How to? Not like that

Business consultancy How to Experience CEO David Williams has a bit of a scathing editorial running at CRM2day.com. In a piece entitled “The Customer Focus Myth,” Williams takes nearly every organization he has dealt with (and over ten years in the biz, that would appear to be quite a few) in simply failing to go the extra mile for customer loyalty.

“The last 10 years have convinced me that virtually all organisations could do ‘customer focus’ better,” Williams writes in CRMToday.com. “The internal ‘stickers and brochures’ campaigns, the new bold talking PowerPoint are harmless and well meaning. But they change nothing and challenge no one. At worst, they are divisive – with unclear objectives that distract the organization from its core objective.”

For a positive example, Williams cites – as many such authorities do, it seems – Virgin Atlantic airline, a firm “brave enough to invest in things around the customer’s real needs” in Williams’ view.

Ultimately, Williams makes an “Emperor’s New Clothes”-like deduction that is surprisingly unique: “Often, CEOs are too far removed from the service reality. A middle management layer protects the status quo. In one PLC, it emerged the service director used the engaged tone on one of its call answering lines … because calls lost in this manner didn’t affect the headline call answering metrics. Good customer focus initiatives change the metrics and understand the business impact of actions.”

CRMchump is down with Williams on this one. This writer has ranted on such a topic for some time, as middle management’s job in the late 20th/early 21st century has more often than not consisted of a lot of rah-rah cheerleading prompted by guys with university degrees doing things by the (school)book.

“The Customer Focus Myth” can be read in full at CRM2day.