How to assess whether a company department is customer-minded?

Is everyone department in your company customer-minded? Check the following items:

 R&D:

• They spend time meeting customers and listening to their problems.
• They welcome the involvement of marketing, manufacturing, and other departments to each new project.
• They benchmark competitor's products and seek "best of class" solutions.
• They solicit customer reactions and suggestions as the project progresses.
• They continuously improve and refine the product on the basis of market feedback.

 Purchasing

• They proactively search for the best suppliers.
• They build long-term relationships with fewer but more reliable, high-quality suppliers.
• They don't compromis quality for price savings.

 Manufacturing

• They invite customers to visit and tour their plants.
• They visit customer plants.
• They willingly work overtime to meet promised delivery schedules.
• They continuously search for ways to produce goods faster and/or at lower cost.
• They continuously improve product quality, aiming for zero defects.
• They meet customer requirements for "customization" where possible.

 Marketing

• They study customer needs and wants in well-defined market segments.
• They allocate marketing effort in relation to the long-run profit potential of the targeted segments.
• They develop winning offers for each target segment.
• They measure company image and customer satisfaction on a continuous basis.
• They continuously gather and evaluate ideas for new products, product improvements, and services.
• They urge all company departments and employees to be customer-centered.

 Sales

• They have speciallized knowledge of the customer's industry.
• They strive to give the customer "the best solution".
• They only make promises that they can keep.
• They feed back customers' needs and ideas to those in charge of product development.
• They serve the same customers for a long period of time.

 Logistics

• They set a high standard for service delivery time and meet this standard consistently.
• They operate a knowledgeable and friendly customer service department that can answer questions, handle complaints, and resolve problems in a satisfactory and timely manner.

 Accounting

• They prepare periodic "profitability" reports by product, market segment, geographic areas (regions, sales territories), order sizes, channels, and individual customers.
• They prepare invoices tallored to customer needs and answer customer queries courteously and quickly.

 Finance

• They understand and support marketing expenditures (e.g., image advertising) that produce long-term customer prefernce and loyalty.
• They tallor the financial package to the customer's financial requirements.
• They make quick decisions on customer creditworthiness.

 Public Relations

• They send out favorable news about the company and "damage control" unfavorable news.
• They act as an internal customer and public advocate for better company policies and practices.

Posted at 08:33PM Feb 27, 2008 by byuan in Marketing Management  |  Comments[0]