Are we deluding ourselves by thinking we understand our customers needs?

Our experience in carrying out customer service audits is that companies try really hard to improve their customer service. But in the end they dont have any idea which specific aspects to focus on. Consequently they try to get everything right. Unfortunately this can mean a lot of wasted effort. In reality there are always just some things that a customer must have right, whereas for others they will be a bit more laid back. If we could identify which are the crucial areas and make sure they are right, we could spend less effort on the things that matter less.

'ACE' stands for an Audit of Customer Expectations. In it we can identify for you what your customers expect from your company and how they perceive you compared with your competitors. This means you can see what factors are really important to your customers and whether you are meeting those needs.

We work with 'moments of truth' to make sure each aspect has an actionable outcome. The outputs from the ACE exercise are:

• Which aspect of customer service each customer thinks is most important
• What each customer expects on each 'moment of truth' giving an action to work against if your score is low
• What your customers think of your performance against these aspects of customer service and moments of truth
• A comparison of your company with your major competitors you may have some work to do but maybe they do too.

It can also measure how accurately staff understand the customers expectations. Most of our clients for these audits like us to carry out a similar piece of research with their staff at the same time. This is a useful way of focusing staff on priorities. We also run workshops to help in a change programme.

Identifying 'moments of truth' creates the platform on which you can build a customer focus programme within your organisation and put in performance measures against specific 'moments of truth'. Then you will need to set new performance targets.

Each audit package is company specific and can be carried out again at a later date to see what progress has been made with developing customer focus.

Case Studies Understanding your customers better

One of the companies who undertook an ACE project found that front-line staff had a much more accurate view of customers' expectations than the directors and this was leading to a lack of management focus on some key issues.

Two other companies thought that their delivery performance was good. But we found that customers didn't think so. It turned out in both cases that when a goods delivery was going to be late, the company measured its performance only against the time re-negotiated with the customer, not the original time. The companies thought they had delivered their goods on time! But the customers remembered the original promised time and felt let down. Once a promise has been broken it could happen again! Even worse, one had been measuring its delivery performance against the time when the lorry left the factory, not when it arrived.

What our clients have said when using us for Benchmarking Customer Service:

• "Immediate understanding of our objectives and industry problems with unrivalled professionalism"
• "Responsive; quickly grasps the problem; sees the strategic implications of the research and has an opinion"

'ACE' ( Leading Edge Management Consultancy Limited)

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