"Customer demands are getting harder and harder to meet. That's great because it's getting tougher for our competition to survive." — Comment from the CEO of a very successful company

Effective teams, organizations, and leaders exist to serve others. And those who provide the highest levels of service/quality enjoy the richest rewards. That's not just some platitude or warm and fuzzy theory; it's become a well-proven fact. In Firing on All Cylinders I reviewed much of this evidence. I showed that those organizations with the highest service/quality levels have the highest levels of growth in revenue, customer satisfaction and retention, market share, productivity, safety, and employee morale while also reducing costs. So it's not surprising that the best service/quality leaders are also profitable leaders.

Since writing Firing on All Cylinders, the research continues to pour in. My files are bulging with study after study showing that outstanding service/quality performance is one of the key contributors to outstanding financial performance.

It's nothing new. Peter Drucker has been reminding us for decades now that the only reason for the existence of any business is to get and keep customers. Winston Churchill once said, "If you aim to profit, learn to please." A century ago, Russell Conwell would conclude his famous "Acres of Diamonds" speeches by urging his listeners to start their search for riches by "first knowing the demand." He continued, "You must first know what people need, and then invest yourself where you are most needed."

Understanding and managing to current customer expectations means having both the will and the way. We must first agree that our customers' expectations and perceptions of the value they receive from us is a key driver of our business. Then we need to systematically turn soft customer expectations and perceptions into hard, manageable data. That calls for the discipline of a rigorous management system and process.

A service/quality improvement system can be boiled down to three major steps: (1) Identify Current Customers/Partners; (2) Prioritize Expectations; and (3) Gap Analysis. These steps are part of the rigorous goals, measurements, and standards we need to continually improve our current products and services to our existing customers.

But these management steps need to be counterbalanced with the leadership actions of exploring, searching, and creating tomorrow's markets and customers, innovation, and organizational learning.

Lots of Customer Talk, Little Action

Jim Clemmer’s practical leadership books, keynote presentations, workshops, and team retreats have helped hundreds of thousands of people worldwide improve personal, team, and organizational leadership. Visit his web site, http://jimclemmer.com/, for a huge selection of free practical resources including nearly 300 articles, dozens of video clips,  team assessments, leadership newsletter, Improvement Points service, and popular leadership blog. Jim's five international bestselling books include The VIP Strategy, Firing on All Cylinders, Pathways to Performance, Growing the Distance, and The Leader's Digest. His latest book is Moose on the Table: A Novel Approach to Communications @ Work.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."