider that employees that work with the customers may require new training to implement the recommended changes. During the execution of the plan identify employees that excel in the new system and locate people that have a commitment to customer service. Place these people in front of the customer as often as possible.

Finally, getting your company to be more customer-focused is a lot of work. Make the commitment to becoming more customer-focused and think in long terms. It is critically important to start to record and measure successes and failures and always identify opportunities for improvement. Launching an annual customer satisfaction survey can be a great measurement tool to identify opportunities to improve. Another tool to identify opportunities for improvement is to keep your customers active in the customer-commitment plan. A customer advisory board consisting of both large and small customer, if properly managed, can offer brutally honest feedback but it can also greatly improve the company’s customer focus as well as identify new business opportunities.

Becoming a customer-focused company is not easily accomplished but it can be very rewarding. Companies that consistently deliver high value to their customers also consistently generate higher margins and grow much faster than their competitors. It takes much more than just saying that customers are important it takes a serious plan to determine what is important to them.