Several years ago, one of the airlines aired a TV commercial that told the story of a leader who gathered his team around a table to announce that one of their oldest clients had just called and fired them. As he handed out plane tickets, he told the team that they were going to visit their customers face-to-face and reconnect with them. “What about you, boss?” asked one of the team members. “Me,” he said pulling a ticket out of his back pocket, “I’m going to visit that old client who just fired us.” It was a powerful commercial. I think of it often.
Some leaders wouldn’t recognize a customer if they bumped into one. Pity. There is a contradiction if you ask the people in your organization about your customers without having any firsthand experiences to add to the conversation. Hearing stories secondhand isn’t the same as talking to a real live customer who’s frustrated by the failure of one of your products. It isn’t the same as seeing how your services enable another entire organization’s processes. It doesn’t match the relationships developed with customers over time. There are leaders, of course, who do work to create opportunities to interact with their customers. Unfortunately, those relationships are often limited to the largest customers or those customers who have complained loudly enough or demanded emphatically enough to get an audience with a leader. These contacts, desirable as they are, do not provide a clear enough picture. What’s a leader to do? Here’s an idea—and a challenge.
Pull out your organization chart and identify twelve areas where you haven’t had, or don’t have, much occasion to interact with customers, and make it your plan to spend time with a person in one of those areas each month for the next twelve months. Spend the day with an installer. Listen in with a customer services representative. Make some sales calls, clean bathrooms with a janitor, and review financials with an accountant. Listen to their customer interactions. See your policies and procedures in action. Ask questions to determine how many of your experiences that day are typical. Experience for yourself the needs and concerns of your customers. Get smart. The next time you sit in a leadership team meeting, think of all you’ll have to say!
If anyone is taking a vote on the most misused business word, let me know. I want to place a vote. The word team is often used to describe any group of people working on a task. Team, however, actually means something very specific. A team is a collection of people with a shared, meaningful purpose and an emotional connection who work together toward a common goal. This isn’t the place to debate the definition or the value of teams, but this is the place to consider the importance of asking What is it like to work on a team in our organization? if you do consider your organization to be team-based. The answers to this question will be greatly dependent on the team’s current situation. Teams, like individuals, departments, and organizations, have good days and bad days, and the answer to this question will be influenced by which kind of day it is. After listening to a litany of problems or a joyful description of successes, you’ll need to probe further. Your intent in asking this question is to uncover the totality of a team’s experience in your organization. If people mention a lack of support, scarcity of resources, insufficient recognition, or endless meetings that seem to be a waste of time, pay attention. Teams don’t just happen. You can’t expect that by putting a group of smart people into a room together and calling them a team, they’ll become one. Teams need to be nurtured, and that’s the job of a leader. Based on the answers you get to this question, it might be time to review how you form, train, and launch your teams. Maybe you need to review the charters of your existing teams. How about planning some project reviews that not only look at a team’s progress toward their goals but that also include a review of how effectively the team is working together.
Somewhere, in a positive answer to this question, people might talk eagerly about the opportunities they’ve had to learn new things, develop new skills, and nurture new relationships. When you get these kinds of responses, you’ve learned that the team experience in your organization is shaping up to both the member’s and the organization’s benefit.
This question is very specific, and it might not apply to you, but if you have any input on employee benefits or if you have responsibility for benefit recommendations or decisions, ask away.
Over the years I’ve noticed a small, common behavior between partners in successful and happy long-term relationships. When a holiday or birthday approaches, they have a conversation that starts something like this: “What’s on your list this year?” I wish I could convey the warm tone of voice that’s behind this simple sentence. Don’t allow yourself to read it with disinterest or sarcasm because that’s not the way it is said by these partners. Don’t jump to the conclusion that it’s said at every gift opportunity either. These partners haven’t abandoned the notion of a surprise, but they have come to realize that gifts that are grounded in real needs are better investments.
What does this have to do with employee benefits? A lot. Years ago our workplaces were filled with a fairly homogeneous group of people. Deciding on a new benefit was fairly easy. But, in case you haven’t looked recently, things have changed. In one department you probably have a Baby Boomer looking at retirement issues, an older GenX with young children, a younger GenX looking for opportunities to learn and develop new skills either with you or someone else, and a GenY starting their working life. Your employees are increasingly divers different races, ethnic backgrounds, and life experiences. The Vietnam War and protests, the assassination of JFK, and mornings with Captain Kangaroo are seminal events and icons for some and ancient history for others. Desert Storm, the Challenger explosion, and MTV hold the same positions for others. One size does not fit all in this group; in truth, one size doesn’t even fit most!
As you work to provide benefits for your employees while being a good steward of your organization’s resources, you need specific information about the people in your organization. Benefit programs that don’t meet the varied needs of your employees are a waste and reflect poor leadership. Asking this question won’t make these decisions easy, but it will make you a better decision-maker.
This question is designed to take the conversation to the level of specific action. This is the What would make us better? question, with teeth. You’re asking your customer to express the thoughts and ideas they had while waiting on hold, fighting to get an invoice corrected, or shaking their head over one of your policies. You’re asking your customer to tell you the truth, and that’s a big deal. An even bigger deal is what you do with the answer to this question. Listening and asking for clarification are acceptable responses. Explaining why you can’t or won’t try the suggestion isn’t.
A note of caution. If you ask a customer this question about change, don’t be surprised if your customer asks it back at you. What would you say? And if this original question-and-answer session turns into an ongoing dialogue, you may find yourself facing a partnership waiting to happen.
Actually, you’ll have better luck asking this question of a customer who considers you a partner rather than a vendor. As the world of business has gotten more complex, customers are looking for the opportunity to work with their suppliers instead of just buying from them. Working together in a partnership relationship, seeing the world from a broader viewpoint than either one of you could ever envision on your own, allows both parties to gain. These partnerships go beyond the traditional working toward a win/win situation. They exist to create. Create new ways of going to market, new ways to solve problems, and new ways to define success.
Partnership carries with it the desire for two-way feedback. In fact, the only way partnerships work is when both parties are willing to make the commitment to a continuous stream of feedback—what’s working and what’s not. Terry McElroy from McLane Company is quoted in Dance Lessons: Six Steps to Great Partnerships in Business & Life by Chip Bell and Heather Shea as saying, “We are constantly asking ourselves, ‘Are we doing business at the level we want to? Are we worthy of this partnership?’ And we want partnerships with people who ask themselves those same questions.” Another set of good questions.
I remember one of my earliest business conversations involved the kitchen table, my father, and a company called International Business Machines. I was about eleven. Dad was telling us that his company had gotten a contract to make a part for IBM, but his team didn’t know anything about the product the parts were going to be used in. Even at eleven that didn’t make much sense. “How,” I asked, “can you tell if what you’re making is right?” “We can’t,” my Dad replied. “We just wait for them to tell us how close we are to getting it right and then we do it over again.”
This is the partnership question. Leaders who want to deepen their relationships with their customers ask this question often. In fact, it quickly becomes one of their favorite questions to ask. Understanding your customer’s view of their future helps you get a glimpse of your future. Asking this question will get you lots of data. First, there’s the basic information. Information that will give you insights into how you’ll have to innovate or modify your processes and products to meet your customer’s need in the future. Customers who can’t articulate their view of the future may not be a long-term asset for you.
Next, you can judge the excitement level. The future is a funny thing. People and organizations that are excited about the future generally have a promising future. People who are pessimistic about the future often face bleaker times. Who would you rather have on your client list?
When you combine the quality of the information you get from the customer with the enthusiasm level generated by giving the answer, you’ve got impressive insight into your own crystal ball. Targeting those customers who think and plan for the future and are excited about the possibilities the future hold for them seems like a great way to plan your future success. These are the customers you’d like to partner with. But you’ll never know who they are unless you ask the question.
Remember the song from Fiddler on the Roof when Tevye asks his wife of many years, “Do you love me?” It’s a wonderful moment, and you can tell couples who have been together for a long time by their behavior during that scene. They poke each other, grin, or hold hands. “Well, do you?” There’s a lesson for business in that song. Do you know why your customers buy goods and services from you? Do they love you? Asking this question will help you find out. Asking this question and analyzing the results will provide you with a foundation of information that will help you formulate your strategy. When a leader takes the time to talk to customers, both external and internal, relationships are built. When a leader goes beyond talking to a well-crafted and well-executed questioning strategy, long-term customer partnerships can happen.
If a customer joins Tevye in singing of their love for your location, hours of operation, products and services, or your innovation and design, you’ve uncovered a champion. If your customer says their loyalty isn’t to your products but to an individual in your organization, you’ve learned something different. If they confess that they do business with you grudgingly and are waiting for someone else to introduce a similar product and service so they can buy from them, you’ve uncovered a problem. No matter how your question gets answered, you now know things you didn’t know before.
Asking your customers this question and those that follow gets you immediate feedback and insight into your future. Some of the answers might make you uncomfortable; all of them will provide you and your organization opportunities to improve and grow. You will hear reasons to celebrate, reasons to make changes, and reasons to re-examine your policies and procedures. You’ll have work to do.
