The Customer is the Real Boss

One of the most important questions in business is its purpose.  If one cannot answer the question, ‘Why are you in business?’ everything else will be very hard work.  Mrs. Sumathi Singaravadivel (1986, EEE),  who is an award-winning entrepreneur, describes what motivates her. 

Sumathi Singaravadivel (1986, EEE)

Introduction

I graduated with a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from PSG College of Technology.  I am an entrepreneur in the supply chain and distribution business based out of Thanjavur.  My business is called LPG Distribution System and we distribute cylinders.  I am proud on behalf of my company and my hard working associates to say that we have received many awards for customer excellence.

I wish to share our lessons learned on customer excellence, here with you.  I strongly believe that whatever business you may be in, by definition, you will be dealing with customers, and thus if you make customer experience and customer excellence a core practice, you will have a key element of success in your arsenal.

Importance of Customer Experience

Sam Walton, the legendary founder of the Walmart superstores, once said:  “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."

To use an analogy, one can imagine a business to be akin to an online portal. Customers are in the front end, company employees are in the middle tier and the employer is at the back end. We all know from our own experience that if the web pages we visit are not user friendly, impressive, informative, current and attractive, we will not visit the website again.

Similar to this, employees in an organization should be willing to serve with a smile, provide the customer a great experience, should have the thorough knowledge about the product they are selling or servicing and should be empowered with the ability to supply the customer’s needs and wants.

It is not enough to ‘check the box’ in terms of a customer service process.  If the customer is not satisfied they will never come back. The core of good customer service is providing the customers more than what they expect and to give them a wow experience.

Only excellent customer service will help the organization to retain the existing customers and to get new customers.

Building a foundation for world class customer experience

There are several key elements for building a foundation for world-class customer experience including focus on recruiting and training that are explained here.

Hiring for the Attitude

When hiring new employees, we need to be sure to select the one who is willing to go the extra mile over someone with greater technical skills. Attitude is important than aptitude. I have found in my experience that it is much easier to increase the technical skills of an employee but is difficult to change their attitude.

Employees who excel at customer care have a natural desire to serve and express genuine empathy when conversing with upset customers.

Once a young female candidate approached me and requested me to give her a job. She was a school dropout and she told me that she doesn’t know anything about computer. I asked her whether she is willing to learn, she said yes. I appointed her and within few months she learnt the entire process.  She is one of the very successful employees at my company.

During our school years we had a few courses in business management in addition to our courses in engineering.  When we were younger, we focused on the engineering side of our studies and paid cursory attention to management insights. Now, after all these years, I recollect and value what we were taught then about employee turnover and what various best practices we need to put into place to ensure that we retain our best employees.

The opposite of this is also true.  Netflix is a popular online video streaming service in the west.  I highly recommend reading a publicly available presentation by the CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings.  He talks about how we proactively transition employees who do not fit the innovation and customer service mindset at Netflix.

Thus both insights are valuable - a person with positive attitude is an asset for our company. Treat them well and retain them.  And a person who does not fit the culture of your company, be gracious, but help them find a different opportunity.

Training the Employee

George Patton, the great World War II general, famously said: "The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war."

Employees, who are properly trained will have professional customer service skills, they can satisfy the customer and gain their loyalty. This helps the business retain customers and improve profits. It costs less to retain loyal customers than to acquire new ones. Satisfied customers will trust us and they will refer about our company to their neighbors, friends and relatives. Investing on Employees training will only fetch fortune for our company.

Here, I would like to introduce to you the concept of Net Promoter Score, created by the management consultant, Bain & Company.  If you ask you customers only one question, it would be this.  Will you recommend our business to your friends and colleagues?  The net promoter score is the difference between those who say yes and those who say no.  Business research has proved that this is the best predictor of how well your customer service is doing.

In some organization the policies of the management will tie the hands of the employee. Therefore it is equally important that management also needs training. Employee empowerment allows staff members to make decisions without consulting their bosses or managers. By being allowed to make choices and participate on a more responsible level, employees become emotionally bonded company. They often view themselves as representatives of the company. This helps in redress the customer complaints fast.

A great example of this empowerment is the Ritz Carlton hotel chain.  At the Ritz Carlton every employee at the hotel from the manager to the janitor are empowered to make decisions unto a certain monetary amount.  If they are faced with the customer, and they need to address a customer complaint, they are empowered to assist the customer, without checking in with their supervisory chain of command.

Closer to home, in our own organization, I very much take the attitude that I will not isolate myself and sit inside the cabin. I am constantly at the front desk and share the work with my staff.

I try and not interfere when they are handling the customers. Only when it goes beyond their limit to handle the customer I will take assist them. In some situation our staff will handle the situation better than us. They have trained me several times.

We mutually teach each other

The management consultant Phil Kight teaches what is called ‘above the line’ behavior.  That is, given any situation, we all have a choice - we can either behave above the line or below the line. Below the line is destructive behavior.  Above the line is constructive behavior.  Above the line builds a better culture.

Using this as an example, I aspire to be a role model for my staff. More than what they learn from training they tend to learn from observing how others behave. If their managers are a disorganized mess, so will the staff. If others have a negative attitude, so do the rest. If we hide the truth and cut corners, so will the staff.

On the other hand, if we can be calm, confident, hardworking, meticulous, and fair and a problem-solver, then each and everyone of the staff will emulate that behavior.

Gaining total customer satisfaction

We know that satisfied customers will buy more of our stuff thus generating higher profits. How are we going to satisfy the customers? First we must identify the need of the customer.  In our LPG distribution system, timely delivery of cylinders with quality and quantity is the prime requirement of the customers. 

Our brand promise is that the product will be delivered within 48 hours.

The key factors that are involved in executing the Brand promise include:

1.  Inventory Management

2.  Delivery system including Delivery Men and Mechanized Vehicles.

3.  Climatic Conditions.

Only when the key factors, which play major roles in our organization, work together it can result in customer satisfaction.

Keep measuring the performance. Give incentives to the delivery staff that help to improve the measure.

In our business customer satisfaction is not possible always. We are distributing subsidized product, which is meant only for domestic purpose.

Some of the customers who try to divert that for commercial purpose will hit the landmine of dissatisfaction frequently. In a different chapter, my classmate Subramaniam will be discussing ethics in business practice.  I highly encourage you to read that.

On the subject of business ethics, we cannot remain silent thinking that the customer is always right. We have to be tough with those customers if they are not willing to correct themselves, knowing well that they are going to spread negative publicity about the company. To overcome this negative impact, our customer service has to be exceptionally good.

Customer Loyalty

Satisfied Customers are like a rear view mirror who will give the picture about the past. Only the loyal customers will predict the future of our business. Satisfied customers will migrate to your competitor if they are going to give a better service than what you give.

In our organization we used to conduct lots of customer loyalty programs. We used to go to colonies and will organize free service camps. During festivals we used to join them and celebrate it. We used to organize lots of game shows and make them enjoy the day with us. As a part of our social responsibility we organize medical camps, educate the customers about safety and conservation.

Such initiatives help us a lot to interact personally with most of our customers and gain their loyalty. Loyal customers are our brand ambassadors.

Customer Complaints

Customer complaints are free survey that helps us to identify where we need to focus and improve.

For every customer complaint, there are six other customers who have remained silent. If we try to solve the problem pertaining to complaining customer it is going to solve similar problem faced by many other, silent customers.

Customer complaints help us to learn what we lack.

If you do not listen to the customer complaint and solve it, the customer will take their business elsewhere.

If you put utmost effort to solve the issue it will increase the credibility of the company.

Summary

As you can see, I not only value my degree and learning from college, but I am quite passionate about my business and my colleagues.  But above all, I am passionate about customer excellence.  Over the years, on the road to being recognized for this area of my business, we have learned many lessons.  I have tried to distill those lessons and share them with you here.  Please remember, the customer is the real boss!

About the author:

Sumathi Singaravadivel is an entrepreneur and head of a distribution agency called LPG Distribution System based in Thanjavur.  She graduated from PSG College of Technology with a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering.