Monitor progress
Shear makes it clear he wants GENCO to focus on the customer,and he makes sure that is happening through data.
The company surveys at least its top 75 customers once aquarter to find out how well the company is serving them.
GENCO takes the surveys one step further by not relying onsome outside firm to do them but requires every senior manager inthe company to conduct them. The surveys are made up of predetermined questions and are administered by phone by the managers.
“We want every senior manager talking to customers becausesometimes you get so involved in other things you forget you havecustomers,” he says.
“So, every quarter, we survey and database the results, and wemonitor how we are doing with our customers. We’re very proactive. So, if a customer says they have a problem or we aren’t meeting their objectives, we don’t want to call them again next quarterand have them say the same thing again.”
Though Shear says you can be inundated with data, he saysdetermining the information to pull from the surveys is easy. Ifsomething in the surveys tells Shear and his team that a customeris having an issue, they try to fix it immediately.
“You really have to pick what’s significant,” he says. “We’ve created what we called a balanced scorecard (from the surveyresults), which we put out once a month that’s about one page forthe overall company.
“On the balanced scorecard, we’ve identified the items that wethink are significant to the company’s long-term success. And then,it’s like a dashboard. Things are either in red or green. Greenmeans you’re doing fine; red means we’ve got some issues —we’ve got to improve in that area.”
While the scorecard process is always evolving, overall, the company sticks to its mission and values when determining what is significant.
“Every company has to decide that for themselves — what’s really important for my long-term success? What’s the stuff I should becontinually looking at?” he says. “It shouldn’t be more than a page.It should be something you can do on a page or less.”
Shear says a common misconception about customer surveys isthat those surveyed will try to find something wrong even if theyare satisfied with the service.
“When we first started surveying customers, everybody said, ‘Wedon’t want to do that. No news is good news, and if you ask customers if they have a problem, they are going to make up a problem,’” he says. “I think we found by being proactive and surveyingour customers and having senior managers talk to customers thatwe tend to keep our customers longer than our competitors.
“Our longevity with customers is longer because we’re going thatextra mile to create a strong relationship with our customers andcreate customer satisfaction,” he says.