host posted on September 11, 2009 03:49
The North Jefferson News
How much do you really know about your customers?
Some businesses really do have this down to a science. They could tell you the average age, income, demographics and preferred common purchases and many more facts that would surprise and amaze you when it comes to their target customer market.
To put this into context, it is important to remember Pareto’s Principle, also called Pareto’s Law. This idea was pinned in 1906 by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country. He observed that 80 percent of the wealth was owned by 20 percent of the people.
In the 1930s quality management thinker, Dr. Joseph Juran, recognized the principle which he called the “vital few and trivial many,” which was attributed to Pareto.
As a result, Dr. Juran’s observation of the “vital few and trivial many”, the principle that 20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results, became known as Pareto’s Principle or the 80/20 rule.
The bottom line is this: Relatively few heavy users of a product can account for much of its consumption. You can apply this science to almost anything from management to the physical world.
Think about your own business and how you run it. Does 20 percent of your stock take up 80 percent of your warehouse space? Does 80 percent of your stock come from 20 percent of your suppliers?
How about your sales? Do 80 percent of your sales come from 20 percent of your sales staff? Does 20 percent of your staff cause 80 percent of your problems, while another 20 percent of your staff provides 80 percent of your production?
This is the real challenge in problem solving for leadership and management. You need to tease through the activities and noise to drill down to the elements that will be worth paying attention too. Once found, those elements will need to be changed or enhanced depending on your finds.
Once you find a nugget that merits your attention, remember that altering the way we approach our customers begins with our attitudes and mindset. We all understand that a changing business environment requires a new and more sophisticated mix of expertise and innovation.
Do you spend time training, assessing and cultivating how you want your employees to interact with your customers? Here are a few ideas on developing your own goals to enhance the strategy by which you train your employees in customer service. It is called SMART and is a common sense tool for goal setting.
• S: Specific direction is needed. It should be clear, easy to describe and remain in line with your objectives
• M: Measure your specific outcome against your objective
• A: Align the employees goal with that of management and broader strategies
• R: Results are the ultimate goal of this or any change
• T: Timeline for an end date that lets your work backward in planning to keep you on track. (Sanofi-Aventis Training, 2009)
As you work through this process, think about how you will allow your employees to infuse their own level of creativity in the process. This will give them the courage to produce valuable marketplace solutions for you.
Lastly, think about stretch goals in this process because it is within the stretch goal that real change takes place. Ask yourself or your employees: If I achieve this goal will I ...
• Develop a new skill?
• Step out of my comfort zone?
• Challenge the status quo?
• Partner with another key stakeholder to achieve this objective?
• Contribute greatly to my/our business success?
I will leave you with this last thought and case study example. If you have ever had a visit to Gardendale Chiropractic Clinic, you have certainly met their friendly staff. You have also been introduced to their complete facility, watched a video on the holistic approach to Chiropractic Care, and had a one-on-one discussion with Dr. Jim Fox, prior to any treatment decisions being made.
This clinic takes and receives feedback very seriously, and to that end they meet weekly as group for an hour or more to discuss how things are going for the clinic. These meetings include, but are not limited to the usual policy and procedure items.
According to Dr. Fox, these meetings are key to keeping them on track as a health care contributor to the North Jefferson community. Discussions at their meetings include patient cases (their external customer) which are going well, and those that are more difficult. This also provides a time to address employee (internal customer) opportunities and concerns.
The pay off, according to Dr. Fox, has been big. Focus on the external customer, the patient, allows them to “see the rose open” in terms of a patients potential return to physical, emotional and spiritual well being. By creating an opportunity to focus on the internal customer, the employee, they keep turn over to a bare minimum.
Good luck this week with your business endeavors. Remember, if you don’t take care of your customers, someone else surely will.
Teresa Vise is the marketing, growth, events and special projects co-director for the Fultondale Chamber of Commerce. She received her MBA from Samford University and is a speciality sales professional with Sanofi Aventis. She can be reached at teresa.vise@sanofi-aventis.com.