Customers R Us

Welcome back. It’s too quick this time is it? This is one thing I find very hard to keep up regularity in writing. Not because I am lazy, but some times I simply don’t get enough to write.

The other day someone asked me how to improve the way we treat our élite and VIP customers. The very question itself is defeating the purpose. In my opinion, there is no such thing as VIP customer. This is the most difficult aspect in cultivating customer centricity – Treating every customer as a VIP or equally. Usually, when we seek inputs from sales persons, while designing systems, often sales people have a tendency to give their experience with a customer whom they feel is a VIP.

One does not need to put any extra efforts to treat a VIP like a VIP. Difficulty is in treating everyone as VIP. So that our feedback mechanism to improve would be as wide as possible. Usual practice is to assess how much this customer is going to buy. Based on the assessment, first the body language of the counter sales persons and then the store manager’s begin to change. If there is a customer centric culture in the work place, every customer gets the same treatment effortlessly!!! How many times people really discuss the reasons, when a customer walks away without making a buy or without a good shopping experience? If the so-called VIP walks away then everyone discusses and becomes an issue. We should know that VIPs are far less in number than the rest. I call the rest of the people other than VIPs as VVIP

If one has to make an effort to treat an ordinary customer as VIP, then organization needs to go through customer centric orientation programs. Customer centric organization knows that every customer  and his/her opinion is useful to their business in one way or the other, at some time or the other, especially when a customer did not make a buy or did not have good experience. But some organizations treat the customers based on the visible profitability at that point.

Every person in the business has to believe in the need for treating all customers as guests. Sales reps with ability to deliver a natural pleasant smile wrapped with a warm welcome are a great asset to the company.

 Unfortunately it is not possible to convert most of this into a software application, so that click of a button makes the sales rep treat the customer like a VIP. But one can use systems intelligently to make every customer enjoy special attention. Design processes and make systems help every associate of the organization to understand customer’s unique needs, likes and dislikes and deal with them so. Design systems that can record the analysis of a bad experience a customer has in your organization and assess its impact every time. This will highlight the areas of improvisation.

Niceties like hello, how are you and good morning etc., though mandatory and minimum required, but they are not all. Customer comes to the store because he or she has a need for something or for feeling good. In the former part, it depends on how well we can understand his/her needs and meet them and the later part is the opportunity for us to convert them. 

Here comes the ability – A real sales associate would not think of on how much can I sell to this customer. Very rarely, sales associates try to understand customer’s needs. This is a skill and some of the sales associates, I have seen are too good at it. These are the sales associates who would help IT persons in validating processes and systems for customer centricity.

How many systems really take us close to understanding customers need at that moment. I did not find (m)any. Even if they are there, they need periodical revision.

For this purpose, we need to remind ourselves about how we felt when we walk into any other store as a customer. What was our own experience and what we felt that should have been there etc. As far as possible try to bring this into your own organization’s systems and culture.  And thus customers r us.