Lessons from Procter & Gamble – Customer Satisfaction

How satisfied are your customers with you, your products and your service?

You should know!  You also should know that customers are becoming deeply engaged with brands across the entire digital channel - and it’s by choice. 73% of customers have posted a brand review on sites like Amazon, Yelp, Twitter and Facebook, and more than 52% of them post a response on a company’s blog. Customers are letting companies know just how satisfied they are.  As customers come across other experiences, they will switch to the product or service that offers the best one.  That’s why smart companies, like Procter & Gamble have specific contact sites for each of their products in addition to the overall company and are putting customers at the center of their business.

In today’s world, any business can connect to its customers via many channels -- email, Facebook, Twitter, phone, live chat, web -- and the technologies to do this are available and within reach of even the smallest of small businesses. Where a business focus on customer satisfaction used to be a rarity, it’s now commonplace.

Experts agree that there are 3 main strategic paths that a company can follow to success.  Which one is chosen, comes directly from their Core Strengths and Strategic Planning.  These are product innovation, price and customer service.  All can lead to customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction can be embellished beyond these basics through the following:

1) The quality of your product or service

While the company focuses on one of the basic strategic paths, it also must also have at least threshold levels of the other two in order to stay competitive in the face of competition.

2) The relationship with your customers

Strong customer support and service measures in place result in better service, less training, faster resolution and happy customers. You’ll build customer loyalty for your brand.

3) The overall customer experience  

People don't buy products or services.  They buy experiences. Creating experiences that will make customers feel good about the reward product.

4) The financial cost vs. benefit

If you are in a dialog with your customer, you can more clearly identify their true needs and create the product, service and experience that best meets that need.  It takes away the guess work and non-productive costs.

The best companies today understand that customer satisfaction is not just about being nice to your customers, it’s about understanding how strong customer relationships are pivotal to a company’s success. If you don’t know the answers to their questions, you aren’t really serving the customer. Every interaction your customers have with your company is an experience, and customer care should be the first responsibility of your business. If you do it right, you'll not only score a lifelong customer, but also an advocate for your brand—and that's a lot more valuable.

Thanks,

John

John Maver
Founder and Managing Director of Moon & Stars Consulting
President Maver Management Group
(925) 648-7561
Maver Management

Lessons from Procter & Gamble – Focusing on the Important and Cutting the Clutter of Emails and More

Are you inundated with emails, meetings and other less productive intrusions in every day?  What can you do about it?

     

         

Clearly the Executives at P&G do not completely eliminate emails or meetings and neither should you.  But how can you handle these in the most effective manner?

As you will quickly see, these recommended actions apply to meetings as well and both can significantly clear up time for more in-depth thinking about the business.

1.   

1.     # As in all areas, start with the right focus.  This will come from the strategic business plan.  You will find emails on many different subjects in your files.  You can quickly identify the ones that that are based on the plan.  Eliminate all other emails that don’t come from the actions on the plan.  This supports the focus.  If anything is REALLY important, it will show up again.

# Insist that all emails be action oriented, either as a recommendation or a summary with conclusions.  There are just too many “nice to know” or “thought you might be interested” emails.  Stop them.  If they don’t have action to drive business growth, they are a waste of your time.

# Eliminate almost all of the “Reply to All” emails.  They just clutter everyone’s Inbox and encourage others to hit the “Reply to All” tab, thereby further adding to the clutter.

# Don’t start the day with an email review.  You have important activities to perform and they must demand your best time and not be cut short at the end of the day.  Set aside a specific block of time later in the day and hold to it.  Too often “just 10 minutes” turns into two hours.

# Be judicious.  Don’t take the emails home with you to spend the evening in front of the computer.  If you have something really important, do it.  The rest will wait until the next day.     

  

 c) Scott Adams

Meetings, meetings, meetings.  So much time is wasted in meetings.  Several years ago there was a book titled, “If you want shorter meetings, don’t have chairs”.  There is some truth to that.  Many of the recommendations about emails apply to meetings as well.  With the right plan and effective delegation meetings can be focused and very productive.  Get the right plan.

Hopefully you will not view this article as just another workflow improvement message.  It is designed to help your productivity and that of your teams.  It is recognized that generally while you and your team have the abilities, you have neither the time currently nor the procedures to be able to implement this plan. 

Unfortunately, many companies do not make the necessary changes and just keep trying to wade through all the various clutters. 

Don’t do that.  Bring in an experienced consultant to help you work the plan and establish the right focus and priorities.  While the business will prosper, your peace of mind and freed time alone is worth the effort.

Thanks.

John

John Maver
Founder and Managing Director of Moon & Stars Consulting
President Maver Management Group
(925) 648-7561
Maver Management

Lessons from Procter & Gamble – The Next Step

What is your next step to drive profitability as you start 2015?  What worked last year and what will you continue?  What markets and customers will you pursue and what needs to be put in place to be successful?

 

 

What is your next step for the right plan that all in your company know and can follow?

As we have written in earlier articles, Procter & Gamble devotes considerable time and effort to creating the specific strategic plan for their overall business and under that plan for each of their business units and brands.

 

During these early weeks of 2015, P&G has a clear next step.  It is an in-depth review of their plans to insure that they still are on target and will achieve the required results.  This is very important work since it will direct corporate effort and resources.  Once the plan is vetted, they will move quickly to put it into action.  It is understood across the company, the roles and responsibilities of all.  The focus is clear and the next steps known.

 

How will they accomplish this work?  It involves top management and then as it cascades down, directors and managers.  It is facilitated by professionals with the experience to guide the required data collection and the subsequent reviews.  These professionals are required so that the executives can concentrate on developing the right plans.  Most companies do not have these skills on staff but hire experienced consultants to assist the company.  It provides a very positive ROI on the relatively small amount of funding required.

 

What are you doing?  If you need help in either creating the right plan to start or refining an existing plan and committing it to written form so that all can follow, please contact us.  We have a wealth of experience both at Procter & Gamble as well as with companies in a broad range of industries.

 

Thanks 

John Maver
Founder and Managing Director of Moon & Stars Consulting
President Maver Management Group
(925) 648-7561
Maver Management