The Hidden Power of Your Customers: Four Keys to Growing Your Business Through Existing Customers

Chapter 9

CULTURE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE

The companies profiled in the case studies in this book all have one quality in common: a customer-service culture. And all of the customer-focused leaders I interviewed for these studies shared similar approaches with me, whether they head a large company or a small business. These can be distilled into the following guidelines:

• Listen to customers to understand their needs.
• Initiate a customer feedback process (formal or informal) and use what you learn from it to take action and make changes.
• Think through the customer experience and work with customer-facing employees to serve customers well at each touch point.
• Assemble a clear set of values focused around employee and customer success, along with a great employee experience.
• Have a sense of urgency, and care for every customer throughout the organization—from founder or president to customer-facing staff to behind-the-scenes employees.
• Interact with employees continuously about what service looks like and what their customers need.
• Make customer service part of the company DNA, which means look for it in the people you hire, your suppliers and partners, and your management team—who should lead by serving.