WHO IS YOUR CUSTOMER?
Summary
TLDRThe speaker discusses the importance of customer service, emphasizing that serving customers is a calling, not just a job. They highlight that everyone, regardless of their role, deals with customers daily and often forgets they are customers themselves. The talk explores how businesses sometimes prioritize processes over customer experience, which can lead to a disconnect between service and the customer. The speaker encourages a mindset shift towards viewing customers as people and stresses the replaceability of individuals and organizations if they fail to prioritize customer experience over rigid processes.
Takeaways
- 📈 All of us deal with customers every day, regardless of our role or job title.
- 🤝 Customer service is not just a job but a calling to serve others.
- 💡 Many technical professionals often forget that they have internal customers within the organization.
- 👥 All customers are people, not just numbers or figures on a PowerPoint slide.
- 🌍 No matter where you go in the world, people have common desires like hope, laughter, and improving life for their children.
- 🔄 Everyone is replaceable, and no organization or role is indispensable.
- 🔧 The role of processes is to standardize and make customer service more efficient, not to replace the experience.
- ❓ A key question businesses should ask: What is more important – process or customer experience?
- 📊 Rules and processes in industries like banking, insurance, and retail are necessary but often focus more on preventing downside risks rather than optimizing opportunities.
- 🚪 Optimizing opportunities requires a different mindset and set of rules beyond just following process safeguards.
Q & A
What is the main entity the speaker refers to in the beginning of the transcript?
-The main entity the speaker refers to is the 'customer,' which is something everyone deals with in their professional lives.
Why does the speaker emphasize that all of us are also customers?
-The speaker emphasizes this to remind the audience that although we serve customers in our jobs, we often forget that we ourselves are customers too, and that understanding this helps improve customer service.
What does the speaker mean by saying 'service is a calling, not a job'?
-The speaker means that providing customer service should come from a deeper commitment to serving others, rather than just fulfilling job duties. It's a higher purpose that goes beyond technical aspects of a role.
Why does the speaker differentiate between 'lag indicators' and 'lead indicators' in customer service?
-The speaker differentiates between them to explain that 'lag indicators,' such as surveys or reviews, reflect past performance, while 'lead indicators' focus on proactive elements that build a customer-centric culture.
What is the significance of the point 'all customers are people' in the transcript?
-The speaker stresses that customers are not just numbers in a database but real people with emotions, hopes, and expectations. This is important because businesses often depersonalize customers and forget their human nature.
What is the speaker's view on the replaceability of employees?
-The speaker asserts that everyone is replaceable, regardless of their position or the size of the company they work for. No organization has a 'divine right' to exist, and individuals need to stay humble and adaptable.
How does the speaker describe the role of 'managers' in scaling businesses?
-The speaker explains that managers are typically brought in to manage processes efficiently, but they often focus more on the processes than on customer service, which can be detrimental to customer experience.
What is the speaker's perspective on the relationship between processes and customer service?
-The speaker believes that while processes are important for standardizing customer service, they should not replace the focus on the customer experience. Processes should serve customers, not hinder them.
Why does the speaker mention industries like banking, insurance, and retail?
-The speaker uses these industries to illustrate how each has specific rules and processes, often designed to mitigate risks, but emphasizes that these rules are not optimized for enhancing customer service or seizing opportunities.
What does the speaker suggest is needed to 'optimize upside opportunity'?
-The speaker suggests that optimizing upside opportunity requires a different set of rules and thinking, implying that a focus on customer experience and flexibility is essential, rather than relying solely on rigid processes.
Outlines
💼 The Universal Truth: Dealing with Customers
In this opening section, the speaker introduces the concept that all of us, regardless of profession, deal with customers daily. This 'entity' is essential to personal and business success. The speaker humorously reflects on their global speaking engagements, except in Antarctica. The core message is that many professionals forget they are also customers, despite interacting with them every day.
🌍 A Commonality Among All People
The speaker emphasizes the universal traits of people worldwide, from China to the United States. They point out that all customers, regardless of their location, are people who share common hopes, dreams, and emotions. This reminder is vital because businesses often reduce customers to numbers or roles, neglecting the human aspect of customer service.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Customer
💡Service
💡Process
💡Lead Indicators
💡Calling
💡People
💡Replaceable
💡Rules
💡Customer Experience
💡Net Promoter Score
Highlights
The speaker emphasizes the universal truth that everyone deals with customers, no matter their profession or role.
Service is a calling, not just a job. The speaker suggests that customer service is fundamentally about the calling to serve.
All customers are people, not just numbers or figures in a database. This human connection is critical to remember in business interactions.
The speaker humorously mentions their experience of working on six continents and jokes about needing to speak in Antarctica.
Professionals in technical roles, such as finance or marketing, often don't see themselves as having customers, which is a misconception.
There is a tendency to separate oneself from customers, sometimes seeing oneself as 'better,' which the speaker critiques.
Service processes are meant to standardize customer service, not replace it, and focusing too much on process can undermine the customer experience.
The speaker promises to prove three points during the talk: that service is a calling, all customers are people, and everyone is replaceable.
Rules in businesses, such as banking and insurance, are often written to safeguard against risks, not to optimize opportunities.
The speaker stresses that many business processes lose sight of their purpose, which should be improving customer service, not adhering strictly to procedure.
Customer experience should take precedence over rigid processes, especially when those processes hinder rather than help customers.
All employees, regardless of how large or powerful their organization is, are replaceable, and no company has a divine right to exist.
First-generation business founders typically understand the importance of customers, while managers who focus on processes may lose that perspective.
The speaker challenges listeners to reflect on whether they are serving the process or the customer, a critical distinction in providing quality service.
In industries like food, retail, and banking, strict rules are necessary due to the nature of their products or services, but these should not come at the expense of customer service.
Transcripts
so what I thought I would do here today
is to talk about this number one
commodity or entity all of us deal with
every single day whether you are
employed or you run your own business
all of us have the single feature across
all of our Lives as a universal truth we
deal with this entity every day some of
us think we deal with it better than our
competitors in fact whatever it is that
you're doing how you deal with this
entity will give you a sense of your
proximity towards
success it's the single thing that all
of us here learn about we all know about
it and some of us think we're better at
dealing with it than the
rest but it and only it is the ultimate
truth of how it experiences you this
thing we call a customer
for whatever
reason when all of us start dealing with
customers we forget that we too are
customers now I've had by God's
incredible Grace and only by God's grace
the amazing privilege of working in six
of the seven
continents that are on this Earth of
ours the only one I have not spoken in
is
Antarctica so I've thought about whether
or not I should gather a couple of
penguins for me to go and address them
in Antarctica so that it would say in my
resume he's spoken in all seven of the
seven continents if you're not smiling
that was a
joke if the person sitting next to you
is not laughing write it down will
explain it to them at the end of the
session all of us no matter what it is
you do deal with
customers now here is the interesting
thing
one of the things I've learned over time
is that typically the more technically
trained people who operate in more
technical functions of an organization
tend to think that they don't have any
customers if you work at a large
organizations you typically will
experience that the people working in
finance don't see the rest of the
business as customer the people working
in marketing don't see the rest of the
business as customer the people working
in audit risk and compliance don't see
rest of business as customer all of us
every day deal with
customers all of
us what is interesting to note though is
that for whatever
reason we tend to separate ourselves
from those
customers we see ourselves as different
as other dare I say sometimes we see
ourselves as
better is that
painful we do we
do I'm going to prove to you over the
next hour three things and you can write
all three of these things down at the
end of the hour you can keep me
accountable and you can give me a
scorecard on whether or not I have
proven all three of these
things the first thing I'm going to
prove to you is this
service is a calling not a
job service is a calling it's not a
job so when we talk about customer
service really what we're talking about
is the calling to
serve now a lot of us myself included
have a way of measuring customer service
you might run a survey for inance
measure your net promoter score go
online and have a look at your reviews
by customers what these are are what we
call lag indicators they tell you what
has already taken
place but truly building a customer
Centric team that requires a certain
number of lead
indicators the most important of these
is the second thing I'm going to prove
to
you all customers are people
I know that's a shocker wow can you
believe it they are not a customer
number on a database oh my goodness can
you believe it they're not a figurehead
on a PowerPoint
presentation all customers are
people and why is this important because
all people have the same things in
common if I travel to shenzen in China
and then made my way out to quala lamp
po where I will be in a few months
time here in Cala or if I travel to
California in the United States I will
find that all people are
common they laugh they cry they pray
they hope they bring children into the
world hoping that it would be better for
them than it
was for their own
lives and yet for whatever reason when
we start dealing with these people we
forget
this the third thing I will prove to you
is perhaps the most difficult
one every single person in this room is
completely
replaceable Believe It or
Not nowhere in the Bible does it say
that on the eighth day God invented
whatever company you work
for believe it or not no matter how
large the organization you work for is
no matter how powerful your boss is no
matter how big your p&l is no matter how
large your market capitalization is
there was a time your business did not
exist nowhere is it written that you
have the Divine Right to
exist see what happens in my experience
is the following typically first
generation Runners and founders of a
business understand understand this they
remember a time when there was no
customer to grow and scale their
business they hire these people who are
technically trained at managing
processes we call these people
managers managers for whatever reason
tend to
forget that the role of a process is to
make customer service more efficient not
replace service in the
customer and so what tends to happen is
we focus more on the process than the
customer customer you ever been to an
organization and they tell you about
customer service department then when
you get to the customer service
department they tell you what the
process is to which you should ask the
question is this customer service or
process
service what are you here to serve me or
the process see when it comes to dealing
with customers to the extent to which
you make the process the end you lose
what the purpose of the process is which
is this it is to standardize customer
service and experience experience not
replace
it the rules are so that we know what
the standard is the rules are not so
that we know what the outcome is before
we even get started the question I have
for you is what's more important process
or customer experience even in the space
where all of you here work what is more
important
process or customer
experience everybody says customer
experence expence of course they do
until it actually comes down to it until
we've actually got to start making
decisions until we faced with doing what
we are told to do and doing what we know
is
right usually when I have these kind of
sessions there are Bankers in the room
hands up if you work in a
bank hands up Bankers you have my
deepest sympathies hands up all of you
Bankers are fairly easy to spot they're
usually in a tie yeah you see there I'm
right there I uh I'm absolutely right
we're the bankers hands up again good
we're the people that work in insurance
companies insurance people insurance
people are also fairly easy to spot they
have Smiles on their faces but they
really don't like their
jobs now hands up any of you here who
work in like fashion or retail who deal
with actual customers like every day
you're in food retail Fashion retail or
anything like this hands up there should
be about two or three of you in the room
you work in
retail food excellent excellent each and
every single one of these industries I
mention them because they have a
specific set of dictates around how they
do business see you have to have
dictates around how you do business
because the things you sell people
ingest you get it wrong you kill someone
the banks have to have rules around how
they do business because if they get it
wrong they're dealing with people's
money
the insurance companies definitely have
to have rules because if they don't
they'll be out of business because all
of us are not honest enough to only
submit claims that are purely
legitimate so the rules are the
Safeguard against the downside risk but
notice something rules are never written
to optimize the upside
opportunity if you want to optimize
upside opportunity that requires a
different set of rules and a different
set of thoughts
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