Market downturns often find old-line businesses rediscovering their customers. The fear and insecurity created by a recession can return senior executives to common-sense principles and remind them why their institutions are in business in the first place - or at least they should. Now is the time when organizations become awash in "back to basics" and "customer delight" mantras that risk being temporary, cliched and insincere.
I lived through successive rounds of customer rediscovery - as if they ever went away - in my commercial banking career. In an attempt to prevent another embarrassing declaration that a certain year would be proclaimed, "The Year of the Customer," I floated the idea that we appoint a Director of Common Sense. I only half meant it, but the suggestion never flew. Only years later did I figure out why. It seemed to me that nobody wanted to be held to any common-sense standard. I don't think people feared ridicule of an appointment that would then, and now, earn a Wall Street Journal headline. Instead, they may have feared the ridicule that would come the very next day and for days, months and years ahead when common sense would be violated.
This is why it is so painful now to hear top executives in financial services and elsewhere brag about their movement back to the customer. A top New England banker I do not know and have never met just told The Boston Globe, "When things are difficult, you go back to your customer focus, and that's what we're doing." It is likely that this official does not understand the revealing quality of this statement. If institutions actually wanted to acquire and retain customers, they would hire, train and pay well customer service specialists who understand the primary language of the country they serve and are truly knowledgeable about the institution. These folks would be ready, willing and able to relay, remedy and reward customers who call, write or e-mail the company. In doing so, these firms would rip out the front-end, voice-mail-hell to which many of them subject their customers.
When mediocre leaders enjoy good times, they move away from customers and take them for granted. Their focus moves to mergers and acquisitions, the usual musical-chairs, who's-on-first office politics, and all manner of "luxuries" that could not be tolerated in tough times. Perhaps they could eliminate or at least reduce trouble if customer focus was not so situational and variable.
I lived through successive rounds of customer rediscovery - as if they ever went away - in my commercial banking career. In an attempt to prevent another embarrassing declaration that a certain year would be proclaimed, "The Year of the Customer," I floated the idea that we appoint a Director of Common Sense. I only half meant it, but the suggestion never flew. Only years later did I figure out why. It seemed to me that nobody wanted to be held to any common-sense standard. I don't think people feared ridicule of an appointment that would then, and now, earn a Wall Street Journal headline. Instead, they may have feared the ridicule that would come the very next day and for days, months and years ahead when common sense would be violated.
This is why it is so painful now to hear top executives in financial services and elsewhere brag about their movement back to the customer. A top New England banker I do not know and have never met just told The Boston Globe, "When things are difficult, you go back to your customer focus, and that's what we're doing." It is likely that this official does not understand the revealing quality of this statement. If institutions actually wanted to acquire and retain customers, they would hire, train and pay well customer service specialists who understand the primary language of the country they serve and are truly knowledgeable about the institution. These folks would be ready, willing and able to relay, remedy and reward customers who call, write or e-mail the company. In doing so, these firms would rip out the front-end, voice-mail-hell to which many of them subject their customers.
When mediocre leaders enjoy good times, they move away from customers and take them for granted. Their focus moves to mergers and acquisitions, the usual musical-chairs, who's-on-first office politics, and all manner of "luxuries" that could not be tolerated in tough times. Perhaps they could eliminate or at least reduce trouble if customer focus was not so situational and variable.