Customer Satisfaction

June 11, 2009

Welcome Back. We've got lots of in depth business strategy to share with you today.

Does your business strategy created in your strategic planning process create competitive advantage and therefore customer satisfaction?

You skipped dinner last night to apply the final touches, and you’re not
disappointed.  The frame is a masterpiece, the mounting ingenious.  You
imagine the customer blinking madly to check his tears, solemnly promising
his eternal loyalty to you and your business.  When he arrives and you show
him his treasure, his face changes, indeed: he crinkles his eyes and tilts
his head momentarily before slapping his Visa on the counter, mumbling “thank you,” and stalking out the door.  You spend the next few hours lamely playing the same guessing game you used as a child to divine your mother’s mood: what did that face mean?  Was he thrilled?  Touched?  Unpleasantly surprised?

Will you be hearing in three days from his attorney?

Customers – not you –  ultimately make or break your business.

Far too often, we find ourselves here: running our businesses according to our expertise and intuition, celebrating our successes, swallowing our
obvious failures, and hoping against hope that most of our customers will be
back.  This guesswork, though, is both needless and detrimental.  There
exists a reliable method to ensure and increase your customers’ satisfaction
with your work: study it.

Power in small business has slowly shifted from those with the expertise to
those with the credit card; your customers —not you— ultimately make or break your business.  Tom Friedman of The New York Times explains this shift in terms of the “democratization of information,” the availability of myriad alternatives to every contemporary customer.  Whereas in an industrial economy the average person knew only of the framing shop or bookstore down the street, our present era of globalization gives the average Joe access to your shop and three others in the area, as well as an infinite number of Internet solutions.  Customer loyalty, then, has eroded: a customer may love the work you did for him last month, but if he finds a lower price or faster turnaround with your (local or global) competitor, he’ll likely have no compunction about taking his business elsewhere.  (Consider your own purchasing behavior.  To how many businesses do you truly consider yourself loyal—regardless of price increases, occasional mistakes, and idiosyncratic service?)

Posted by Bob Jonas | Filed Under Strategy Management 

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