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Executive Summary
Are You a Good Customer?
Judith S. Corson
Partner and Co-Founder
Custom Research Inc.
October 1999
Today’s business world focuses on the customer, or in our case, the client. Books have been written on serving customers, staying close to customers, and having customers help design products and services. Yet not much is written on how to be a good customer. As the line between service provider and service consumer blurs, being a good customer becomes as important as providing good customer service.
In our company, we do everything we can to be a good customer. We want to help our suppliers do the very best job possible. The better we are as a customer, the better they can be as suppliers. For example, we rely on interviewing services to conduct the personal, telephone and online interviewing we do for our clients. For years we have invested a lot in these firms in order to get the processes and quality we need. We solicit their feedback so we can improve our questionnaires and instructions. It makes their job easier. By being a better customer of theirs, we get higher quality work – on budget and on time.
We do the same with other firms from which we buy services and software. We include them in our annual planning. We make sure they understand our objectives and needs. This allows us to communicate our high standards and maintain a good client-provider relationship, built on mutual respect and understanding.
We pay our bills on time. Even if a client of ours is late, we aren’t. We believe that we get better service because our providers know they can count on us to pay them on time. You’d be surprised how unusual this is becoming in the business world. How you handle accounts payable says a lot about who you are as a company and the values of your organization. Some of the biggest and most respected companies in the country are notorious for stringing small suppliers out on their invoices. We don’t think that is right. Why should a small company subsidize a company hundreds of times bigger?
Many years ago we decided to offer a guarantee of our service. At the time we were practicing the guarantee but not advertising that fact. When we started promoting our guarantee, we wrote down the core of what it takes to have a great partnership with our clients. Over the years, we have found that these same standards help us focus on being a good customer as well.
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We promised to be |
We asked our clients to |
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Looking at "friendliness," one might ask how that applies to business. For us it means creating an atmosphere of mutual respect, trust, and common courtesy. For example, we trust the companies who provide services to us that they will do things right the first time. We want an environment of courtesy and mutual respect that includes everyone. An internal department of our firm is staffed by an outside vendor. We include their employees just as if they were our own – even inviting them to join us on a company trip to London last year. We know that our friendliness has reduced turnover among the people who work for our supplier, making our account one on which people want to work.
We want to be nice to people, whether we are customers or providers. After all, our reputation is all we have. We expect friendliness – this atmosphere of trust, common courtesy and mutual respect – from our clients and suppliers alike. If we treated our clients well but not our providers, we would earn a bad reputation. And with the mobility in business today, you never know when a supplier will become a customer.
Being a good customer means treating employees right. We’ve fired clients who failed that test. Employee turnover is costly, and we can’t afford customers who put our employees through the wringer.
We have found that clients who practice what it takes to be a good customer get their projects done more quickly and more cost effectively. This is probably true for all businesses. So if you want the best prices and quickest response time – be a good customer.
Thus far, I’ve focused on those outside the company. However, most employees are customers of someone else inside their company. The same concepts and practices apply: Treat people like you want to be treated and you’ll get great service!
Over the years we have found this brief list to be a good guide for not only delivering great service but being good clients, too.
So, take a look and ask yourself if you and your company are good customers.
And don’t forget, pay your bills on time!
Meet the Executive
Judith S. Corson is Partner and Co-founder of Custom Research Inc. Prior to co-founding the firm in 1974, she worked for The Pillsbury Company in marketing research. Judy has held numerous national offices in her profession, in business organizations, and in the community.
Custom Research Inc. provides marketing research, customer satisfaction measurement, and data base marketing worldwide for large companies from its offices in Minneapolis, New York, and San Francisco. CRI is most noted as the only professional service company to have won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
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