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Thursday, November 13, 2003 |
Customers Schmustomers - Cogent Comments From John Pocaro Cogent comments by John Pocaroon an article written by the Gallop Management Journal (First Break All The Rules, Now Discover Your Strengths, Follow This Path) called Roadblocks to Customer Engagement (Part I). Article Extract: "Marketers are rediscovering that strong customer relationships are essential if companies want to avoid the downward spiral into commodity status that comes from competing on price alone. Throughout the halls of corporate America, banners proclaim programs such as "Putting Customers First," being more "Customer-Centric," or "Becoming a Customer-Focused Organization." These initiatives may be part of a culture change or a back-to-the-basics effort. However, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, published by the Institute of Social Research, only a handful of such programs succeed on a sustained basis. Why? On the surface, these programs may appear well-designed. Companies measure their customers’ perceptions and satisfaction levels, compensate employees on improving satisfaction scores, and then teach employees the best approach to interact with customers. But even if these steps are well-executed, "customer-centered" efforts often encounter serious obstacles. For a company to truly put customers first, it must focus all its processes, systems, infrastructure, policies, and practices on that goal. The problem is, too many organizations are structured in ways that hinder achieving world-class levels of customer engagement." Pocaro Comments: They go on to give reasons why these efforts often fail, including obvious ones like people focusing on the rewards rather than the outcome (scamming the system) or competing for valued outcomes at the expense of the rest of the organization (or even the whole initiative). My favorite failure is that companies expect behavior that isn't natural for the people they've hired. Can someone hired for their competitive tenacity, their cut-throat "win-at-all-costs" action-orientation, or their "logical prowess and smarts" be expected to be open to customer feedback, to solving customer issues, or adopting a true "customer focus?" Some ya. Many, no. I was in a meeting yesterday with our division executives, and as we were explaining our efforts to build partner communications tools, our VP stated very clearly (to my delight) that we were to be very careful not to focus too heavily on the "technology" of our tools, rather focus on understanding and meeting our partner needs, even if it meant doing things manually. Of course I nodded my head in violent agreement, but it was great to hear it from the highest-ranking executives I deal with in my job. Some of the comments left after my last posting were exactly right (one email from Ballmer doesn't mean the ship's turned around), but there are many, many daily examples of individuals doing the right things. And hopefully--in response to the Gallup article--for the right reason.
8:41:30 PM 
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Port Requirements for Microsoft Windows Server System
8:11:44 PM
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Multiple Monitors - Multiplied Productivity? Great post on multiple monitor efficiencies - via Robert Scoble's weblog. While not a "coder" - I have been using multiple monitor for years - and it is now very challenging to operate with only one monitor at a time. Darrell Norton did his own research into productivity of multiple monitors. His findings are very interesting and is similar to what Microsoft's own research found. [The Scobleizer Weblog]
8:05:35 PM
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Princeton, HP Labs demo plastic write-once memory Another look at "Plastic Memory": Memory cell that holds gigabytes of information can be produced inexpensively. [InfoWorld: Storage]
6:18:56 PM
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Dell Profits Up on Server, Storage Sales (Reuters) Reuters - Dell Inc. (DELL.O) said on Thursday third-quarter profit rose as the No. 1 personal computer maker held down costs and posted strong sales of server computers and data storage machines. [Yahoo! News - Technology]
6:10:14 PM
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New Plastic Memory Technology Unveiled A new memory technology promises to store more data at less cost than the expensive-to-build silicon chips used by popular consumer gadgets including digital cameras, cell phones and portable music players. The magical ingredient isn't smaller transistors or an exotic material cooked up by the semiconductor industry. It's plastic. (eWeek)
6:07:12 PM
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Ray Ozzie On Longhorn & Groove Networks Since the early days of his development of Lotus Notes, Ray Ozzie has competed vigorously with Microsoft while working closely with Redmond as a leading ISV on the Windows platform. Now, with Microsoft's significant investment in Ozzie's Groove Networks, the collaboration has broadened. In the aftermath of Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Ozzie spoke about Longhorn and Groove with eWEEK Contributing Editor Steve Gillmor. (eWeek)
12:56:55 PM
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SAN Device Interoperability Begins To Emerge The Storage Management Initiative-Specification Test Suite, developed by the Storage Networking Industry Association, has entered its beta testing phase. The suite is a series of interoperability tests for switches, fabrics, servers and arrays. Its purpose is to ensure that when a user buys a product that claims conformance to the SMI-S standard, the product does indeed conform. If all goes well, the suite should be available to vendors before the year is out. Users will probably start seeing vendors claiming conformance to the test's standards by the end of the first quarter of next year. (InfoWorld)
9:58:01 AM
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© Copyright 2004 Rob Robinson.
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