Cultivate Customer Culture in Your Organization!

Once when I was the first person getting on an airplane, I heard one of the attendants exclaim, "Here come the animals." For that attendant, passengers were a nuisance and it is very likely that that attitude carried over into how the attendant dealt with passengers during the flight.

You don’t have a problem like that in your company, do you? I hope not, because in order for your enterprise to succeed, members of your organization must show respect for customers -- not thinly disguised contempt (TDC).

When customer orientation grows, profits grow too. Consider Sanity Music, a chain in Australia, which doubled its market share in just two years and earned more than $1.50 more per CD than their competitors due to the enthusiasm of their staff.

Look at ticket-takers in the Disney theme parks too. They make every guest feel welcome and good. And that didn’t happen by accident. They receive hours of instruction about treating park visitors as guests--before they even begin work.

So, what type of training do you give your customer servers? It has to be good, because members of customer-driven organizations need to have what Tom Peters has called a "passion for perfection." Passion for perfection is a concern to get things right and get them right the first time.

Buck Rogers, former head of sales at IBM, believed that in customer-driven organizations, employees dealing with customers must have "thoughtfulness, courtesy, and integrity." In short, they must treat customers the same way that they would like to be treated themselves.

I expect that when I do business with companies. Shouldn’t your customers have the right to expect that too?

And by the way, customer orientation will never grow in your organization unless it is also present in you - the person at the top.

When Lou Gerstner took the top job at IBM, he made it clear that he would be the sales representative for five customers and sent a very clear message to all those in the organization regarding the importance of customers to IBM.

If Lou Gerstner could do that in a company as vast at IBM, can’t you do it too? You can, and you should, because all your success depends on it.