This is episode 7 of BIZBUZZ.
I stimulate conversations that challenge business owners to consider new possibilities and to Act Boldly. The following video highlights some of the content from Richard Whiteley’s book The Customer Driven Company that made sense to me.
Hi, I’m Gary Brown a FocalPoint business coach.
Welcome to BIZ BUZZ.
I’ve chosen to comment on The Customer Driven Company, by Richard Whiteley. Not surprisingly, this book deals with the relationship that we have with our customers.
I’d like to highlight four observations from the book that interest me.
The first deals with vision. I know that this is a repeat from my most recent BIZBUZZ episode, but I believe it bears repeating. Whiteley defines vision as a source of inspiration and a guide to decision making. How often do we use our vision statement as a litmus test for decision making?
My next observation expands on vision statements. Whiteley encourages the reader to communicate the vision constantly. He stresses the need to establish challenging goals that are driven by the vision and to embody it in our everyday behaviour. How many of us act on this advice?
Comment number three is specific to our customers. The suggestion is that we should make it easy for our customers to complain to us about our products and services. That might sound trite but do we even have a method for customer complaints?
Finally, I’d just like to mention that Whiteley identifies what he calls the seven essentials that are the game plan of winners. Here they are:
1. Create a customer keeping vision
2. Saturate your company with the voice of the customer
3. Go to school on the winners
4. Liberate your customer champions
5. Smash the barriers to customer-winning performance
6. Measure, measure, measure
7. Walk the talk
That’s it for The Customer Driven Company.
Your comments are always welcome.
Stay tuned for more BIZ BUZZ.