Case Two

 

Quoting the experience of a leader in Customer Relation

 

Leaders must connect with customers, partners, and front-line employees. If you really want to understand a problem, go to the front line and give people your ear. It is amazing what you will find out about your business, your customers, and how life really is.

 

I recently made changes in our business as a result of a visit to a reseller of our service. My host wanted to give me an executive tour, but I asked if I could sit with someone who worked on our account. It was a revelation. The young woman I met showed me what she had to go through to do business with us. She was trying to correct a mistake on a customer order. She had to talk to four people at the company and none of them could fix the problem. Why not? That order passed through our company like a part on an assembly line. No one had accountability for where it went next.

 

We implemented a system that I think will change the way our partners view us. We made a supervisor and a dedicated team responsible for each of our channel partners. It will create a new customer experience. But I never would have seen that problem if I did not sit with someone who does our work.

 

It takes time and commitment to be at the front line. It also takes an ability to relate to people. One of the first things I learned as a manager was a communication technique called FORM. You can learn a lot about people and open useful conversations about your business by asking about any of these elements:

 

Family - what's happening with spouse, children, immediate relatives (usually the most important thing in people's lives)

Occupation - what they like or don't like about their job

Recreation - how they spend their time away from the job

Money - how they spend it, what they enjoy; what's important to them

I use these experiences to show other leaders in the business how important it is to get out and to touch the people, feel the people. Leaders lead through stories. They use stories as tools for engagement, for change, for honesty, and for values.