Become your customer

I was in a hurry recently and needed to purchase a few things on my drive home.  Near to my office there's a shopping center which has a K-Mart in it, so I decided to duck in and purchase a few things.  As I wandered through the aisles trying to find the merchandise I needed I was frustrated and appalled.  The store was not clean, there were few sales people and the store was a mess.  It made me wonder if the CEO or other executive management of K-Mart ever walk through their stores.  If so, they should be fired immediately.  If not, well, they should be fired immediately.

This is not just a diatribe about K-Mart, since our local Wal-Mart makes any shopper feel like a criminal as he enters the store.  At our local Wal-Mart there are 17 cameras trained on the parking lot, and a host of people who watch you as you shop, and examine your bags and belongings as you leave.

Neither of these stores reflects my ideal shopping experience, and they both make me question whether or not the senior executives of these chains ever shop their own stores.  If so, aren't they the least bit put out by the disorder of the stores and the poor interactions with the customers?  Or have we become so accustomed to poor service that it has become the expectation?

Think for a minute about your own processes.  Who are your customers and what do they think about the experience of working with you?  Often we design our processes to maximize some internal operating goal, but what's important internally may be a barrier or a hindrance externally.  For example, the folks watching you as you enter and leave Wal-Mart are seeking to reduce "shrinkage" but they give me the creeps and make me unwilling to shop there.

Every once in a while, become your customer.  As much as possible, step away from your team, your process or your company and experience what it's like to interact with your group from an objective customer's point of view.  I suspect you'll be surprised at what you find.  Why?  Well, as we've discussed already, we tend to optimize measurements of the process that are internal, not external.  Second, apathy sets in in many places as people become used to providing poor service and receiving poor service.  Finally, inertia makes it difficult to change even the things you know aren't quite right.

When was the last time you looked at your process or your team from your customer's perspective, and understood the challenges that they face when working with you?  Does the interaction a customer has with your team or firm reflect the goals and expectations you have for your team?

Comments

[Michael Schaffner]

Jeffrey,
Excellent post. One of the simplest process checks of the customer experience is to call your company's main phone number from the outside and ask to speak with someone. Does the person answering the phone: answer quickly? do they continue their conversation with their co-worker before they address you? answer with a smile (yes, you can hear smiles - if you listen)? transfer the call quickly? treat your call as important? This simple test can tell you a lot about how a company really feels about their customers, their suppliers and even their employees. It can also be a real eye-opener about the "first impression" you are creating.

[Stephen]

I have to agree with all of your points. The last time I was in K-mart my experience was similar, it seems like they have just given up and are coasting. As for the phone answering, at my current job most of the "receptionists" are also tasked with other admin and data-entry duties, so the "greeting" is something along the lines of "Itsagreatdayat*****howcanIdirectyourcall?"
all slurred together and delivered at a pace to make an auctioneer envious. Not much of a customer-focused expeience, to say the least.