Customer Driven Business

I was at a breakfast meeting this morning when a gentleman asked the following question: “How do we get our engineering department to make better specifications for our products?”. The leader, a six-sigma master black belt responded, “That is the wrong question. It is always the customers who should be driving the specifications.”.

This got me to thinking about how often businesses don’t really listen to their customers. The entire reason a business exists is to make money, and the only way to make money is to be responsive to customers. How often do sales people try to sell you the latest gadgets, fads, gizmos, or stuff that the company wants to clear out, rather than asking questions about what you really need and want? In my experience it does not happen very often. Those companies that put customers first, really, really put them first, will beat competition every time.

Does your business really listen to customers? Do you really know what they want? Do you design your products and services to satisfy their needs or to satisfy your ego? Do you ask questions of customers when designing a new product or service? Do you ask questions when selling to assure that you are providing the best possible solution to the customer wants? Do you have a process for handling complaints to a) assure that the complaint is handled to the customer’s satisfaction; and b) assure that future customers will not have reason to make the same complaint?

If your business is not 100% customer-centric, it’s time to examine why not, and make the process, management, and cultural changes needed to be so. The payoff to your bottom line will be amazing.