is customer focus really that difficult?

I am always amazed that despite all the fine words, companies do not understand what customer focus means.

Let’s start with the essential difference between customer focus and customer friendliness. The latter indicates the way in which you deal with the customer. So how you actually treat the customer in behavior and language. Customer focus is about the extent to which an organization meets the wishes / requirements of the customer. That is therefore about the actual service. And the latter is still a bit wrong with many companies.

Tendentious websites

Technological developments are ringing around our ears. But building customer-oriented websites proves impossible for many companies. Day in, day out, as an internet user, you are nevertheless mainly urged to protect your data and your computer. If you have done that, you will discover that many websites do not work afterwards. You are expected to disable your firewall or at least minimum protection. As a result, ‘the man in the middle’ effect can occur.

You have to accept all kinds of cookies that often have no functional value, except that they can track you and websites often prove not to be multi-browser resistant. Whether you want to install IE. While browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Chrome are much more stable and secure.

Mail responses.

Mailing with organizations seems to be taboo these days. You have to fill in email forms, which often work flawed and if you receive mail from the organization, this is in almost all cases a no-reply address. All this to make it seemingly easier for the organization. The fact that this complicates correspondence with the customer and for the customer seems to elude the organization. In addition, I would like to choose how I correspond with an organization. There are even organizations that demand that you always call for support. Apparently emailing is much easier for many people. In any case, you as a customer are not central.

Cabinet and the wall.

And then you have the nice problem that departments do not work well together. Despite the excellent packages that exist, you can tell your story every time. You can often resend data that you have already sent. Your account will be blocked for unclear reasons and it will then take weeks to clear that account.

Employees often assume that the customer has done wrong. Regardless of whether this is the case, the starting point is by definition wrong. And in cases where it is up to the organization or their site, it will take you many emails, phone calls and malfunctioning web forms before you convince the employee on the other side.

Cheap is expensive.

One of the main reasons for this high degree of customer focus is cost. Organizations cut back heavily on customer interaction contacts and try to handle everything through the system as much as possible. The support desks often have too little manpower, too little knowledge and, above all, too little authority. This form of savings is expensive. Companies that invest heavily in multi-customer contact solutions appear to have a much higher retention rate and have customers who are willing to pay extra for the high service and customer focus. The other organizations mainly cause a lot of frustration and a lot of negative reporting on social media. What they then try to fight with social media teams. Which means that at the back all savings are canceled out.

In this way they tighten the horse behind the wagon. Organizations, despite all the recommendations, seem hard to learn. There is a clear vision of cooperation with its customers, let alone that customer feedback is effectively used to improve the services offered. Cost-thinking has gone too far and leads to erosion of the organization and the relationships with its customers, with all possible consequences.