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 CUSTOMER FOCUS
 Background
Previous ‘In-Touch’ articles have explored best practice
approaches to ‘Leadership’, Alignment’ and ‘Effectiveness’
in a team. Much of this team energy (expended on these three factors)
is driven by a need to satisfy client, customer and/or consumer requirements.
Accordingly, the next three articles (Issues #10, 11, 12) in the series
will be concerned with how best to expend this energy in a more ‘focused’
way.
Introduction
Those readers who have been following this series will recall that the
underpinning ‘Star Model’ is as follows (for those interested
in research into the Star Model please go to www.tls360.com/research).
Star Performing Team Model
Broadly speaking the top half of the model maps the ‘hard’
or ‘performance’ factors necessary in teams whereas the bottom
half of the model is more concerned with the ‘people’ factors.
The fourth Factor in the Star Model is now introduced.
TOP 
 FOCUSED
The team is customer focused and regularly reviews the meaning of success
Concept Clarification
Customer focus for a team implies a role and desire to help or serve
others, to meet their needs. It means focusing team effort on discovering
and meeting internal and/or external clients’, customers’,
and consumers’ needs. Companies and teams which strive for exceptional
performance are now shifting their focus externally to customers.
If teams are to achieve star performance, they must create and deliver
products and services that are valued by customers. It sometimes feels
uncomfortable to be constantly thinking about, let alone proactively seeking
information on how we look in the eyes of our stakeholders. It, therefore,
needs to be agreed by the team that it is a team ‘value’ to
see ourselves as others see us.
Between the notion of ‘customer need’ and ‘customer
need satisfaction’ each organisation has a unique set of processes
for creating value for customers. These usually revolve around ‘innovation’,
‘operations’ and ‘post sales service’. These processes
can be viewed as an internal value chain. Important elements of this value
chain will be the responsibility of different teams. For example, an ‘innovative’
team (e.g. product development) would be responsible for product attributes.
Eventually a new product would become part of mainstream operations, who
would perhaps be responsible for timeliness and quality. A sales team
would receive (or transact) the finished product with the customer and
provide ongoing support. Each team is a customer and has a customer.
The first article in this series follows from Alex Sutherland, Principle
Consultant, ‘Lines of Sight’, and accredited Team Management
Systems consultant. He provides two practical approaches that teams and
organisations can adopt to assess their current customer focus.
 A possible customer ‘focus’ programme - by Alex Sutherland
The emphasis in what follows deals more with possible content and process,
rather than on design detail. Design detail would be tailored for each
individual team or organisation. This approach begins with the assumption
that while learning can and should be fun, the business of customer service
cannot be tackled lightly if it is to be embraced and owned throughout
the organisation. Identifying actual organisational, team and individual
behaviours which impact the customer experience is also seen as important.
Since we are concerned here with team performance the following analysis
will concentrate on team customer focus.
The suggestion is that teams adopt a two-fold approach to their customer
service programme:
- An inside-out approach, probably in the form of a series
of team workshops
- An outside-in approach, involving customers of the team in
a series of focus groups facilitated by trained staff.
 An inside-out approach to customer service
TOP
What is she really doing?
The outcome of this programme would be:
- Identification of those aspects of the team’s operations which
directly and indirectly impact the customer experience
- Ownership by individuals and teams of those activities which can add
value to or detract from the customer experience, and
- An ongoing commitment to deliver value.
The programme would explore these issues internally, drawing on the customer
service experiences and expectations of team members.
Steps in the programme would address the following questions:
1. When it comes to customer service, in general,
what do customers value?
An introduction to the concept of Value = Benefits – Costs
2. What do we as customers value?
The starting point would be participants’ actual experiences of
great and / or poor customer service. They could also be asked to think
about specific settings (e.g. purchasing clothing, taking a car for
servicing, taking out a home loan).
The discussion would be further focused by asking participants to breakdown
the Value = Benefits – Costs equation with an
emphasis on Products, Processes and People.
3. What do we as customers value when it comes
to the customer service provided by teams like this one?
With the emphasis clearly now on Products, Processes and People. The three ‘P’ focus starts
to keeps the emphasis on specifics – tangibles that can be addressed.
4. How significant is each of the characteristics
/ components that contribute to customer value, from the perspective
of the customer?
An importance rating for each of the characteristics.
5. How well do our competitors deliver to these
significant contributors to customer service?
This might take the form of a discussion and / or some mystery shopping
6. How well do we think our team is delivering
value to its customers? Are there aspects of our approach to customer
service that are best practice?
After steps 3 and 4, a questionnaire to capture these characteristics
might be developed and distributed, with a view to taking a temperature
check and providing some additional focus for the next steps in the
programme.
7. What else do I / does my team do that impacts
(directly and indirectly) the customer experience; and therefore add
to / detract from the experience they receive?
8. As a team, what do we do well? What could we
do better? What should we consider not doing?
On the basis of the questionnaire results and discussions what aspects
of our Products, Processes and People offering should we be addressing?
9. As individuals what do we do well? What could
we do better? What should we consider not doing?
10. How will we measure success in our approach
to customer service? When and how often?
An outside-in approach to customer service
TOP
The outcome of this programme, in which selected staff would
facilitate a series of structured customer focus groups with customers
valued by the team, would be:
- A customer view of those aspects of the team’s Products, Processes and People offerings which
they value
- A real sense of the significance of each of these factors from a customer
perspective
- A base-line measure of how well the team is currently delivering to
each of these characteristics
- Ownership within business units of those activities they can influence
and which are known to impact the customer experience.
If this approach is adopted, selected staff would be trained as focus
group facilitators and they would receive ongoing coaching and support
throughout it. This team would also collate the information and be involved
in the design of the second-phase of the programme - communicating the
information internally and acting as a resource for business units exploring
the issues specifically related to them.
Steps in an outside-in approach would seek answers to the following questions:
1. What are our valued customers doing when they
engage with us?
2. What’s important to them in terms of
the service they receive from us?
What do they value – in terms of Products, Processes and People?
3. How well do we deliver to their expectations?
4. What do we currently do that differentiates
us / is the same as our competitors?
An outside-in approach could be run con-currently with an inside-out
approach. It could also be run in a more condensed form as a way of validating
the explorations of staff in the first approach, although this is not
a preference I would personally recommend. Ideally, it is an outside-in
approach which should drive the customer service impetus and provide focus
for a sustained commitment to value-adding services.
Conclusion
A more detailed and tailored process would go beyond the above through:
- Focused discussion with key players in a team on their team’s
commitment to customer service and expectations of an ongoing customer
service programme. Ideally, this would take the form of an extended
discussion with the leader of the team.
- A more detailed appreciation of current attempts to achieve customer
focus.
- An overview of the criteria currently used to measure the customer
experience and how the team currently performs against those benchmarks.
Next Issue
The next article in the series will take an organisation/market perspective
to encourage team’s to make sure that they are appropriately targeting
the right market segments in their quest for Star Performance.
TOP
Dr Paul Robinson
Managing Director
Team Leadership Services
P.O. Box 21-194, Henderson, Waitakere 0650, New Zealand
Tel: +64-9-836-5317 Fax +64-9-836-5318
email: paul@tls360.com
Website: www.tls360.com
© 2004 Team Leadership Services
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