Customer Service and Profits
We tend to look at revenues and profits, as generated by customers. This is useful, because it reinforces efforts toward good customer service. We must care about customers and focus completely on satisfying their needs. Better customer service. Some have taken this to fanatical levels, essentially saying that customers are all that matters. Without them, we are nothing and the company does not exist.
Now let's re-examine this and look at things a different way. That revenues and profits are delivered by employees and not customers. That employees are responsible for all income and profits. Entirely responsible. This does not mean that customers are not important, or that their satisfaction does not matter. Certainly if customer service is poor, customers will be lost and the business will suffer, but lets make that a secondary consideration. We credit our salesperson for making the sale, not the customer for buying. We should deliver for that customer and make them happy, but that was initiated by people inside the organization. Employees. We pay our respect and thanks to them and their efforts in gaining and servicing a customer, not to the customer for buying. We're grateful that they bought. But, they did not buy out of a sense of goodwill or as a special favor to us, for which we should feel grateful. They bought because of the efforts of those inside our organization that made that happen. Most directly, those involved with the sale, and those involved in any support role that helps gain and keep the account.
Employees are now given their just credit for the revenues of the company. Also, now they are responsible for those ongoing revenues. It is not just the job of the sales force to keep sales going. It is everyone's responsibility. Everyone has their role to play and they are not all direct sales roles, but all must be supporting some revenue generation effort. Customers must be propected for and sold to. The only good situtation is one where both the buyer and seller feel they are satisfied with the deal, but make no mistake that it is the employees who have generated that sale.
Looking at things differently than the prevailing wisdom of "customer first" may be useful in reminding us that the employees are the real value in the organization.
