How Should You Work With Customers?

Are the rules of customership the same, no matter how small or large your business? We’ll let you vote first, since this is your business and your customers. One thing remains the same and that is the title CEO. If you are a business of one, the owner of a business with fewer than 50 employees or the head of a company that has many employees and customers, your business card probably says chief executive officer, president or some “C” label that says you are top dog.

 

John Quelch has a terrific blog on Harvard Business Online—How CEOs Should Work With Customers and states the mantra we live by, here on Customers Count,: “Customers are the source of all cash flow.”

 

If you don’t believe it, try going without customers, or lose too many and you’ll understand the gap between saying you are customer centric and actually getting out of your office or factory to get out and meet customers on their home turf—in their homes, in their offices, on their job sites, where they create value and generate revenue.

 

“How much time should you spend with customers?” Quelch asks and offers three specific strategies with instructions on what do to and why. Read his blog and gauge your activity in each of the areas.  Find out why running around visiting customers is not enough.

 

What does the current economic downturn tell you? If your answer is conserve cash by not traveling, not investing in new services and products and bunkering in your comfort zone, you’ll just make things worse, even faster.

 

If you were paying attention to the political campaigns for the past 21 months (how could you not notice?) you saw that customer insights and knowledge comes from listening to a lot of them, first hand, at a somewhat exhaustive pace. Leadership strengths tell you how much time to spend balancing the work on customership inside your business and how much to spend on the outside.

 

Customers vote every day with their wallets. They may not buy as much in the months ahead and that’s why it’s important to focus on what they will do. The cash flow reality is customers don’t go away; they just go to someone else. They may buy differently based on their economic circumstance, but they are someone’s customer.

 

The main question you ought to have now is How do I grow my business in a time when thing around me appear to be shrinking? The answer will come from one source—customers. Someone’s business and customer satisfaction numbers will grow and thrive this year. We hope it’s yours.

Comments

[David V. Greis]

In today's tough economy, the need for businesses to work with their customers is stronger than ever before. Customers have more options and it is far more costly to replace a customer than to keep an existing one.
We need to work with customers to provide what meets their needs and their situation. This might mean a new billing policy, product offering, or a change in delivery or store hours. Whatever our customer base needs, we need to listen and provide whenever possible.

[joe123]

Its a great article. I always give impotance the manners. Keping manners will bring success for customers.
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[joe123]

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[Narconon Arrowhead]

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[ria simpson]

Sage Spark has a great online invoicing tool called Billing Boss that does the following:

Your data and your customer information is encrypted and stored in a state of the art facility with regular backup.
Share data with your bookkeeper or accountant
Your customers can pay you immediately with online payments
Unlimited number of invoices you can create and send

And that's only a few of its features. But the very best thing about it is that it's FREE. Check it out at www.billingboss.com.

http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/04/03/show-me-the-money-online-invoicing-services-for-the-web-worker/
Sage Spark is offering online invoicing services for free with Billing Boss. It's the easiest way to create and send invoices and accept online payments. You can also share data with your accountant or bookkeeper which is a huge help when it's that time of the year to deal with taxes. You can check Billing Boss at www.billingboss.com.