Customer Service Expectations - Part 2

Last week, I included the following stats in my blog:

60% of Baby Boomers want excellent customer service

71% of Gen X want excellent customer service

77% of Millennials require excellent customer service.....!!!!!!!

I added that Millennials are the worst at giving great customer service even with all the competition out there whereas Boomers who grew up with no competition - a sort of 'you'll get what you're given' range of options and are the best.

It got me thinking (and I have blogged about this before, but I do feel very strongly about this and this stat might prove that we should discount the competition) forget about the competition (the Millennial sales assistants do with their lack of help in shops) and focus on your products.

I mentioned last week, that I would include one of the world biggest brands on this point: Amazon.

Ever since they started, Amazon have been customer focused. There mission is to be Earths Most Customer Centric Company and they certainly do that.

Jeff Bezos has been fixated on customer over competition since day one of Amazon when it started to sell books. I am a big believer of focusing on the customer over the competitor and focus on your strengths to drive this message home which you can control rather than an obsessive focus on the competition which you cannot control.

I revisited a presentation for work on customer service that i am about to deliver in a fe weeks and found this video of Jeff Bezos talking in the late 1990s about his focus of customer over competitor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbENtDIPl3U

So the world's most influential companies have one thing in common: 

1 - They disrupted their industries by being customer-centric, rather than competitor-centric.

2 - By focusing on customers needs, they highlight their competitors' shortfalls and gain market share.

3 - By taking the time to truly understand the needs of customers and think creatively about how to meet them, these leading companies set themselves up to win.

By focusing on creating a strong customer experience, instead of being overly concerned with competitors; companies can experience higher levels of growth.

Great experiences drives more traffic to a business through word of mouth. More traffic leads to more sales, which ultimately gives you more resources to create an even better customer experience.

I do understand that someone in your company needs to understand the marketplace and keep an eye on what's going on: who your competition is, what other products are on the market, and how they are doing, at a basic level. But there’s a point at which paying attention to other companies and what they’re doing interferes with your team’s ability to immerse itself in the world of your consumer.

So why are so many companies focusing on the competition over the customer?

I feel it's because a company does not have strong products or services and therefore produces copycat products and services to alleviate this weakness. However this is not innovative or customer focused.

It could be weak / safe leadership driven to follow, rather than be innovative and take risks, the latter which is what forward thinking companies and businesses are all about. 

So I say this:

Focus on the customer + Your Strengths = Growth