By Hank Moore/Corporate Strategist™
In today’s highly competitive business environment, every dynamic of a successful organization must be toward ultimate customers. Customer Focused Management goes beyond service and quality. There is no business that cannot improve its customer orientation. Every organization has customers, clients, stakeholders, financiers, volunteers, supporters or other categories of “affected constituencies.”
Customer Focused Management is a concept that goes far beyond just smiling, answering queries and communicating with buyers. It transcends customer service training. In today’s highly competitive business environment, every dynamic of a successful organization must be toward ultimate customers.
Companies must change their focus from products and processes toward the values that they share with customers. Customer Focused Management goes beyond just the dynamics of service and quality.
Everyone with whom you conduct business is a customer or referral source of someone else. The service that we get from some people, we pass along to others. Customer service is a continuum of human behaviors shared with those whom we meet.
Customers are the lifeblood of every business. Employees depend upon customers for their paychecks. Yet, you wouldn’t know the correlation when poor customer service is rendered. Employees of companies behave as though customers are a bother, do not heed their concerns and do not take suggestions for improvement.
There is no business that cannot undergo some improvement in its customer orientation. Every organization has customers, clients, stakeholders, financiers, volunteers, supporters or other categories of “affected constituency.”
Key Components include:
Clarifies customers
Specifies results and performance expectations
Factors customer satisfaction and company’s customer orientation
Links budget allocation to output delivery
Requires performance reporting
Promotes performance analysis and continuous quality improvement
Encourages new ways of optimizing human capital
Has capacity building
Encourages system wide approach
Incentives are essential
Internal ownership and commitment are necessary
Performance data management and reporting
Building High-Performance Teams
Change Management
Coaching and Counseling
Conflict Management
Creativity
Dealing with Difficult People
Decision Making and Problem Solving
Effective Customer Service
Envisioning the Future
Leadership in a New Era
Managing Stress and Change
Results-Based Performance Management
Transition to Supervision
Workplace Ethics
Evaluation and Accountability Planning
Evaluation Studies
Evaluation Tools and Training
Customer Focused Management means:
- Establishing clear organizational vision, mission and priorities, which are translated into a four-year framework of goals, outputs, indicators, strategies and resources.
- Encouraging an organizational and management culture that promotes innovation, learning, accountability, and transparency.
- Delegating authority, empowering managers and holding them accountable for results.
- Focusing on achieving results, through strategic planning, regular monitoring of progress, evaluation of performance, and reporting on performance.
- Creating supportive mechanisms, policies and procedures, building and improving on what is already in place.
- Sharing information and knowledge, learning lessons, and feeding these back into improving decision-making and performance.
- Optimizing human resources and building capacity among staff and national partners to manage for results.
- Making the best use of financial resources in an efficient manner to achieve results.
- Strengthening and diversifying partnerships at all levels towards achieving results.
- Responding to external situations and needs within the organizational mandate.
Quotes on Courtesy, Customer Service, Corporate Manners,
Abstracted from Hank Mooreís new book, ìPower Stars to Light the Flameî
“The customer is always right.” H. Gordon Selfridge
“The greater man, the greater courtesy.” Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
“There are two little words that can open any door with ease. One little word is thanks, and the other is please. Good manners are never out of style.” Pinky Lee, 1950’s children’s TV star
“We are born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society. It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help. Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.” Judith Martin, (Miss Manners)
“We don’t bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don’t dress well and we’ve no manners.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
“Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.”
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
“Do thou restrain the haughty spirit in thy breast, for better far is gentle courtesy.” Homer
“Don’t forget to say please and thank you.” Captain Kangaroo, children’s TV star
“Don’t flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
“Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.” Jacques Maritain (1882-1973)
“All legislation, all government, all society is founded upon the principle of mutual concession, politeness, comity, courtesy; upon these everything is based. Let him who elevates himself above humanity, above its weaknesses, its infirmities, its wants, its necessities, say, if he pleases, I will never compromise; but let no one who is not above the frailties of our common nature disdain compromises.” Henry Clay (1777-1852)
“Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several–from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy.” Jean de la Bruyere (1645-1696)
“Don’t reserve your best behavior for special occasions. You can’t have two sets of manners, two social codes – one for those you admire and want to impress, another for those whom you consider unimportant. You must be the same to all people.” Lillian Eichler Watson
“Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve. Run around with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be strengthened.”
–Stanley Walker
Hank Moore is Corporate Strategist ™ and Futurist. For more information: www.hankmoore.com or call 713-668-0664 or email Hank at [email protected]
