Page 82 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

Never a Customer, Always a Guest 63

Shocking, isn’t it? Whatever happened to the customer focus of this
CEO? Maybe he never had it.
Nearly two decades ago, Tom Peters told it like it is in his revolutionary
book Thriving on Chaos:

Each of us carries around a crippling disadvantage: we know and
probably cherish our product. After all, we live with it day in and
day out. But that blinds us to why the customer may hate it—or
love it. Our customers see the product through an entirely dif-
ferent set of lenses. Education is not the answer; listening and
adapting is.

The accuracy of Peters’ words is borne out by an example with which
we are particularly familiar. Bill’s uncle, the owner of a newspaper distribu-
torship in Chicago, had only an eighth-grade education and knew nothing
about return on investment, asset turnover, or market segmentation analysis.
He built his business on the simple premise that his customers paid him to
deliver the paper at a reasonable time in readable condition. The customers’
happiness was his primary concern. For three decades, Uncle Shorty never
forgot the customer’s perspective, even if that meant leaving the dinner table
to attend to a complaint, which he did on many nights.
After 30 successful years as owner/operator, he sold the distributorship
to people who went out of business within 10 years. How could the new
owners go under when they had been handed a thriving business of long
standing? It’s very simple: They did not attend to customer needs and solve
customer problems. They made the mistake of operating the business like
the monopoly it was, neglecting their home-delivery customers and allowing
service to the local retail stores to deteriorate.
The retailers’ anger over shoddy service was compounded by the fact
that they had no other choice but to buy from this distributor. Eventually,
the growing number of complaints made directly to the Chicago newspaper
publishers caused the distributor to lose its franchise.
All too many owners and CEOs are like the rental car executive or the
newspaper distributor. They feel it is beneath them to concern themselves
with dirty-car stories, or late deliveries from their docks, or doing whatever
it takes to make a customer happy.
Although a “customer first” policy usually makes its way into most of the
mission statements we’ve read, far too few companies really live those words.