CEOs still don’t get what “Customer Focus” truly means

Friday, March 6, 2009 by Sean Geehan

I met with a client who, like most organizations, has a large sign in the lobby of HQ that states their priorities along with a picture of the CEO beside it. The first priority listed is about listening and responding to the customer needs.  Naturally, this message made me feel as if I had just read a Robert Frost poem or heard some classic Dave Matthews music. 

Later that day, we were planning for an upcoming Customer Advisory Board meeting to be held at HQ. This meeting includes many of their biggest and most important customers. While wrapping up the day, our client mentioned that the CEO wasn’t planning on attending the meeting. Crazy, you say??? This is more typical than not. It’s easy to communicate “we are customer focused”…it’s another to lead and live it.   

The CEO could just simply stroll down the hallway to the meeting room and directly listen, engage and interact with the biggest customers. So why doesn’t she demonstrate to the 1,000 other employees the values and priorities listed in the lobby, Annual Report and company town hall speeches…?? Well, copy writing is much easier than changing old habits.

But then again, she’s always loved the standby “Roses are Red” poems and Richard Marx music.

Comments for CEOs still don’t get what “Customer Focus” truly means

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009 by Barry Goldberg:
Welcome to the blogosphere Sean! Your observations take me back to my CRM days... Oh the stories I could tell. But these days I am more focused on leadership devleopment. What you describe is harmful way past customer focus. One of the things that will undermine the credibility of a leader most quickly is to showcase a gap between what they say is important, and the places they invest behavioral capital. And one of the few reliable truths of leadership is that a compromise in integrity is pretty much unforgivable. Walk the walk and let the talk take care of itself. Customer and employees will see it.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 by Carol Abbott:
Sean, I'm glad you're blogging because what I've learned from you and your organization has always helped me. This post is dead-on and puts me even more on the lookout for ways I can walk the walk better in my own home portrait business. Did you catch the President of Zappos.com appearing with Donald Trump on Celebrity Apprentice in a challenge to create a cartoon character promoting the "customer-centrism" of the Zappos brand? He seemed like someone who was sincere about walking the walk; I wonder.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 by Bill Cunningham:
Actions speak volumes. True customer focus comes from within and appears natural not contrived. The irony is that they had to ask the questions is the CEO going to attend, whereas organizations that have customers as the core do not have to ask.