Employee-customer relationship vital to success: Refererences are surest sign of customer satisfaction

Today, Dec 2002 by Wanner, Jim

References Are the Surest Sign of Customer Satisfaction

Nearly four years ago Key--Mark established a goal to achieve a 100% satisfaction record with its customer base. To achieve this goal we expect that all KeyMark customers, regardless of size, will provide us with a referenceable account-meaning that we must be able to provide (with notice) the contact name of a current customer to a potential future customer.

Key-Mark developed several operational strategies to achieve the 1000/ referenceable account goal and some of the ideas may be adopted as criteria during any vendor selection process.

The best way to find out if a potential vendor will be a good long-term partner is to ask questions during a site visit. It is worth the time to see the products and possible solutions before you purchase. Pull the customer aside and ask how the company will respond to customer requests.

The key to achieving a successful customer focused program is dependent on communicating this goal to all employees. Employees should understand why customer satisfaction is important to their own success. Employee orientation is ongoing. never ending, and in continuous need of improvement.

KeyMark has identified a few concepts that have contributed to our employee's success:

* Recognize the employee's need for recognition through effective incentives. The program should include minimizing an employee's concern for financial or family issues. Distractions of this type affect job performance and eventually impact the customer.

* Provide the training required for the employee to perform job assignments for customers at the highest level of proficiency. Create problem solvers for your customers and they will seek your company's solutions for their problems over any and all competitors. Your employees will appreciate that you care about their long-term goals.

* Establish an effective research and development program within your company that emphasizes the need to solve your customer's business problems. Turn these problems into business opportunities.

* Encourage your employee's creative juices to flow. New ideas sometime come from the most obvious sources. the very people that work with the originating problems. Open avenues of communication to both employees and customers that keep the R&D projects flowing. Most important, reward the idea generator and you will receive a continuous stream of new project ideas.

* Turn your valued employees into owners and they will communicate with customers to the mutual benefit of both. An employee/owner will seek the best possible customer relations in order to provide for their personal financial and professional growth. Various stock plans are available to accomplish this goal; however, we encourage interested parties to seek legal and financial guidance so that the best plan is implemented to best serve both the company and all participating employees.

It is often necessary for companies to ask philosophical questions to their potential vendors to find out if they will be a good long-term partner. So often we focus on the financial or technical details instead of the personal side of business transactions. I think we make a mistake when we overlook how the company's core philosophies will conflict or fit into our goals and objectives. I encourage everyone to look for the concepts we described in this article when selecting vendors. After you begin analyzing vendors based on the companies philosophies, I think what you will find is a higher probability of success in your vendor selection process.

Jim Wanner is CEO of automated data entry systems provider KeyMark (www.keymarkinc.com). He can be reached at jim.wanner@keymarkinc.com or 864-295-2790 Ext. 102.