Are You Obsessed with Your Customers?

Every time I return to Dubai, I am inspired. Not that long ago, this small town on the edge of a very big desert was trans­formed by the vision of its lead­ers. Because I’ve been to the Mid­dle East well over 50 times, a recent return to work with a client felt like going to my sec­ond home. It was a great chance to catch up with some amaz­ing peo­ple to see how they con­tin­ue to grow and thrive.

In dozens of inter­est­ing and impact­ful con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple in the com­pa­ny I was work­ing with, I heard how they were obsessed with doing spec­tac­u­lar work for their cus­tomers. Yes, obsessed.

Every­one in the com­pa­ny worked incred­i­bly hard to make sure their cus­tomers were hap­py and the proof was in their cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion rat­ings. They were so high for the scale and type of busi­ness, I didn’t believe them. But after pres­sure test­ing by dig­ging into the data, I found them to be absolute­ly true. That explains the amount of busi­ness that comes from cus­tomers refer­rals. When cus­tomers are thrilled with their expe­ri­ence, they want to keep doing busi­ness with you, and they want oth­ers to join in.

Cus­tomer obses­sion and high expec­ta­tions of cus­tomer ser­vice do take more proac­tive ener­gy and dis­ci­pline – and often more than pays for itself because peo­ple on the team get more pos­i­tive feed­back from clients and feel good about what they are doing.

What Cus­tomers Want

In col­lege, I did a research project on what cus­tomers want­ed after a ser­vice fail­ure. The find­ings weren’t sur­pris­ing: they want peo­ple to take respon­si­bil­i­ty, to acknowl­edge the mis­take and show empa­thy, to sin­cere­ly apol­o­gize and pos­si­bly, to offer resti­tu­tion. An apol­o­gy was con­sid­ered the most valuable.

In fact, how you respond to a cus­tomer when things go wrong can be a real test of your values.

One of our team, who reg­u­lar­ly bought a nat­ur­al hair con­di­tion­ing prod­uct was shocked when a recent treat­ment result­ed in bright red hair (she’s a brunette). When she called the store where she pur­chased it, the retail­er was more upset than she was, apol­o­gized pro­fuse­ly and promised to inves­ti­gate. With­in an hour, they called to say that a mis­take was made in pro­duc­tion when, instead of con­di­tion­er, hen­na was put in the jar. When asked what they could do to make this bet­ter, my col­league said she’d appre­ci­ate a free jar of the right prod­uct and noth­ing more because they took respon­si­bil­i­ty for their mis­take and tried to do every­thing they could to make it right.

I loved this sto­ry because it shows invest­ing in your cul­ture and val­ues helps you to take care of your cus­tomers even when things go wrong.

And things will always go wrong. Each time is a moment of truth and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to enhance, rather than hurt, the rela­tion­ship with your customer.

The Chal­lenge

• From 0 to 10, how would you rate your com­pa­ny when it comes to cus­tomer obsession?
• What has to hap­pen to be a 10 or notably clos­er to a 10?

Addi­tion­al Podcasts

Episode 111: What is NPS 3.0 and how can you bring it to life in your company?

Episode 78: 4 ques­tions lead­er­ship teams need to ask their customers

Addi­tion­al Blogs

Why you need to upgrade to NPS 3.0

Nev­er for­get who’s the boss: the customer

How to keep cus­tomers hap­py by antic­i­pat­ing their needs

Your cus­tomer expe­ri­ence depends on the lit­tle things

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achiev­ing lead­ers to have it all – a great busi­ness and a reward­ing life. Con­tact us for sim­ple and impact­ful advice. No BS. No fluff.