Never Forget Who’s the Boss - The Customer

“There is only one boss. The cus­tomer. And he can fire every­body in the com­pa­ny from the chair­man on down, sim­ply by spend­ing his mon­ey some­where else.” — Sam Wal­ton, sin­gle dime store own­er who par­layed his com­pa­ny into Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer.

In the busi­ness of work and desire to stream­line process­es, increase prof­itabil­i­ty, and engage with col­leagues, do you for­get who is your boss?

I’m the per­son who pays your bills – and your salary.

I’m the per­son who exists for you to please.

I’m not your man­ag­er, your CEO, your board of direc­tors or shareholders.

I am your customer.

If, in your dai­ly deci­sions and actions, you for­get that I exist, that you work for me — that I employed you to solve one of my prob­lems, we’re going to have problem.

Time and time again, busi­ness­es get into trou­ble if peo­ple see the boss as the per­son they report to, or who signs the pay cheques. As a result, they make bad deci­sions, and lay­er in extra process­es and bureau­cra­cy that the cus­tomer doesn’t care about — or want to pay for.

So how do we con­tin­u­al­ly remem­ber who’s the boss, and that our job is to please the customer?

It’s sim­ple: you must have some sort of data con­tin­u­al­ly report­ing back to every­one in the com­pa­ny about how hap­py the cus­tomer is. In fact, many of the com­pa­nies I work with cir­cu­late cus­tomer feed­back through the entire com­pa­ny on a dai­ly or week­ly basis that helps keep it top of mind.

To mea­sure cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion at dif­fer­ent points in the trans­ac­tion or rela­tion­ship, many use the Net Pro­mot­er Sys­tem (NPS), which gives not only a score of how well you are doing, but infor­ma­tion on what cus­tomer likes, and the things that would make them more even more thrilled to con­tin­ue to be your customer.

The Sys­tem becomes an auto­mat­ic reminder that the cus­tomer is the boss — and, with cus­tomer-fac­ing teams, becomes a game to con­tin­u­al­ly fix the things that make the cus­tomer crazy.

And remem­ber the wise words of auto­mo­tive pio­neer Hen­ry Ford…

“It is not the employ­er who pays the wages. Employ­ers only han­dle the mon­ey. It is the cus­tomer who pays the wages.” — Hen­ry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company