Article written by Zac de Silva for NZICA’s The Accountants Journal, June 2013 edition… Enjoy!
Business should be simple. There are many ingredients into being successful in business but one of the most obvious parts if often over-looked… You don’t have to be the Ritz-Carlton or Mercedes to provide your customers with a great experience. Just a little forethought and planning will make a huge difference. A classic NZ example is Air New Zealand vs. Jet Star – nothing against Jet Star but the average customer experience received (based on cyber-space comments and real life experience often reported in the media) in these two companies seems to be like chalk and cheese. Air New Zealand did not become good at customer experience by fluke – it was planned very strategically and it is not all because of the price charged…
Every single client of my business advisory and coaching firm Business Changing has a chartered accounting firm that they deal with (of course). Being an ex CFO myself, I have strong views on what a CA firm should be offering to their clients. If I was being generous, I would suggest that no more than 20% of my clients receive really good service from their CA firm. That might blow you away but most companies just think of their CA firm as ‘formal bean counting’, one of those things that you must do, no choice! Hopefully not as bad as going to the dentist but not that far off sometimes…
Bain & Company in North America did a study on chartered accounting firms a few years back. The study has set the benchmark for the reality of the situation for professional service firms. They asked 360 CA firms what proportion believed they gave really great service (customer experience) to their clients – 80% of CA firms asked said they were great in looking after customers and delivering a great experience. Bain then asked these firms thousands of clients who received great service – 8% of the CA firm’s clients said that they received great service. So… That is a huge gap (72%, ouch) in what these CA firms thought they were delivering compared to what clients believed they were receiving. We all know the saying “perception is reality” so this means that the stereotypical CA firm highly likely has a huge proportion of clients who are not happy with what they are receiving and they might jump ship to a competitor CA firm.
Even more interestingly, Bain did a second piece of research about why clients leave their accountants. They asked a thousand accountants why their customers leave them, and in number one position came price, according to the accountants, and number two came technical efficiency. Here’s the really interesting thing… When the accountant’s clients were asked why they left, price was number 8 on the list and technical efficiency number 9. So what, you may ask was the number one reason that clients left their accountants? The number one reason, as voted by 67% of respondents was that they just “didn’t treat me right”, bedside manner, if you like. Not rocket science…
So the point is simple – that clients leave you not on price, not on technical efficiency, but because you don’t treat them right. You may be thinking that this just applies to accountants, but not so. These findings are supported by research done by Rockefeller, which was conducted across all businesses. They found 82% of customers of a normal business leave that business because they do not receive a good customer experience and feel that the business does not care about them…
A study was done that reviewed various listed American companies who were known to be hugely focused (perhaps close to obsessed…) with customer experience as a source of competitive advantage. Over the five-year period studied, a period when the S&P 500 was essentially flat, the portfolio of customer-focused companies produced a cumulative total return of just over 22%. During the same period a portfolio of customer experience laggards returned minus 46%. That shows that not only do customers reward a superior experience, so do the markets.
Remember even if you are a finance team in a company, who gives only mainly internal service, you need to be very focused on ensuring that your internal customers are fans of what you do and your delivery to them. It will highly likely greatly affect your career success and your pay packet!
Sam Walton (founder of the biggest retailer in the world, Walmart) said “the goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary”! With the right focus and true acceptance of this fact, it is totally possible to make your firm or business even more successful – are you up for it? What do you do to provide a ‘remarkable’ customer experience in your firm, business or internal team?
Contact Zac for business coaching…
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