When customer first and customer orientation become the purpose of all enterprises, service penetrates the boundary between manufacturing industry and tertiary industry. For example, Tencent, which is good at products, never talks about products, but always talks about what services it provides and how the customer experience is.
Service depends not only on the support of the site and hardware system, but more importantly, whether there are people who sincerely provide the required services to customers in different service links. Every customer-facing interface is the focus, and every moment of contact with customers is a critical moment. Doing a good job at a critical moment is the most basic work of an enterprise.
Then what is the critical moment? Jan Carlson, the author of Critical Moment, believes that every time a customer comes into contact with any level of enterprise, no matter how small, it is an opportunity to form an impression. When these impressions are accumulated, they constitute customers' positioning and preference for the brand, and ultimately determine whether the enterprise can last for a long time.
Take SAS as an example, there is a set of shocking data: in a year, SAS * * * transported100000 passengers, and each person contacted 5 employees 15 seconds on average. That is to say, each of the 6.5438 million passengers has five impressions of SAS in one year, each lasting for 654.38+05 seconds, totaling * * * 50 million times. These 50 million critical moments determine the success or failure of SAS.
The idea was put forward by Jan Carlson, an MBA from Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden. At the age of 32, he served as the president of Ping An Travel Agency, Sweden's largest travel agency, and at the age of 36, he served as the president of Lynn Airlines, a famous Swedish airline, helping the two companies move from bankruptcy to high profits. At the age of 38, he became the CEO of SAS with huge losses, making SAS one of the most profitable airlines in the world within a year. At the age of 46, he wrote "Critical Moment", which swept the global management and business circles.
In the book Critical Moment, the author puts forward ten critical moment principles according to his working practice during his tenure as ceo of Nordic Airlines:
1. Creating customers is more important than creating profits;
2. Increase the turnover rather than reduce the cost;
3. Leadership has less decision-making power and more comprehensive power;
4. Understand the real needs of customers and grasp the ever-changing market;
5. Front-line employees know the enterprise better than the management team;
6. Be brave when taking risks;
7. Communication can improve execution and profit rate;
8. Let the board of directors know the overall strategy of the company;
9. Maintain consistency between performance evaluation and customer needs;
10. Reward the self-assertion that makes customers satisfied;
I interpret these ten principles from the following three aspects:
1, the core of the critical moment: customer orientation
2. The foundation of critical moment: system support
3. The key to the critical moment: the key person
The reason why every moment of contact with customers is defined as a critical moment is because of the importance attached to customers and the awe of the market.
The customer is the most fundamental, active and active factor in the market. Customer orientation is actually market orientation. Grasping customers will occupy the market, adapting to customers will adapt to the market, and developing customers will open up the market. Even if the customer is the basis of enterprise survival, it is also the source of enterprise growth.
Customer orientation is not a slogan. First of all, we should re-examine and define the enterprise from the customer's point of view. How? Take Nordic Airlines where I work as an example: Does it belong to the aviation industry? Or is it a transportation service industry that transports passengers from one place to another in the safest and most convenient way? Obviously belongs to the latter.
According to this idea: McDonald's is not an enterprise that sells fried chicken with hamburgers, but an enterprise that provides customers with convenient, fast and standard dining services; State Grid is not an enterprise that transmits and distributes electric energy, but a service enterprise that provides clean and safe energy.
Redefine the enterprise and core business, no longer only focus on products, but adjust the focus to provide customers with comprehensive services and systematic solutions based on products.
Although the critical moment happened in the front end, it can't be separated from the support of the whole company and all aspects of the system. For example, to ensure the operation of the bank's ATM, the key is not whether the machine is tall and the interface is beautiful, but whether the ATM can always withdraw money.
In order to ensure that customers can withdraw money at any time, there may be general information support from the data department, timely cash addition from the escort department, personnel deployment, regular maintenance and so on.
All requests for improving service quality without resources, support and help are hooligans.
Obviously, the original pyramid organizational structure, in which the leader is above others and everything needs the instructions of subordinates, will not be able to meet the requirements of critical moments. Therefore, it is necessary to change the organizational structure into an inverted pyramid and a flatter organizational structure.
In this organizational structure, managers are no longer bureaucratic CEOs, but leaders who help front-line employees serve the market and customers.
The responsibility of the middle level is not only to upload and distribute, but also to be a middle-level manager who is familiar with the knowledge and skills of supervision, teaching, criticism, praise and teaching, and mobilize the necessary resources to help front-line employees achieve their goals.
Front-line employees become the protagonists, the "internal customers" of the company and the objects of the company's services. Because there are satisfied employees, there are satisfied customers.
Such a structure is more necessary and efficient in the service industry, because the starting point of the service industry is not products, but customers.
For example, the "three-person buyer group" of Handu Yishe, which has attracted much attention in the field of e-commerce, is a bold attempt to flatten the organization and fully empower front-line employees. It turned out to be very successful. The trio has a high degree of autonomy, from style selection, pricing to production and promotion, all of which are decided by the groups themselves, and the groups compete with each other. This has greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of employees and adapted to fleeting business opportunities more flexibly.
Carlson believes that if we want to sincerely serve every customer's needs, we should encourage front-line employees to put forward ideas, because they are key people at many critical moments.
From the example of Handu Yishe, it can be seen that the company must completely change the role of front-line employees if it really wants to be customer-oriented.
There is a story: when two masons were asked what they were doing, one of them replied, I am building a wall with these damn stones; The other replied, I want to build a cathedral with everyone.
At first glance, I thought this story was a mason's mentality problem, but think about it carefully, is it really a mason's problem? Maybe the managers didn't describe this vision to them. Many times, while complaining that employees are not motivated, we firmly hold on to power.
If managers can lead employees to imagine and design the future of the whole church and give them some tasks, then they will certainly be more satisfied with their work, more efficient and more willing to work hard to achieve their goals.
Haidilao hot pot, which is known as providing "abnormal service", is popular all over the country. Many people say that Haidilao can't learn it, because you can learn fur services such as free manicure and free shoeshine, but you will never learn the sincere smile and enthusiasm of Haidilao employees. In the words of Haidilao, "employees are more important than customers"!
Under the support of this concept, Haidilao employees have great freedom of service. For example, some customers eat Haidilao in winter and feel that their watermelons are particularly sweet, so they ask if they can pack some back. The waiter was particularly embarrassed to say "Sorry, sliced watermelons can't be packed". However, when the account was settled and ready to go out, the waiter chased it out and gave it to them, saying, "Sliced watermelons won't work, but the whole one can."
Therefore, if we want to serve every customer's needs sincerely, we can't rely on the instructions of superiors and rigid methods, because the supervisor who wrote these regulations is too far away from customers! Carlson said that front-line employees such as air ticket agents, flight attendants and baggage handlers should be encouraged to put forward ideas and given the right to make decisions and take actions, because they are the key figures in many critical moments of 15 seconds.
Any enterprise will lose its vitality once it is out of real contact with customers. Because customers who get satisfactory service are the only truly valuable assets of the company.
Therefore, the name of the enterprise should not be a noun, but a verb, which is the real experience of many key moments that customers can imagine at any time.