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Customer Focused Business Practices:

The organization works against itself because "customer focus" is really unprofitable customer appeasement.

However, in the name of "good customer service," many businesses try to be all things to all people.  

We were purchasing a residential garage door opener that, because of the design of the garage, needed to be a commercial model. 

We stated the commercial need to the salesmen in the first sentence. It was outside the salesman’s mindset that a customer would not buy on price alone. 

Long story short, we could not get the engineering challenges resolved until we called the manager, who coordinated with the factory engineers. 

Being unable to meet our stated needs, may merely be an example of poor qualifying and listening by the salesman. 

However, we suspect that the organization did not have a two-track system to work with the customer who buys on quality and the one who buys on price—which are very different needs. One wants cheap, skip the details and give it to me. The other wants their individual situation handled appropriately—and in our experience is willing to pay for it. If the salesman’s job is to sell, he did his job. However, if it is to sell what the customer wants and needs, an entirely different dimension is added to the picture—and a new business challenge.

The knee-jerk solution is to "train" the salesman. However, if you sell on two-tracks, you need two delivery and service tracks—or to refer the customer elsewhere. 

After two opener failures, the organization finally sent out their commercial installers (who we requested in the first place). We’ve had no more failures. The company "ate" the mistake. They could have made more money, charged a consulting fee, and not had to send out installers at no charge twice—or they could have passed on a money-losing sale.

Successful sales is an external business focus. Successful service and delivery is an internal business focus—two very different orientations, communication styles and paces of work. 

The amount of coordination, thinking through an implementation is daunting to the externally focused. An external focus is difficult for the delivery/service people who are often so involved in procedures they can’t see how the procedures impact the customer. The classic "company at war with itself."

Beginning to treat root causes of these contradictions is more straight-forward than one might think. 

However, many organizations only address symptoms of the difficulties. They may use new marketing plans, firing, training or "re-structuring" tactics. However, these approaches fail to address the contradictions and real day-to-day problems that the people doing the work see every day. Instead of using existing, undeveloped assets, either-or debates develop that generally focus on differences between people—not difficulties inherent in the system.

A genuine customer focus is not only knowing why your customers buy, but building a system that supports your buyers and makes you money. 

Where do your employees invest their energy?

Ironically there’s high energy at both ends of the pole—and just going through the motions in the middle.

 If your company is stuck in the middle or at the petty dispute level, you may be experiencing a disconnect between your business and people—both customers and employees.