Customer Orientation: 10 Key Questions for Your Company
Keywords: customer orientation, customer focus
One of the dominant trends in management today is customer orientation.
From the marketing department inward, all levels and segments of
business are advised to turn their focus towards identifying, categorizing,
understanding and serving the consumer. This user orientation typically
places great emphasis on information gathering units and marketing
processes. But to be truly effective, customer orientation must
become the guiding principle of all existing and planned company
actions.
Prime areas for customer orientation include:
- Image - Customer focus can have a profound influence
on the company image. Everything from the company logo, the furniture
and equipment, to the colour of the uniforms, the walls or the
web page needs to be tailored to customer needs and expectations.
- Organizational culture - The attitudes and opinions of
company members are important to customer focus. Whether they
interact directly with customers or not, all staff members should
be aware of the high value the company places on the individual
customer and should plan and perform in ways that put the customer
first.
- Competition - Companies need to be aware of how competing
enterprises are meeting customer needs in order to differentiate
and excel.
- Strategy - Customer orientation requires that customer satisfaction
be built into all long-range plans.
- Evaluation - To create manageable customer services companies
need to set up systems for the collection and objective analysis
of customer data. These systems need to be evaluated regularly
to ensure the information they produce is relevant to the current
customer.
- Quality - Quality applies not only to the end product
or service a company provides but to every interaction the company
has with its customer.
The marketing process usually involves researching and segmenting
the market, establishing a market position, analyzing customer needs
and preferences, producing a marketing plan, and evaluating the
results. The most visible aspect of this process is likely to be
promotion in the form of advertising communications, public relations,
information dissemination and customer "awakening". True
customer orientation requires a much deeper organizational starting
point. Organizations need to coordinate business functions around
the customer and to develop systematic ways of adopting, monitoring
and improving customer relationship-building behaviours.
The following 10 questions, addressed to your organization, can help discern
patterns of customer orientation behaviour and pinpoint areas for
improvement.
- Have you identified your customers using market research, market
segmentation and customer surveys?
- Do you differentiate offers, products and services for different
customer groups?
- Have you identified strategic objectives and critical success
factors for service and sales to each of these segments?
- Do you regularly collect information on the wishes and needs
of individual customers and use this information as the basis
of marketing activities?
- When you introduce changes, is it in direct response to identified
customer needs? If not, are the changes tested against user needs
and preferences?
- Do you have a precise understanding of the cost-benefit ratio
for each product or service by market segment and do you use this
knowledge as a basis for introducing, changing or discontinuing
products or services?
- Have you carried out a thorough analysis of your competitors'
customer services and looked for ways to be more responsive to
customer needs?
- Are all staff members trained in customer focus and aware of
the central role customer orientation plays in your organization?
- Do you treat your customers as individuals?
- Do you fulfill your promises of quality in products, services
and customer communications?
Adapted from "A customer orientation checklist:
a model" by Ana Reyes Pacios Lozano in Library Review;
14:1 2000
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