The Business Key

Archive for March, 2010

Copyright (c) 2008 Drew Stevens PhD

Finding Solutions that otherwise puzzle organizations

Organizations believe that they provide exactly what customers desire. Ask any firm and the Paretto Principle prevails. 80 percent of most organizations believe they deliver exemplary customer service. Ironically, less then 20 percent do. According to research by consultancy Bain and Company, only 8 percent of companies really deliver on customer service.

Our present environment exists with a gap in delivering service. There are numerous reasons for the gap, however, we believe two issues contribute to this gap, a) greed and b) the inability of customer relationships.

Greed Many statements by management consultant Peter Drucker are famous. However, in the book The Practice of Management, Drucker clearly states, “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.” Organizations today are trumped by two fundamental issues- competition and productivity. The focus is so acute that raising revenue, higher profits and increasing productivity all ignore the necessary myopia of customer concentration.

How often have you either referred to or considered the expression, “Success is a journey and not a Destination?” Probably many times, yet often being in a hurry to get there, we forget that success is not an end unto itself, but is instead an ongoing process.

Though some people seem to have the Midas touch and easily turn everything to gold, most of us have to give our endeavors lots of time, effort and the sweat of our brow before seeing things come to fruition. The simple truth is that the majority of us are simply not born leaders, but become leaders by who we are and the actions we take. Consequently, whether or not you’re an established entrepreneur or just starting out on your journey, there are particular traits you’ll usually find operating within the exceptional women entrepreneur. In fact there are 7 particular traits you’ll generally discover deeply embedded within the exceptional and successful businesswoman.

As the economy suffers, many people are interested in finding a new career. Sometimes this is a personal choice, and sometimes, like in the case of people who have lost their jobs or have gotten laid off, it is a necessity. There are certain types of careers which become at risk when the economy takes a turn for the worse. A career in the medical field is not one of those risks.  If anything, a career in the medical field can be expected to increase in demand overtime, regardless of our economic situation. That is because the medical needs of the population are not necessarily driven by the status of the economy.  As the population grows the need for highly trained and qualified medical workers will rise.

The Healthcare Job Outlook for 2008/2009 describes new job growth from 2006 – 2016 as excellent with over 3 million new jobs added for the period.  As well, the projected salary increase is 22% compared to just 11% for other industries combined.

Better Customer Service is Not Optional

Providing better customer service is an obvious competitive strategy that creates the platform to achieve success in your market. For that reason, is is almost unbelievable that customer service is so poor from so many businesses. Most business owners I talk to want to provide better customer service. However, their attempts to develop customer service policies and behaviours throughout their business are often frustrated. In this article, we highlight why providing better customer service is not optional if you want to achieve business success and some ways to achieve better customer service, by approaching the topic somewhat differently than you might anticipate.

Provide Better Customer Service by Identifying Unmet Needs

One reason many businesses fail at providing better customer service is that they try to compete head-to-head with their competitors. They take them on at their own game. This strategy is difficult to make work, because of competitor reactions. Both you and your competitor either get stronger at customer service, or someone tries to take a shortcut and ends up undermining the reputation of everyone in the industry. A better approach is to try to identify unmet needs within your market that no competitor is paying attention to. This is a strategy that can propel your success to market domination like no other.