Leadership, Culture, & Customer Delight

What came first: the customer-obsessed leader, the customer-centric corporate culture, or the best practices in Customer Delight?

My colleagues and I may be the experts in the field of Customer Delight – we like to think so, anyway, and that’s what our clients tell us – but we can’t answer this question. It’s the chicken and the egg all over again.

Companies exist to make money. When they do, they thrive; when they don’t, they close up shop. It sounds so obvious that it’s not worth stating, but somehow most business people don’t get that: look at the dot com boom and bust; look at Detroit.

While our favorite example of this profit-or die maxim are the fates of the grocer Albertsons (Fortune #46 in 2006, now defunct) and its comparison company, Wegmans ($3.8 billion and growing), they’re far from alone. Profit or die. To paraphrase my friends at Bright Horizons, profits are the lifeblood of any company.

Profits are based on sales and margins.

Superb customer service brings repeat sales, and it inspires referral business.

Good customer service drives sales.

Great customer service brings more sales.

Superlative customer service is a revenue-generating machine.

At Coiné, we’ve got our work cut out for us, because most leaders don’t get this yet.

But best practices in Customer Delight don’t just happen because middle management hires on consultants to teach a smile-training course. Best practices in Spoiling your customers Rotten are the natural results of a companywide Customer Service Ethic. Putting the customer first, last, and all in between has to emanate from the company’s culture like heat from a fire.

And without total dedication to that culture from the very head of the company, it’s just not going to happen.

At Coiné, we turn down business all the time; the bigger we grow, the more we do it. That may sound weird to you, but there is a very solid reason behind this decision. Since 2001, when Jane and I founded the first company with our name on it, we knew without thinking that past and present results would drive future sales. They would also bring us personal pride.

So, the first thing we do when we are approached by a prospective client is to evaluate the company’s leadership: is it committed to the customer service initiative it is asking for? Will leadership push for the culture change necessary to turn their company into a Five-Star Customer Service provider? Or will they stand in our way?

When we feel that leadership doesn’t get it, we generally pass. Because failure, or even mediocre success, just isn’t in our own company’s genes. It runs counter to our own company culture.

That’s why I personally work with top leadership – owners and C-level executives – over eighty percent of the time. If they want my help, they have to listen to my advice; they can’t defer it to subordinates.

We’ve learned this lesson the hard way, and we’re still learning with each client we take on. But it’s fun, and… well, as long as you don’t make the same mistake twice, it’s worth the experience.

Can you give world-class customer service without a culture that supports it? We doubt it. Can your company uphold such a culture when the guys at the top don’t get it? Probably not.

It’s good to be able to pick-and-choose your clients. Personally, I like helping people who deserve it, and passing on those who don’t. (Ask me about the car dealer some time – I’ve mentioned him in this blog before. Yikes!) But you don’t get this luxury until you can prove your past successes – and you can’t do that if you choose the wrong clients.

Another chicken and egg dilemma, I suppose.