Customer service and the bottom line
I recently had the pleasure of attending The Power Within event in Montreal (Thanks to a generous colleague who had an extra ticket – thanks again Michael). It was quite the experience. Speakers included William Jefferson Clinton, Lance Armstrong, Stephen J. Dubner, Peter Guber, Loretta LaRoche, Mary Lou Quinlan and Chuck Martin of NFI Research.
NFI Research is a U.S.-based research firm that identifies and analyzes trends and attitudes in business, organizational management and information technology.
I thought Chuck gave a great presentation – and being in the research space, I am always interested in contributing data points. After hearing Chuck speak, I decided to become a member of the Net Future Institute.
Their recent study, just wrapped up, and I wanted to share these figures (after getting Chuck’s permission of course)…I found them quite interesting.
When senior executives and managers are asked what their department and/or organization most highly value, customer service (65%), bottom line (63%) and customer relations (57%) are noted the most. When asked in which of the same areas do they provide the highest value, customer service (58%), customer relations (50%) and creativity/new ideas (50%) are the top three choices.
Although customer service, customer relations and bottom line are perceived as the most highly valued by an organization, they are not as frequently the areas in which executives and managers say they provide the highest value.
Nine percent more managers than senior executives perceive that their organization values the bottom line.
I thought this was especially interesting. The importance of listening to the voice of the customer may exist at the upper strategic levels of an organization, but are not necessarily being communicated lower down as important strategies for success. And as the organizations become larger, apparently communicating this message becomes more difficult.
The larger the company the more executives and managers say their organization value the bottom line, nearly 40 percent more frequently.
The questions and answers are as follows:
What does your department and/or organization most highly value?
Customer service 64.6%
Bottom line 62.7%
Customer relations 57.1%
Service 37.9%
Communications 35.4%
Creativity, new Ideas 33.5%
Production, delivery 32.3%
Sales 29.8%
Secure and orderly management 12.4%
Marketing 10.6%
In which areas do you feel you provide the highest value?
Customer service 58.4%
Customer relations 50.3%
Creativity, new ideas 49.7%
Communications 40.4%
Bottom line 39.1%
Service 34.2%
Production, delivery 27.3%
Sales 21.1%
Secure and orderly management 19.9%
Marketing 16.1%
Select responses from NFI Research members:
- If we do well on the service side, we tend to hit bottom line. Our board highly values quality of delivery, but doesn't get to that topic until assessing whether we are hitting our numbers. We live in a bottom line world.
- Our philosophy is the "client is king" - it drives all of our decisions.
We are measured both on what results we achieve and how we achieve them. The "how" includes acting with integrity, inclusiveness, mutual respect, and team play.
