March 01, 2005

The Power of Language

A few months ago I was making a presentation to a senior management team on the results of some focus groups. As the CEO watched videotape of segments of the focus groups, he remarked, “Where did we get these customers?” and “These customers just don’t understand how we do things.” Other members of the team chimed in with equally negative comments about their customers . . . and more than a few members of the team had some equally negative comments about employees.

As these comments bounced around the room, I was struck by the irony that this is an organization that prides itself on being customer focused and creating “Raving Fans.” It made me wonder if this was the way they to talked to employees about customers, and, if so, how did this influence how employees treated customers?

What is clear from this organization is that employees walk the walk that is consistent with the talk of senior managers. Employees are friendly to customers, but do not go above and beyond the call of duty to serve customers. The company focuses on pitching its product to customers rather than engaging the customer in a conversation to find out about his/her needs. When one store is out of product, employees make little effort to help the customer find the product elsewhere. When a customer wants to make a change in the product specifications, they are charged a fee; when the company misses a deadline or makes an error, the customer gets nothing but headaches in return.

Being customer focused takes more than reading a few books, attending a few seminars, and putting up a few posters in the office. It requires an organization wide commitment to putting the customer at the center of your organization and aligning your policies, procedures and processes to make it easy for customers to do business with you and easy for employees to meet and exceed their expectations. It requires rewarding employees for delighting customers and using appropriate measures and performance management to hold them accountable for meeting company standards.

Most importantly, creating a customer-focused organization requires a senior management time that models customer focus and accountability for making it easier for customers to do business with them. Employees are watching what senior managers say and do, and judging them based on the differences between their talk and their walk. With over 60% of employees not trusting their manager, it is important to get the talk and the walk aligned.

If an organization is truly customer focused, you can hear it in the language that employees at all levels use to talk about customers and each other. Rather than saying, “Where did we get these customers?” and “These customers just don’t understand how we do things”, customer focused organizations demonstrate a respect for customers at all times and acknowledge the company’s need to continuously improve. These companies say, “We need to do a better job of communicating with and educating our customers” when customers don’t see the world they way they do rather than blaming them for not understanding how the company does things.

As a consumer, would you want to do business with a company that thinks you are dumb or a pain? While most of us will not have organizations tell us this to our face, how many of you get the feeling that this is what some service providers are thinking when they interact with you? Senior managers need to take care that the language they use does not implicitly say to employees that it is okay to be something less than customer focused. Be careful what you say and how you say it because your employees are listening.

Posted by Greg Robinson at 02:33 PM | Comments (2)