Business
A customer's whole view of a company forms in short contacts with its people: a phone call, a check-in counter, a voice over a loudspeaker. Any contact with any part of the business, however remote, is a chance to form an impression. These encounters together are, in practice, the company.
What insiders treat as the core of the business can be nearly invisible to buyers. In one survey, 90 percent of airline passengers did not even know what aircraft they were flying. They judged the firm by how its people treated them.
Equipment on the balance sheet has no real value while it stands empty. It gains value only when paying customers use it. The company's real worth is customers satisfied enough last time to come back.
Customers pleased by their last experience return. Motivated employees then serve them well enough that they come back a second and third time. The loop keeps itself going, like a human perpetual-motion machine.
Top management should not do the business itself. Its job is to give away information and responsibility, and to create an environment where people dare to take risks. Then staff can do the business out where customers are.
If the customer's perception is the real value, success comes down to making every critical meeting good. Each one should go beyond what the customer expected. Do that consistently and the business succeeds.
Research on what customers actually notice can persuade technical and operations staff that their tools are no longer the most important thing. Data from customers becomes the argument for changing priorities inside the company.
Companies protected from competition put their attention on technical development, operations and cost control. Service is not treated as a business issue that drives profit. When competition arrives, the culture has to turn from running the machinery to serving the market.
In most firms, frontline employees can only refuse a special request; agreeing needs a supervisor. Customer-driven firms reverse this, so problems are fixed on the spot without waiting for permission. Pushing responsibility down takes courage from the top.