Customer Focus, With a Side of Hash Browns

When you go out to a restaurant and order breakfast, what do you, as a customer, expect to get?

Do you need, or even want:

• The policies and procedures for the restaurant’s employees?


• The inspection schedule for the dairy farm where your milk comes from?


• The operations manual for the farm that raised the source of your bacon?
  

Of course not. And if you got all that dumped on you when you ordered breakfast, would you ever go back to that restaurant? (Didn’t think so.)

Those processes are all important. You trust they work effectively so that you don’t have to think about them. But what you expect – what you as the customer came in to get – is breakfast.

What do your customers expect from you? Do they care about your processes?

Failing to understand the difference between what you do, and what your customers expect to receive from you, is a clear sign of a poorly performing organization.

Your customers expect you to provide them with services, tangible and intangible. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes: are you focused on giving them services they need, or are you inflicting your processes on them?