Maintain customer focus
Growth only comes when you make the customer happy, so Weiss has made it a point to keep everyone thinking about the customers.
He says he stole an idea from Stu Leonard’s store, a grocer in Connecticut, about the importance of making the customer happy.
“Outside of his stores, he’s got this big block of granite,” Weiss says. “When I first went there back in 1983, the block says, ‘Stu Leonard’s Rules. Rule No. 1 is the customer is always right. Rule No. 2, when the customer is wrong, refer to Rule No. 1.’ It’s all about the customer. If we solve the customer’s problem, if we do it better and if we do it faster and if we do it cheaper than everybody else and if we do it with a high degree of customer satisfaction, the world is our oyster.”
Customer focus is more than just words and rules.
“It’s far more subtle than that,” Weiss says. “It’s publicly recognizing people that do things over and above for the customer, (such as) little silly programs like giving somebody a rubber duck or sending people on a trip for having gone over and above the call of duty to help people out and help others. When you are in a corporation where they are very customer-focused, you generally find the same corporation being heavily focused on great teamwork, as well.”
Author Solutions has customer metrics in place for every phase of the business, and Weiss says you need to monitor the metrics on a regular basis.
“We develop a reporting process with customers,” Weiss says. “The way you set it up is you make sure the people that understand the process the most work with you to figure out the appropriate questions to ask to test how you are doing with your customers on each phase of the process.
“On the sales process, you want to understand things like did the rep answer all your questions, was the rep courteous, did the rep respond to you in a good time frame? Did the rep sell you what you really wanted, or did you feel like you got sold something you didn’t really need? Was the rep clear about what you were buying? You don’t want so many questions that the customer says, ‘I’m done; I’m not answering any more questions.’ But you want to make sure you get the right ones that help you impact a change in your business, if in fact, things start to slip.”
Each one of his executives has a responsibility for ensuring that their customer satisfaction metrics are continually updated.
“They get to review them with me,” Weiss says. “We constantly look at whether or not they should be changed, dropped or if they are in good shape.”
The reports are done weekly and go out to department leaders, who then share the data with their teams.
“When these things get out of phase, they are responsible for reporting up through the management chain on the things they are doing to change the result,” Weiss says.
And a better customer focus isn’t the only thing that’s changed since Weiss took over.
As he looks at Author Solutions today, he sees a team bonded in the pursuit of success.
“The teamwork in the company wasn’t bad when I got there, but today, it’s as good as any of the places I’ve been in the past that were really fantastic,” Weiss says. “It’s just continuing to reinforce with the people that the customer is important and that your teammates are important. If we do that right, people will find us. And they do.”
How to reach: Author Solutions, www.authorsolutions.com
