How to Make Customers a True Priority: Align With Your Company Power Core

Customers are having a harder time than ever getting service from the companies they do business with, regardless of how much they spend, how long they've been a customer, or how profitable they are for the company.

There is a fever pitch from customers using the power of the Internet to make their pain known. Web sites such as www.ripoffreport.com, www.planetfeedback.com, and www.gethuman.com give customers a place to gripe and navigate their way to companies that can serve them better. And they are doing it actively, loudly, and in great numbers.

Research validates customer pain:

• In "Building and Profiting from Consumer Trust," Datamonitor reports that 86% of 3,200 US and European consumers surveyed say their trust in corporations has declined in the past five years.
  
  
• The "Customer Experience Report" conducted by Harris Interactive and RightNow Technologies found that almost every US consumer surveyed (96%) had a negative service experience in the past year, and 80% ceased doing business when the service experience was negative.
  
  
• A recent study (Zenith Research) shows that 92% of retail organizations have a customer service rating of 70% or worse.

What we have now is a frenzied awareness of a problem that often leads to an even more frenzied approach to a "solution." Companies lack the motivation, metrics, and mechanics to require them to connect the silos of the organization and deliver a meaningful and beneficial set of products and services to customers.

A Major Reason Customers Have Not Become a True Priority of Most Businesses

The base of power in a company lies in its "Power Core" of founders and executives and its business stronghold in the marketplace. This center of power defines what competencies are built and rewarded in the company.

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