Gary Heil, co-author of Maslow on Management and Leadership and the Customer Revolution speaks to RCME attendees about One Size Fits One: Building Relationships One Customer At A Time.
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Not long ago, it was commonly observed that one dissatisfied customer normally told nine people about the bad experience.
Today, we are so interconnected that a dissatisfied customer can practically tell the world: A Power Point presentation posted on the Web by two unhappy customers of a hotel chain has been downloaded 5 million times, and counting. Other sites and e-mails voicing customer complaints have become Web mainstays, with some making headline news.
"People make more of a difference than they've ever made before. It's the proverbial butterfly in China causing a hurricane in North Carolina," says Gary Heil, an expert on leadership, service quality, and change management.
On March 19, Heil focused on developing personalized customer relationships, connectivity, and regaining competitive advantage for a seminar hosted by the Retail Consortium for Management Education sponsored by a group of leading national retailers. The educator and business consultant is the co-author of Maslow on Management and Leadership and the Customer Revolution and also founder of the Center for Innovative Leadership at www.garyheil.com
During the past two years, Heil's research on customer relationships has found that "people don't want to talk just to each other in the absence of the company involved—they want to talk to the company." In every case he's researched, the customer tried to communicate with the company first.
The customer's point of view is this: "Every company is telling me they want my business, they want to have a relationship with me. They want me to fill out all these profiles. They want to treat me as a segment of one. But when I try to get a hold of them, I can't. When I want to tell them something, and they don't respond quickly, I get angry and I look for someplace else to communicate."
On average, customers are loyal to a surprising total of only 2.5 companies, says Heil. And loyalty has a strong emotional component.
When is most loyalty created in retailing? "When you change your normal process for me because of something I need, you"re showing me that you care," says Heil. "The way companies react when they have a problem demonstrates whether or not they care. We've known for years that this emotional connection is a big deal."
Gary Heil, discusses the finer points of customer service with RCME attendees.
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The words 'care' and 'trust' surfaced in nearly every research interview. Seventy percent of responses indicated that loyalty was created because of the way the company handled a customer's issue.
long-term perception of you as a company. So if you sell me something and it was great, or if I send you an e-mail and you don't answer it, the last contact has an undue influence on my perception of your brand or company.
"If we manage our last contact well, we"'l get more credit than we deserve. First impressions and last contacts are everything. But last contacts are really everything."
Relationships inside companies are just as important, says Heil, because they affect the bottom line. Is there a shared sense of purpose or communal sense of identity? Perpetuating a sense of identity is the single most important thing a company can do, says Heil.
"Leadership is more about who you are than about the tactics you use. It's not about leadership style. It's about how we are collectively going to act differently. If we don't change the way we think, we're not going to change the way we act."
How to create an inspired team? Motivating employees and developing customer relationships both require trust. "Don't I have to trust you to get the trust back? And if I don't create an atmosphere of trust as the leader, who's going to take the first step? We have the chicken and the egg."
“Trust is the glue that holds the whole thing together," says Heil. "Do I get the feeling, when I walk into your store, that you trust me?"
Next in the 2002 RCME Series:
June 12, 2002 - Barry Posner, Ph.D., Dean, SCU Leavey School of Business, Coauthor of The Leadership Challenge.
BEING AT OUR PERSONAL BEST AS LEADERS: HOW TO GET EXTRAORDINARY THINGS DONE
October 2, 2002 - Dale Achabal, Ph.D. Associate Dean & Director Retail Management Institute; and Kirthi Kalyanam, Ph.D. Professor of Marketing and Director of e.Commerce Initiatives, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University.
BEST PRACTICES IN INTEGRATED MULTI-CHANNEL RETAILING
For Information on future RCME programs and membership....contact:
Cynthia Gamage at 408.554.4961 or e-mail: cgamage@scu.edu
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