Driving growth: Are you making your customers happy?

Enterprises should be asking this question all the time – especially in these times of pandemic and economic hardships. If they were to ask customers about happiness, most of us would probably say, “Certainly not!”

From our cellular service provider to automobile and appliances we all have lots of unhappiness all around whether it is about quality of service, performance or costs. I have yet to come across a customer who is totally in bliss with all the purchases he or she had made in life.

Every time my car goes for its regular service, it comes back with another problem that was not there before. Recently I had sent the car for AC problems, which took the dealership more than 4 days to rectify, only to find that they had not fixed some parts right leading to gas leakages. After a week the AC failed again in the peak summer. The car went back for the same work and they claimed to have resolved it after another two days. One week, and the AC started sending hot air again, and this time they took even more time to diagnose it and they claimed that the compressor had to be replaced! Even an entry-level car A/c performs far better than this top-end luxury car. In this case, it appeared so. Moreover, these compressors come with a price tag of a Nano.

You would imagine that either the company had lost the quality edge altogether or that the dealer had made a grave mistake in repairing. Whatever, the customer is unhappy to the core.

In businesses, one of the key aspects for success, and even survival, is having a good handle on how your customers are responding to your business, your employees, your products, and your service. It is important to know if you have more happy customers than unhappy ones. You also need to know what makes them happy and perhaps unhappy. That will help you figure out what needs improvement and know the drivers of customer delight. While helping clients with strategy execution we often seek the answers to such questions as where the business is headed, what the critical measures of the customer value proposition are, what the key value chain elements that drive the value proposition are, and so on. These are fundamental to knowing how your business can make customers happy.

In businesses, one of the key aspects for success, and even survival, is having a good handle on how your customers are responding to your business

In this respect three questions are pivotal: Are we delivering what we have promised? Is this enough to meet their expectations and make them happy about our offerings? What lead indicators will tell us these?

These questions raise the bar for an organisation in putting together a proper system for tracking customer satisfaction. If a business is in the dark about how customers feel, it is unlikely that it will ever resolve any of their problems. If the business cannot stay on top of service to customers, it is unlikely to make them happy. Having a plan for how the organisation is going to evaluate whether or not it is meeting its customers’ needs is critical. Companies use several methods to find the satisfaction levels: Surveys, incentives for regular feedback, customer calls, and many indirect methods like observation research and marketing fairs. The point is, regardless of the method used, the business needs to ascertain whether or not its customers are happy.

Apart from understanding how happy your customers are with you, you need to train your employees (and your dealer or affiliate employees) to follow a well-planned service standard. Following the policy manual ditto is also not a good idea as oftentimes there will be incidents not covered in policy manuals. For instance, almost all service-driven companies insist on delivering right the first time. All manuals talk of how to treat customers right in terms of softer skills.

The good thing about making customers happy is in the growth of business from referrals. In fact, some clients we work with measure the satisfaction of service levels by how much extra business comes from the same customer and how many referrals they get from existing customers. I am convinced my car company in India does not have any of these measures in place. If your existing customers are not recommending you to friends and family, then there is much more you will have to do differently.

It is also important to talk directly to your customers, and get a feel for what they want from the company. Customers are not right always and you cannot do everything they want, but you will be able to see the direction the market is moving in. Do not get caught unawares like the music industry when Napster happened. You may want to examine what you are offering today in view of the changing requirements or demands of your customers, but within the capability or business model.