Do Customers Like Doing Business with You?
by Sally Mizerak

Marketing people talk about the "four Ps - product, price, place and promotion. These factors influence the decision to buy.

There is a fifth "P" that probably has as much influence on the decision to buy as any of the preceding elements. That "P" is the person - often the salesperson-who links the customer with the buying experience. A sale can be lost, even when the product is exactly what the customer wants if the customer doesn't connect with the salesperson.

Relationships Count

Think about a significant purchase you made recently where you felt comfortable with the person you bought from. The purchase might have been a car, a house, or a major insurance policy. What made you comfortable with this person? What words would you use to describe him or her? Helpful? Interested? Knowledgeable? Trustworthy? How important was this person to your decision to buy? Do you feel that you can go back to this person if there is a problem with your purchase?

Selling Depends on Connection

Any business which requires personal contact at some point in the customer process needs to be concerned about the people who provide that contact. In the case of a service business, such as consulting, accounting or legal service s, the person IS the product. The ability of that person to connect with the customer and establish a positive relationship determines whether there will be a sale.

Selling is very much an interactive process, particularly when it involves helping customers solve problems. If we are selling ourselves in some way, we need to establish rapport. We need to enter into a partnership where the customer is willing to trust us enough to share what may be very sensitive information and to respect the solutions we offer. Without openness and rapport, accurate diagnosis cannot happen and solutions will not be accepted.

For many years, I patronized a local pharmacy because of their personal service . I knew their prices were a little bit higher that the chains but the pharmacist knew me, seemed glad to see me when I came in and helped solve lots of little problems when my children were young. Saving a few cents on a prescription wasn't worth losing that.

When the pharmacist retired, he was replaced by another, younger pharmacist with no sense of what it meant to connect with customers. She would talk on the phone while she waited on us, frown at us when we asked for advice and talk loudly to other associates in the store as though there were no customers standing at the counter. Now price mattered because the service I had prized was not there. It didn't take long for me to find another pharmacy.

  Service keeps customers

Management guru, Tome Peters, urges us to consider some research done by the Forum Corporation in Boston . Fifteen percent of those who switched to a competitor did so because the "found a better product." Another 15% changed suppliers because they found a "cheaper product" elsewhere. Twenty percent left because of the "lack of contact and individual attention" from the prior supplier and 49% left because "contact from the prior supplier's personnel was poor in quality." It seems fair to combine the last two categories, after which we could say 70% defected because they didn't like the human side of doing business with the previous product or service provider.

Think Outside-In

A customer-driven company thinks from the outside-in. It is concerned about how to improve the relationship - the involvement experience - for the customer. And it lets the customer decide what constitutes improvement.

Customer Service expert Karl Albrecht notes the difficulty that companies have in focusing their attention on customers. Albrecht cites the words companies use to avoid calling people customers, words such as policyholders, patients, rate payers and passengers - a practice which he says depersonalizes customers and creates a perception of them as powerless objects.

So what is customer value? Value is the importance a customer attaches to the combination of product and experience, tangible and intangible, involved in dealing with you. Take the example of gasoline. Gasoline is the product. But the experience of obtaining that product counts for more than the features of the product as long as the product is competitively priced. This combination of product and experience equals value in the customer's mind.and that's where it counts.

Value is a perception. It lives in the mind of the customer. Often it lives in comparison to other options. It doesn't have to be true.

The Purpose of Any Organization is to Serve Customers

What do you measure to determine your success with customers? If you measure transactions completed, then you are in the transaction business. If you were in the customer business, you would be measuring the things that matter to your customers. Not the things you THINK matter, but the things they tell you matter.

Many salespeople and companies get very good at doing the wrong things. The hotel industry is a case in point. Hotel chains have gotten very good at outdoing each other in amenities such as phones in the bathroom or extra choices in the mini-bar. But business travelers have indicated that what they really want are quite, smoke-free rooms with good reading lights, comfortable chairs and desks with computer access, preferably wireless. Women want skirt hangers, not just suit hangers and ironing boards, irons and extra plugs in the bathroom for curling irons. Gradually hotels are making these amenities available but the slow pace of change indicated how hard it was for them to really listen to their customers.

When structure or process interferes with delivering customer value, it should be changed. According to Richard Whiteley and Diane Hessan, authors of Customer Centered Growth , customer needs should be at the center of the organization's being.

These needs should be communicated throughout the organization. Every employee should evaluate every process, every task and every decision by asking one vital question: how will this add value for our customers. The answers determines how something gets done or if it gets done. Employees should be empowered to respond to customers based on a few guiding principles which everyone understands. In customer centered companies, no one has to be reminded that the customer is the center of everything.

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Sally Mizerak is President of Performance Drivers, Inc. Sally is an experienced facilitator, strategic planner, consultant and speaker on strategic, customer-driven change. Learn more about Sally . . .

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