Why don’t businesses believe that “Customer is King?”
This is a very interesting question for all of us who are customers and who isn’t? Everyday businesses ill-treat their customers. Everyone of us has horror stories to tell. Inspite of being a business and hotel management student, I ill-treated a customer in 1997. Since then, I have thought about this question. Now I know the answer and would like to share it with you.
Do you drive your car into a wall? I am quite sure you do not. This is because we all know that if we drive our car into a wall, we will get hurt as well as suffer a financial loss. So we don’t drive our car into a wall.
Do you jump off the top of a tall building? I am sure that the answer to this question would also be a firm “no” as you know that such an action will certainly lead to your death or your getting seriously injured. So most of us (except those who want to commit suicide) don’t do it.
Just a couple of more questions. Did you read any book which warned you about the adverse affects of driving your car into a wall or jumping off a tall building? Did you attend a training program or a seminar on the subject? Or, did your parents tell you not to do so? I think none of the above is true. Yet we don’t jump off a tall building or drive our car into a wall.
A question that logically follows from above is why don’t we jump off a tall building or drive our car into a wall in spite of the fact that we have never been told about the dangers of doing so by anybody? I think we do not do so because we sincerely BELIEVE that both the actions will hurt us financially and physically because of two reasons. One, logic suggests that such acts will cause us harm. Two, we have off and on seen some evidence to support the fact that people get hurt when they fall from a tall building or when they have an automobile accident. Since we BELIEVE in the outcome of these actions, we don’t do it.
We are all aware of the importance of the customer for our business and careers as it has been endlessly written and talked about. There are literally thousands of books and articles written on this subject. There are large number of consultants who provide training programs and seminars on the subject. Probably no day passes by without you or someone you know talking about the importance of the customer. Now we even have a separate department in companies called “Customer Care” and a whole new discipline in management called Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Practically, every business school is offering certificate/degree program in CRM. We also have software specifically developed for the purpose of taking care of the customers. What more. Even a new industry, BPO/call center industry, has developed all over the world at a fast pace with the objective of taking care of customers. I doubt if there is a vision statement of any company that does not include the word “customer” in it. I think most of us also intuitively feel that ill-treating customers is not good for our business and realize that it can probably hurt us financially. But we still treat our customers shabbily. We are rude to him. Some of us even go to the extent of cheating him.
So the million dollar question is why do we treat our customers poorly in spite of the fact that we have read books and articles as well as attended training programs and seminars on the subject? Why is it that we do exactly the opposite of what we are told, that is, to keep the customer happy by providing him “value for money” and “being there when he needs you?”
The answer is very obvious. We DO NOT BELIEVE that keeping customers happy and retaining them will benefit us in any manner. Most organizations all over the world do not sincerely believe that a company’s profitability is linked to customer satisfaction. If they did, they wouldn’t be treating their customers the way they do. They just talk about customer satisfaction as it is fashionable to do so. They don’t put their money where their mouth is.
Let me try to explain what I am trying to say with an example of how I treated one of my customers. I started my advertising agency in 1996. In 1997, we recieved a brochure printing job for Rs. 9000 job from our client IT Solutions Ltd. (name changed), a reputed IT firm. The quality of the brochures printed by us was poor. Anyway, since I had just started the business, I did not want to lose money. As such, I somehow convinced the customer to accept the brochures we had printed for him knowing fully well that the brochures were of poor quality.
You would agree, after taking my background into consideration, that I was or should have been fully aware of the importance of a customer. Then why did I try to short change my customer? Why did I cheat my customer? Yes, I would call it cheating because I did not supply the customer what I had promised to supply him for the money that he had agreed to pay me.
It is obvious that at this point of time, I was a NON-BELIEVER in the concept of customer satisfaction and retention. If I was a BELIEVER, I would have ensured that the customer received value for his money. I would have done this if I had believed that losing Rs. 9,000 in satisfying my customer today would result in higher profits later. I didn’t do it because I believed that Rs. 9,000 spent today in satisfying the customer would be an irrecoverable loss.
I realized that I had lost an immense amount of business trying to save Rs. 9,000. Had I tried to save the customer instead of the money, I would have been much better off. This company had so much business to offer that I could have sustained myself on just the business that came my way from it.
Why did I treat my customer poorly in spite of the fact that I was fully aware of the importance of customer? Isn’t it strange that with no one telling us not to ram our cars into a wall, we still do not do it. On the other hand, with everybody telling us to treat our customers properly, we do exactly the opposite? Just like what I did to my customer. I hope you will agree that we DO NOT SINCERELY BELIEVE in the concept of “Customer is King.” In other words, we DO NOT SINCERELY BELIEVE that satisfying a customer will result in higher sales and profits for our business or give a boost to our professional career. It is no wonder that we ill-treat our customers.
So, now you know the answer why you ill-treat your customers. In case, you would like to become a BELIEVER in the concept of “Customer is King”, you can read some of my books on the subject. My book “Customer Math” give mathematical proof that customer retention should be the primary strategy of every business. Once you understand mathematics related to the customer, you will never dare to make the customer unhappy. For details, visit www.customermath.com or www.management-training1.com.
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