The customer always acts to satisfy their interests by seeking what is, in their opinion, the highest quality at the very lowest cost. At the high end they select a Rolls- Royce or Bentley, at the lower end they choose between a KIA and Hyundai. Each customer decides what they consider the best value for the lowest price.

They care about themselves, about their desires and their lives. Your success depends on meeting customer needs and desires from their perspective, not yours. You must know them well and understand their real concerns. Here is how!

See your customers as they are, not as you wish them to be. All customers start with an awareness of a need. They then evaluate providers, select one, sort out payment options, purchase and use your product or service, repurchase, hopefully from you again and tell their friends how happy they are.

Most organizations break this customer process into unrelated parts that match company structure. Marketing and sales create awareness, evaluation, and buying decisions. Financial people handle the payables, credit screening, and billing. Procurement, shipping and receiving make sure the inventory is correct. However, your customers evaluate their total experience with your company as a whole. Causing dissatisfaction or inconvenience in one area jeopardizes the entire relationship. Your entire organization is your customer service department and failing to realize this can create a major competitive disadvantage.

My wife always joked about paying $15 for a CD that had only one song she wanted to hear. She would visit a retail store, sort thru the racks then buy a CD that had about a dozen songs. She then went to the checkout, paid and played it.

Now she can buy the single song she wants on-line rather than purchasing an entire CD at a store. The familiar profit model of the music business has changed forever and, for my wife, an annoyance of the old model has been eliminated.

These customer centric changes have made some music business models less profitable but forged opportunities for other innovative companies. What could change in your business that would give your customer more of what they really want?

To answer that question look closely at your most profitable customers and ask. everyone, research, development, suppliers, sales, marketing, servicing, credit, complaints, repairs, shipping, and technical assistance to help. A team can best describe a customer experiences and will discover how to improve it.

Authors McGrath and MacMillan in Market Busters point out that Amazon.com simplified the book-buying experience and even added a way for customers to resell used volumes. Coinstar, Inc. got customers to happily accept 91 cents for every dollar in coins by conveniently installed sorting machines in supermarkets.

Customer service leaps were made when CarsDirect.com. decided to assist buyers through the complete process of evaluating and purchasing an auto on-line according to McGrath and MacMillan. And when the Speedpass was introduced at ExxonMobil it made the customer service experience more pleasant. Stations using Speedpass gained 6 percent more market share than other stations.

Outstanding customer service provided by your “organizations” service team will cause raving fans to reward you beyond expectations. It’s not about your business. It’s about them!

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