Successful organisations are customer focused! They plan to meet customer needs, wants and expectations.

1. CUSTOMER FOCUS Successful organisations are customer focused! They plan to meet customer needs, wants and expectations.

2. Escalating environmental change requiring more imagination/intellect/ creativity. Structuring products/service around customer interests. De-construction/ decentralisation- effective resource and information sharing. Entrepreneurial managers and employees. Effective internal supplier customer chains. PERPETUAL REVOLUTION Point of difference. Competitive edge. Current and future success. Encouragement and reward systems for creativity and innovation. Internal and external relationships/ networks. Feedback. NEW IDEAS Market research. Plans and strategies for meeting and anticipating customer interests. Legislative compliance and ethical practice. Sustainability. THE CUSTOMER DRIVEN ORGANISATION

3. PITFALLS COMPLACENCY KILLS BUSINESS!

4. CUSTOMERS Customers are people, work-teams, businesses or other organisations which utilise goods and services from another. This may be in exchange for money (payment) but does not necessarily involve the exchange of money. We must know who our customers are, where they come from, their needs and their buying intentions.

5. CHANGING ATTITUDES The customer, not the organisation, should determine product style, product quality and theservice offered.

6. MARKET IDENTIFICATION Market research and analysis – vital activities – identify your customers, their needs and their prospective purchasing intentions

7. ASK THE CUSTOMER Never assume that you know what the customer wants or will buy.

8. Customer research Product design Supply/sale/deliverySupply/sale/delivery Other inputs and constraints Manufacturing or processing operations Manufacturing or processing operations Wholesale operations Refining operations Retail operations End user Internal customers/suppliers Stakeholder/shareholder customer interests THE SUPPLIER/CUSTOMER CHAIN INTERFACES INTERFACES

9. EMPLOYEES AND SHAREHOLDERS Organisations have customers, stakeholders and shareholders. They all have an interest in your organisation and its performance. Employees are internal customers. They are also stakeholders. Shareholders (owners) have a direct financial interest in the organisation’s profits.

10. CUSTOMER TYPES Customers are either external or internal to your organisation. External customers buy or use the goods and services of your organisation and are not employed by or directly associated with the selling organisation. Internal customers are the people, groups or teams in an organisation to whom completed work, resources or information is passed by fellow employees.

11. GIVING LESS THAN 100% • The repercussions of giving less than 100% • If 99.9% is good enough, then, in America: • 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily. • 114,500 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped/year. • 18,322 pieces of mail will be mishandled/hour. • 2,000,000 documents will be lost by the IRS this year. • 2.5 million books will be shipped with the wrong covers. • Two planes landing at Chicago’s O’Hare airport will be unsafe every day. • 315 entries in Webster’s dictionary will be misspelled. • 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written this year. • 880,000 credit cards in circulation will have incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strips. • 103,260 income tax returns will be processed incorrectly during the year. • 5.5 million cases of soft drinks produced will be flat. • 291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly. • 3,056 copies of tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal will be missing one of the three sections.

12. FOR INTERACTIVE DISCUSSION How can an organisation encourage customer awareness in employees like cleaners, maintenance staff, storekeepers and pay administrators, whose work never brings them into contact with external customers? What benefits should flow on from making backroom staff more aware of external customers? Is it possible for an organisation to provide excellent customer service without every employee having a job they feel makes a real contribution?

13. WORK-PLACE CULTURE Effective and efficient information sharing at all levels within the organisation is essential to fostering a customer focused work-place culture. A customer focused culture is one in which excellent customer service is accepted as the norm.

14. WHO PAYS YOUR WAGES?

15. FOR INTERACTIVE DISCUSSION Who pays for your equipment, machinery,computers, stationery? Who pays the maintenance divisions’ wages? Who pays the wages of the person who cleans the toilets?

16. TEAMS • Teams: • Have a shared purpose and goals • Are able to take advantage of collective andshared skills of members • Effective teams have: • Strong leadership • Support for each other and the organisation • The ability to work together to achieve greater results than individuals working toward the same objectives

17. CUSTOMER NEEDS, WANTS AND EXPECTATIONS

18. PRODUCT SALE PLUS SERVICE In most instances, when customers make a purchase they have an expectation that the purchase will be accompanied by an associated service of acceptable quality and standard. This is called bundling.

19. THE SERVICE FACTOR Customer service can be defined as: The range of help and support offered to customers before, during and after a sale has been made. It begins with the first contact and only ends when the customer ceases interaction with you.

20. SERVICE COMPONENTS • First impressions • Moments of truth • Response skills • Communication / interpersonal skills • Active listening and questioning • Product knowledge • Conflict management • Problem solving • Negotiation • Last impressions • Professionalism. • Customer service ends only when the customer is satisfied

21. PERCEPTIONS OF VALUE • ‘You get what you pay for.’ • Customers purchase: • Features • Benefits • They want: • Value for money • The product/service bundle must meet the customer’s value proposition

22. BENEFITS • Products and product descriptions have • attached features and benefits. • Customers do not purchase product features, they purchase benefits. • They ask: • What’s in it for me? • How will I benefit?

23. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS Relationships imply trust and dependability. Effective internal and external customer relationships are the key to business success.

24. FOR INTERACTIVE DISCUSSION What level of customer service doyou think youshould receive from your internal suppliers? What level do you consistently give your internal and external customers? How do you know that they are happy with the service you provide?

25. RETURN BUSINESS Value adding comprises the actions an organisation or supplier takes to ensure that customers perceive their products/services as value for money -because they provide something extra. Value added products and services contribute to relationship building

26. FOR INTERACTIVE DISCUSSION How can a business exploit, for example, old‑fashioned snobbery? How can an intangible such as after‑sales service be made into a value added sales component?

27. INNOVATION Utilise the innovative and creative talents of your employees to design and develop methods by which your organisation can improve/increase sales and profits.

28. RELATIONSHIPS AND LOYALTY Client/customer loyaltymeans that a client/customer retains some sense of commitment to the seller; some notion of satisfaction that will cause them to return on the next occasion when they want similar goods or services.

29. ATTITUDE Your attitude and that of every person in the organisation determines the extent of customer loyalty. Treat every customer as an appreciating asset Provide top quality as perceived by the customer Build relationships Create uniqueness Under promise - over deliver

30. Long term profit EQUALS revenue from continuing satisfied customer relationships MINUS costs. (Tom Peters) Monitoring, measurement and evaluation of processes and outputs are part of the continuous improvement cycle. If you do not monitor, measure and evaluate you will never know how well, or how poorly the organisation is meeting its goals. CUSTOMER INFORMATION

31. CURRENT INFORMATION • Measurements • The results of customer feedback - should be widely shared so that everyone in the organisation is aware of customer satisfaction levels. • Post key customer satisfaction measures and the results of current surveys (internal and external) everywhere in the organisation. • Encourage self-monitoring by employees.

32. SURVEYS AND RESULTS Take care when designing and administering surveys Target your respondents correctly Ask the hard questions and act on the answers

33. QUALITY PERCEPTIONS You are not the customer! What the customer perceives as quality is not necessarily what the supplier considers a quality product or service.

34. ENCOURAGE EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE Every job description should include a qualitative description of the person-connection to the customer. Link role and task KPIs to customer service practice. Use performance evaluations and appraisals to assess and improve customer orientation. Recognise and reward high levels of internal and external customer service.

35. DISSATISFACTION ENCOURAGE YOUR CUSTOMERS TO COMPLAIN WHEN CUSTOMERS COMPLAIN THANK THEM FOR DOING SO

36. COMPLAINTS – YOUR LIFELINE Never assume that because no-one is complaining everything is going well. "Think of customer complaints as the voice of God and accept them." Konosuke Matsushita Matsushita Electric Industries (National Panasonic)Japan.

37. USING DATA Plan to act on the data you collect. Collecting data that is not used wastes time and resources. Follow through on your plan

38. IMPORTANCE ARE ALL YOUR CUSTOMERS AS VALUABLE AS EACH OTHER? A POINT WORTH CONSIDERING IS WHETHER YOU NEED OR WANT ALL THE CUSTOMERS YOU HAVE

39. FOR INTERACTIVE DISCUSSION Can you refuse to service unprofitable customers? Can Telstra and Australia Post refuse to serve non - profitable customers? Should you pay more attention to your bigger customers? Why persevere with insignificant or unprofitable customers?

40. PARETO’S RULE 80 percent of profits are likely to come from 20 percent of customers.

41. FOR INTERACTIVE DISCUSSION What happens to customer service when the extraordinary comes to be accepted as ordinary by the customer?

42. EXPECTATIONS IS THE CUSTOMER ALWAYS RIGHT? By virtue of the fact that the customer can choose not to use your product/service - YES! However, customer expectations are not always reasonable, or able to be serviced by your organisation. EDUCATE YOUR CUSTOMERS

43. MANAGING CUSTOMER SERVICE Customer service doesn’t just happen. Good customer service is dependent on your employees - your most valuable asset Look after your assets and they will look after your customers.

44. COMPETENT STAFF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD CUSTOMER PROCEDURES IS NOT INNATE An effective induction and training program, matched to appropriate performance appraisals will benefit you, your organisation and all the customer supplier interface members.

45. Customer driven organisations are successful organisations in which: Products, services and bundles are designed around customer interests and purchasing prospects Internal customer service is recognised as being of equal importance as external customer service Organisational plans and strategies for meeting customer needs and expectations are supported by management, staff, systems, technology and constant information gathering processes Customer feedback is constantly sought, recorded and analysed as part of the continuous improvement cycle and to solve problems efficiently Products and services are adjusted to meet customer expectations Staff are trained and empowered to meet customer expectations and to provide excellence in customer service Workplace culture supports quality and excellence at every interface of the supplier-customer chain SUMMARY