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As if
you needed another acronym to help you understand what’s going
on in business today. But faced with the need to get your CSR’s
to implement CRM, BPR and ERP (all this ASAP), Michael Hammer’s
groundbreaking book, “Agenda”, adds a few more acronyms for
every business that’s trying to get ‘closer to the customer’.
The premise of the
book is that Management isn’t so simple as some guru’s
(including Hammer) once made it seem. There is no silver bullet,
he says, half apologizing for his eighties’ book on
“Reengineering” that made it seem so. “If managing were simple”,
he says, “how do leading companies allow themselves to be
overtaken by upstarts? It’s not just the upstarts who make the
established companies tremble; it’s their customers! Customers
are irrational, fickle, demanding and powerful. The
manufacturing economy is over. The customer economy is here, so
let’s deal with it.
The
broad prescription of the book is that companies should run
their business not for the shareholders, but for their
customers. The implications of this mean rethinking the
processes that have been set in stone for the convenience of
those within the company, not those ‘outsiders’ called
customers. Companies often pay lip service to customers --with
glib statements such as ‘the customer is always right’, and ‘the
customer is king’-- but have been unwilling to design processes
that give the customer more control. It’s in this context that
Hammer rolls out the first in a series of acronyms. He
challenges all companies to check how customer-centric they are
on the ‘ETDBW’ barometer. It stands for being Easy To Do
Business With. Companies have tried-and-tested legacy systems
that they never want to budge from; they build silos between
sales, accounting, shipping, legal, and tech support divisions.
They impose penalties to customers for the privilege of doing
business with them. The widespread outbreak of HTDBW companies
(what the H stands for isn’t hard to figure out, is it?) have
eroded customer loyalty. It’s eventually expensive for the
customer and expensive to the organization. So what’s the cure?
Hammer presents 6 recommendations. No silver bullets here, but
key factors that can turn impatient customers into long term
ones. They are:
1. Present a single face
to your customers.
2. Work in different ways for different
customers.
3. Know what your customers will ask
before they do.
4. Make the customer experience seamless.
5. Empower your customers to do more.
6. Measure the things that your customers
really care about.
Management people fear overturning old habits, and turning
things on their head. As Hammer says, such creative management
does not have to be chaotic. Process innovation can bring
structure and discipline to the customer experience.
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