Strong Leadership is Essential to Building a Customer-Focused Business

Is your company a customer-focused organization? Many claim to be but actually don’t focus enough of their time or development budget on customer service skills. Ensuring a great customer experience is the best thing you can do to gain repeat business and it’s worth devoting some effort to improve your skills and those of people in your organization.I’ve assembled a collection of articles and blog posts with valuable information and advice on developing a truly customer-focused organization.Research: 10 Traits of Innovative Leaders. Harvard Business Review: “Have a strong customer focus. What was merely interesting to the customer became fascinating to these individuals. They sought to get inside the customer’s mind. They networked with clients and asked incessant questions about their needs and wants.”Focus on Customer Share not Market Share to Grow Your Business. Small Business Trends: “Think about a group of people who know, like, and trust your business and products. Hmm, let’s see. Someone who is aware of your business and knows about you.  Someone who likes your business and products. And someone who trusts that you can help them with what they need. That sounds an awful lot like an existing customer. Yet, when it comes to existing customers, many business owners and managers become complacent.”Leadership Behaviors Required to Create a Customer-Focused Culture. Business 2 Community: “Train Beyond the Task. To be truly customer focused, arm your team with skills that put the customer first. Train employees on the task and technology required to serve customers responsively and quickly. However simply being technically competent is not enough to take care of today’s customer. Employees must be adept at relationship building, empathy, and effective listening. Customers want a real person who is skilled at handling issues the first time. Check your training and assess if it is updated to handle the ever changing fickle, savvy, demanding and impatient customer.”Improve Customer Service, Increase Sales (Infographic). Nimble: “Of course, when you don’t provide great customer service to all of your customers, and not just a select few, the story is not a pretty one. Especially in our social media driven world. 20% of your dissatisfied customers will use social media to air their grievances; 46% for those aged 24 and under. 78% of consumers are likely to walk away from buying because of poor customer service. 89% of consumers who experienced bad customer service are likely to go to a competitor.”How Your Leadership Focus Drives The Customer Experience. Content Loop: “If you want to deliver consistently great service and a sustainably great customer experience, your leadership focus needs to be different from what’s required to maintain production capacity in manufacturing. This is because your organization’s ability to provide service is overwhelmingly affected by how engaged -- how professionally ‘‘alive’’ -- the employees are who come in contact with customers. Employee engagement, in turn, is propelled by organizational leadership.”Need help developing your leaders’ Customer Focus? Contact us to get help with your organization’s leadership development.Success Labs is a leadership development and management consulting firm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to explore their business potential and improve their company and cultural performance. Contact us to get proactive about your people strategy.