The 10 Customer Facing Characteristics of 21st Century Businesses

The 10 Customer Facing Characteristics of 21st Century Businesses*

1. Highly trained work force - focused on continuous learning to quickly respond to customer needs
2. Knowledgeable sales people who understand the customer's business
3. Lean manufacturing programs to produce high quality products at competitive prices
4. Leaders focused on leading, coaching, and praising to ensure a customer-centric business
5. Managers focused on ensuring the business goals are met so customer expectations can be met
6. Employees empowered to make informed decisions that lead to customer satisfaction
7. Vision, Mission, Objectives, and Goals aligned to meet customer requirements
8. An enlightened, diverse work environment with personnel representing all generations to better understand the wide variety of customer types and expectations.
9. Business principals based on sustainable qualities that meet all stakeholder expectations equally to ensure the business is there to serve it's customers, not the expectations of outside investors looking for short term gains.
10. Long term thinking led by senior management that maintains a close relationship with key customer personnel.

Throughout this blog are ideas and tools to help you become more competitive, cost effective, and focused. Please post your comments and ideas - and please subscribe to receive the latest posts and so that I will know there is interest in additional posts.  Thanks for your support.
* Trade Mark of Hibbard Associates LLC

Where do I Start? THIRD of Series

What do I NEED to consider? Kind of a basic question with lots of possible answers.  You need to know what you need to know to accomplish whatever task you have defined that you want to complete.  Therefore at each stage of your journey to your organization's Vision you will have to obtain the necessary skills and knowledge to accomplish the task.  You may wish to learn the knowledge for yourself, buy the knowledge, or utilize the knowledge your team has.  Normally it will be a combination of all three.

The knowledge, skills, and tools needed to realize your Vision will be a composite of past experience, current skills, and future learning events.  Take an assessment of your own skills, your team's skills, tools you own or can acquire to determine your "knowledge state" and compare those with what is thought to be needed.

Some of the basic 'need-to-know' are shown below and can be found on various posts on this blog.  Check out the page tabs for quick links to them.

NEED TO KNOW:

1. Your personal style - are you a Manager or a Leader?
2. What task(s) are to be accomplished.
3. Key business strategy factors.
4. What you do not know.
5. Why am I doing this?
6. Who knows what, in your organization.
7. Who can help.
8. Do you plan to go it alone or with consultants.
9. What's in it for me.
10. Can we afford it.
11. What knowledge needs to be purchased.
12. What tools to consider.
13. Is the organization and leadership committed.
14. How do you enlist support.
15. Where to obtain the knowledge and tools needed.

See also:

Where do I Start?  FIRST
Where do I Start?  SECOND

Competitive Advantages - What? How? Knowing?

Sharpen your pencils - everyone has one or more competitive advantages.  Businesses, departments, private organizations and any host of other entities have (or should have) some competitive advantage.  If you do not have one or any you better come up with some!  You generally need more than one.  You must be constantly looking for your 'killer-app'.  Even if you are in a commodity market you want to have some differentiator(s).

What are some differentiators?

1. We have all live (verses dead or robo) phone operators.
2. Six distribution centers across the country verses three for the competition.
3. Triple redundancy for power supplies at our co-lo facility verses two.
4. All personnel are Microsoft certified in each of our service offerings.
5. We serve only fresh beef, produce, etc.
6. Our factory is in full compliance with Six Sigma standards.
7. We are ISO certified.
8. Each of our doctors has done post-graduate work at the Mayo Clinic.
9. We offer the product in ten colors.
10. Each of our recruiters is focused on a specific industry and skill set.
11. My hand-to-eye coordination rate is in the top one hundredths percent in the world.
12. Our food servers have more than 30 hours of customer service training.
13. etc.

How do I determine what mine or our competitive advantages are?

You could start with a SWOT analysis.  A focus team and BRAINSTORMING session will be very useful.  You should have a cross-functional team if you are looking at a business area, product, delivery, etc.  Look to have at least sales, marketing, production, quality, training, service, and even financial on the team.  It can be amazing what types of advantages can be discovered and then exploited as a result of these team efforts.

Knowing your real competitive advantages is critical?

Things like more sales personnel may or may not be an advantage, for example.  True competitive advantages must be sought out on an on-going basis.  Once you know your advantages you must take action to make them tangible to your clients and customers. In other words you must act upon them.  Build on your strengths.  Build products or services based on these advantages - in that way your competitors are at a disadvantage. It is always good to keep in mind that your competition has competitive advantages too - how do you circumvent them?