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Page 149 GO IT ALONE!
BUILD IN FEEDBACK LOOPS WITH A FOCUS ON CUSTOMERS In designing your total business system, keep in mind the critical question of how the system will provide you with constant customer feedback. Successful entrepreneurs are particularly attuned to the needs and responses of their customers, which requires that you be certain to design your business so that this information flows back to you rapidly and without distortions. All successful entrepreneurs use customer feedback to improve their companies’ offerings. Many of them specifically structure their businesses so that they are directly involved in all aspects of customer relationship, even when this might seem—to an outside observer—like a poor use of limited time. Some examples: - Lars Hundley, the founder of CleanAirGardening.com, handles all the customer service associated with the retail site himself.
Inder Guglani of Guru.com has been described in the press as adopting “an almost religious reliance on customer feedback.” He says, “I cannot believe that companies outsource their customer service functions to other firms. This is a source of essential information. I hope they have the appropriate systems in place for capturing this data.” Gourmet Gatherings asks customers to fill out detailed
evaluations of events.
Wyck Hay and his wife personally handed samples of
KaBoom Beverages to over 20,000 consumers.
Why do they do this? These interactions are often the best source of ideas for improving services and for creating new services. As noted earlier, Mr. Trademark’s most successful new offerings consistently arose because customers asked, “Do you do this?”
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GO IT ALONE! Copyright 2004 by Bruce Judson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
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