Don’t just talk about the buyer “focus”, live it – and you possess it

Leaders must put customers in the center of daily decisions and work.

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We hear the following all the time: “We need our leaders to” obsess “more about our customers and put customers in the center of daily decisions and work. What can we do that happen?”

Most people who express such concerns have already tried the usual director and other leaders to visit branches, they spend time on the call line listening to customer and complaints and mark occasional sales visits.

It seems that they will still ask the same issue again and again, it seems that “common things” do not work.

Buyer experience

We all know how important the customer’s experience is. Like J. Christopher Westland of the University of Illinois Chicago pointed to a recent magazine memberAbout 30 years of academic research showed a clear relationship between “superior customer experience” and all the following:

1. “Increased loyalty and customer retention”
2. more frequent and greater buying customers,
3. Stronger value of the brand,
4. Lighter new purchase of customer – at lower prices,
5. “Less Complies and Restore”,
6. Less atria among employees in customer service and
7. Improved company agility and resilience.

But not every organization realized how to provide top experiences of customers on a consistent basis. And often, this is because the management of the organization is focused elsewhere.

In fact, research suggests that most of the director spends very little time or focuses, customers. The data show that most are already working about 60 to 70 hours per week, and they can only do so much. The compositions consume almost three-quarters of a typical working day of the director.

There is not enough time for everyone

Detailed study Harvard Business School’s Michael E. Porter and Nitin NohriaCarefully drawing everyday activities of the 27 executive directors of the Grand Company during a period of 13 weeks and night, seven days a week – illustrates the point. Their study, published in Harvard Society (HBR), revealed that:

• “General directors are always involved and always needs to be done” with studies on average 9.7 hours of work every working day, several additional hours a day on most weekends and a few more hours of rest. “As these figures show that the job of the Director General is relentless,” Nohria and Porter write.
• A face-to-face interaction “took 61% working hours” learning participants, while another 24% was spent on electronic communication (who is dead to be dead?), And the remaining 15% on reading is responsible for written communication or telephone.
• “CEOS attends the endless course of the meeting, each of which can be completely different from the one before and the one that follows.” Porter and the Nohri reported, leaders in their study on average “37 meeting of sorted lengths” per week, consumes 72% of its total working hours each week.
• Customers? They are about 3% of the study group’s working hours each week.

This defines the problem, a large written. The solution, however, lies in specific steps leaders of C-apartments take (with the help of Staff chiefs) To integrate “focus” customers “in their daily routines and installed it in the DNA of their organizations.

What others do

So how do we get executive directors (other leaders) less about endless meetings and obsess about their customers?

The obvious place to start is, of course, by reducing the number and duration of meetings on their schedule. Nohria and Porter talk about it in length in their article “How Executive Directors manage over time. “And my colleague Deborah Lovich, a former associate for Forbes, too Provides great advice .

But it is only an introduction, releasing valuable time, applicable to a practically every leader at any level in every organization.

The big question is: What do you do with that free-free time? Answer should be: meet with customers. Press the meat. See what customers tell about your products and prices and those of your competitors. Just do it.

Here are some examples:

• In AmazonEach manager – including the founders and executive director Jeff Bezos, we were told to spend at least two days each year of Call Center “auxiliary (in words) Ziprecruiter)Customers with inquiries, orders, returns and technical support by phone, chat or e-mail. “
• In Dutch ship, Oregon-based expanding was started by Travis Boersma and its late brother, all regional shop operators and regional leaders are now needed to have practical experience working in a Dutch brochure shop before taking larger roles.
• At the end of last year, Home depot, The DII award company, returned a policy that has fallen during Covzija-19 pandemic. To wit: All corporate employees must put in the eight-hour shift of each quarter at the home depot store.
• In CaneThe fast casual dining chain is specialized for chicken fingers, based in Baton Rouge, the entire Todd tomb continues to be transferred as a cashier in his Louisiani Roomtovn. During the pandemic and post-pandemic lack of work, about 750 corporate officials has also done work in company stores.

Whether you are a senior executive director with a giant multinational corporation or start a small mom and pop job at a local shopping center, the best way to know what is on the minds of your customers is to talk to them, one on one.

One day quarter on the floor of the store, or one day per month, maybe everything you can spare. If you’re really honest with yourself, you’ll know that’s not enough.

In 2022 hbru memberVilliam V. (Bill) George, former director Medtronic, explains how and why he awarded his time during his age in the company’s medical devices. HIS Formula, which made him an “outlier,” HPP notes, was 30/30/30/10: 30% with customers, 30% with frontline embodyees, 30% with his fellow senior executives, and 10% with “external constituencies.”

It’s someone who is Cuck Centerric. I’m talking about.