Your customer's insight into your company
Listen to your customers and they will tell you what they need. Ask open ended questions and you will understand what keeps them up at night.
But there is another reason to listen to them! Another reason to stop talking and listen.
They just might offer up insight into your company that you have not seen. No matter how in tune you are with your employees as you gauge culture, efficiency and quality, your customers see it and certainly have a point of view! a Point of view that you need to listen to!
Listen carefully and they will tell you the unvarnished truth about their experience with your services, with your employees and with your business processes. So listen. Ask some questions about what it is like to work with your company.
Your customers will point you in directions you never knew to look, some of them very subtle. I had a customer tell me once that our contract pricing process was frustrating for the salespeople and might be the reason a few had left the company. It led me to look at that process (and salesrep departures!) .
When a customer has that kind of insight it is not because they have a desire to know, but because there are things in your organization that are impacting their perception, their ability to seamlesly do business with you. Lets face it, when a customer starts talking about how your internal processes and employee dynamics work, you had better sit up and pay attention.
And you can bet that when a customer has enough faith in you to tell you, that there are a lot of other customers seeing the same thing who won't ever talk about it.
So ask. Use your customers' feedback as a barometer of your company's culture, of its ease of doing business. You just have to stop selling for a while, and ask the right questions.
. . . and listen
But there is another reason to listen to them! Another reason to stop talking and listen.
They just might offer up insight into your company that you have not seen. No matter how in tune you are with your employees as you gauge culture, efficiency and quality, your customers see it and certainly have a point of view! a Point of view that you need to listen to!
Listen carefully and they will tell you the unvarnished truth about their experience with your services, with your employees and with your business processes. So listen. Ask some questions about what it is like to work with your company.
Your customers will point you in directions you never knew to look, some of them very subtle. I had a customer tell me once that our contract pricing process was frustrating for the salespeople and might be the reason a few had left the company. It led me to look at that process (and salesrep departures!) .
When a customer has that kind of insight it is not because they have a desire to know, but because there are things in your organization that are impacting their perception, their ability to seamlesly do business with you. Lets face it, when a customer starts talking about how your internal processes and employee dynamics work, you had better sit up and pay attention.
And you can bet that when a customer has enough faith in you to tell you, that there are a lot of other customers seeing the same thing who won't ever talk about it.
So ask. Use your customers' feedback as a barometer of your company's culture, of its ease of doing business. You just have to stop selling for a while, and ask the right questions.
. . . and listen
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