CRM - May 2008 - (Page 28)

THE EXCELLENCE MYTH excelling; superiority.” I especially like the word “superiority,” which clearly indicates that “consistency” and “parity” are not excellence. I define excellence as the ability to exceed expectations. In terms of CRM, excellence is simply the ability to surprise customers. It is the art of going beyond the expectations of your customers, your managers, and even yourself. When you go beyond expectations, you create something unique for your recipient. You add a personal touch and take responsibility. You contribute from the reservoir of your humanity. You surprise your customers (and sometimes yourself) with the creation of the new. To drive excellence, your organization needs willing employees who have been given permission to perform. Excellence cannot be mandated from above; it rises from the bottom up. Your employees need to want to deliver excellence. Meanwhile, managers need to create an environment in which delivering excellence is not the exception to the rule or something in the domain of the “suckers.” Enabling excellence will require you to give employees permission to perform. You’ll need to provide them with sound information for decision-making, and empower them by granting authority and the freedom to make mistakes. Your commitment to excellence must be absolute because it is a matter of differentiation and growth. It is a matter of making you and your organization sage delivered in the voice of the customer can be more insightful than hundreds of pie charts and Excel spreadsheets. “Listening to customers” is a corporate mantra every executive loves to tout, but when executives are asked to join customer discussions at the contact center, they often decline, citing time constraints. (Executives always seem to have higher priorities than listening to those who pay the bills.) Even when executives do finally go meet customers, the agenda is predetermined—and the real voice of the customer is never heard. At one Fortune 500 corporation, however, the vice president of customer service had an idea: If the executives would not come to the customers, he would bring the customers to the executives. He started to record customer interactions at his contact centers. The CDs he created with selected calls—titled “Our Greatest Hits”—were then distributed to executives. “It was painful to listen to those calls,” one of the executives said, “but it opened my eyes to the way customers think and speak about us.” The CDs became a regular part of the corporation’s executive agenda. Every few weeks, a new CD was produced with fresh customer comments. Thanks to this simple idea, executives began to shape their decisions to fit customer needs. People got used to incorporating The Customer into their daily thinking and decisions by listening to live customers. Getting every employee exposed to the voice of the customer helps companies to be fully tuned to the customer’s way of thinking. Going beyond graphs and spreadsheets, employees get to hear real customers who express real feelings and emotions. It can be a painful experience, but it can also be the best wakeup call. (Alternatively, it can be thrilling to hear customers describe how they enjoy your product and provide some insight for new, innovative ideas.) To deliver excellence that is based on the recipient, you need to know your customers better than they know themselves. You need to be well versed in your customers’ lifestyles, challenges, aspirations, www.destinationCRM.com EXCELLENCE OR NOTHING Competition has presented us with a simple challenge: excellence or nothing. We live in times where “good enough” simply doesn’t cut it anymore. New competitors have demonstrated an ambitious spirit and a drive to succeed. While some may not yet have reached a genuine level of excellence, it’s clear that the pursuit of excellence is a main focus. Why are we losing ground to others? Are we really willing and ready to compete? Are we pursuing excellence with everything we have? Do we have a fully committed organization, with employees who are dedicated to delivering excellence—and to winning the customer’s heart in the process? Do our employees have the freedom to get around controlling processes and to make the types of personal choices that will let us rise to the challenge of excellence? Sadly, the answer to these questions is “No.” With a culture of ineptitude developing among us, created by top-down management and reflected through countless “Dilbert” cartoons, episodes of The Office, derisive jokes, and books that tell us to “stop working so hard,” we are methodically stripping away our ability to win. As competition has intensified, so has our addiction to cynical content that places us on the fast track to diminished expectations and competitiveness. 28 IN TERMS OF CRM, EXCELLENCE IS SIMPLY THE ABILITY TO SURPRISE CUSTOMERS. indispensable. To stay competitive, you can no longer afford random acts of excellence conducted by a few individuals who are the exception to the rule. You need excellence to happen every day, by every employee. Excellence through processes is a familiar goal, thanks to the Six Sigma formula that drives consistency through optimization. Excellence through people is still a rare virtue, commanding attention and premium. But by working with your people as the prime differentiators of the business, excellence will become the way to unleash the power of their innovation, caring, and commitment. It is only through their own choice that they will deliver their best. EVERYONE LISTENS TO CUSTOMERS There is nothing more powerful than listening to your customers. A simple mes- CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | MAY 2008 http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - May 2008

CRM - May 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Is CRM Too Hard for Microsoft Vendors Go Virtual For Feedback Sense-sational Marketing How UGC Can Benefit CRM DestinationCRM Dashboard Price Check, Aisle 5 Required Reading The Moving Target The Excellence Myth Seven Steps to SOA Success And They're Off! Are You Ready to Party? Skin in the Game The Right Numbers Secret of My Success Re: Tooling Connect Pint of View

CRM - May 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.