In 1983, on his second day on the job, the new CEO of a company gathered his people and said:

“Tomorrow when you come to work, you do not work for me or for a boss. You work for your customer. I don’t pay you. They do. Every customer has its own factory now. You do what is needed for the customer.”

And just like that FAVI, an auto parts supplier in France, went from a centralized organization to a flat organization.

The paradigm shift worked. Accountability is to the customer and to the team, so people are free to innovate and solve problems for customers. Read the entire article on FAVI over at the American Express Open Forum.

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If you don’t know who Guy Kawasaki is you can pretty much learn everything you need to know about him from the title of his blog – “How to Change the World.” A big thinker, yes, but also very grounded. He’s one of the best business minds of this generation and he has a pretty simple philosophy on the “art” of customer service – and let’s face it, it is an art sometimes more than a science. His 10 points:

1. Start at the top.
2. Put the customer in control.
3. Take responsibility for your shortcomings.
4. Don’t point the finger.
5. Don’t finger the pointer.
6. Don’t be paranoid.
7. Hire the right kind of people.
8. Under promise and over deliver.
9. Integrate customer service into the mainstream.
10. Put it all together.

In his blog post he goes into detail on each of the points, so check out The Art of Customer Service. Though it was written about 3 1/2 years ago good customer service principles never go out of style.

The only point I think is really missing from the list is “Let the customer know they were heard.” This is a very important step. This doesn’t always mean answering their question super fast because the right answer can take a lot of time depending on your business and the complexity of the question itself – and it’s more important to answer correctly and thoroughly in as few steps as possible. What it does mean is acknowledging as quickly as possible to the customer that you have heard what they want and that you are working on it. Bonus points if you frame for them exactly when they can expect your full answer. Letting them know they were heard goes a long way to putting the customer in the right frame of mind.

What other points help craft your customer service “art” in your business?

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With today’s lean operations and even leaner budgets for preventive maintenance, machines begin to experience performance issues over time. Line and maintenance personnel, who may or may not have been factory trained, typically respond to these problems by making adjustments and/or swapping out parts. Then comes the day when a problem becomes catastrophic and all the customer can do is rush to telephone the machine’s supplier.

At this point, responsiveness on the part of the supplier becomes essential. Under intense pressure for a resolution, the last thing the customer needs is an extensive phone tree, a voice mail for a person out for the day, or a service representative on other end of the phone who does not share their sense of urgency.

Putting systems in place to respond to urgent customer calls cannot be an afterthought on the part of the supplier. The supplier must design a response system that can be measured for effectiveness and continuously improved. Support personnel must be trained and then evaluated on how well they perform to expectations. Above all, the response system must reassure the customer that the supplier understands the problem and will work quickly to solve it. Solutions include same day or next day parts delivery or sending a field technician who is familiar with the plant. Effective response systems require the backing of the supplier’s senior management because responsiveness ultimately relies on sufficient resources, and senior management must allocate and support those resources.

In a perfect world, every customer large and small would devote themselves to thorough preventive maintenance programs and on going training. But this isn’t a perfect world. It is up to suppliers to cultivate a culture that ensures that machine uptime is a priority for every customer and every location where the machine is installed.

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Great client service consists of these five elements:

• manage client expectations
• maintain high availability
• practice courtesy and respect
• practice honesty in all communications
• be proactive in your service

This is a summary of a great SitePoint article Give Great Service: 5 Essential Tips. SitePoint is a web site that focuses on providing information to web developers and designers, particularly the freelance segment. You’re probably thinking “Web designers? Freelancers? How does that apply to my company?” Well customer service is customer service, no matter the industry, no matter if you’re a large company or a lone freelancer. And this article really focuses on fundamentals.

Read the whole article and you’ll find you’re nodding your head a lot going “Yeah… of course… well, duh.” But really turn that notion of obviousness and shine it back on your company. Are you delivering on the points in the article all the time? Consistently? Is there room for improvement?

Every now and then it’s good to get a refresher, and this is a good one.

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iContact, the email software provider of choice for the divisions of Pro Mach, had some serious issues a few months ago with downtime with their application due to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks across the internet.

Obviously they’re sensitive to their customer needs so they fully disclosed everything that happened in an email to their customers and what they were doing to resolve it. Proactively. They didn’t wait for the situation to clear up – they addressed it as soon as they realized what was going on. They communicated every step of the way and from an end user perspective, I can tell you I appreciated knowing what was going on.

The email included headings such as “How We Are Addressing the Remaining Issues” and “What Happened” and “Updates & How You Can Reach Us” – they also linked to resources about these kind of attacks so we could learn more.

Here’s the full letter that their CEO sent out to their customer base.

Transparency means you don’t have anything to hide. You share with your customers, you communicate with them, you tell them what’s going on, you tell them you’re not always perfect. The strange thing is that the customer has more of a chance to become an advocate when they realize you’re not perfect. Transparency creates trust. Of course customers don’t ever want a less than perfect situation with their suppliers, but they inevitably do happen. It’s how you react that shows the customer what you’re really made of and that shapes how they perceive you long term.

What can you do to be more transparent with your customers?

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An absolutely great video here from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. In case you haven’t heard Amazon is the model of success on the internet. They’re profitable, customer driven, and they just “get it.”

Amazon has recently acquired Zappos.com, another company that we love because they put the customer first. Bezos put together this 8 minute video to let Zappos and the world know how he thinks. It’s a great piece in praise of the customer that I think we can all learn from.

The key takeaways?

1. Obsess Over Customers – Above everything else obsess over your customers. Put your energy into your customers and everything else will fall into place.
2. Invent – Listen to your customers and invent on their behalf, because it’s not their job to invent for themselves.
3. Think Long-Term – Initiatives (such as obsessing over the customers and inventing) can take a long time to pay dividends to your company, though they may pay dividends to the customer right away. Disruptive innovation only works if you think long-term.
4. It’s Always Day 1 – There are always new ways to obsess over customers and new ways to invent and innovate. Never rest.

What rules does your business live by?

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