How to Thrill Your Customers!
What is Your Role in the Customer Experience? Supervisors in manufacturing are typically insulated from their customers and often supervisors only have a distant understanding about their customers' needs. Customers may seem like faceless companies because of our infrequent interaction with them. Sometimes we even consider our customers as over demanding bullies with nitpicky expectations. Manufacturing leaders really like to stay focused on production hoping that their efforts are enough to support customer requirements, Sometimes it's a good idea to take a step back and consider what we can do to favorably impact the customer/supplier relationship.
We just consider that our customers are real people who are working hard to ensure the success of their employer. Our customers are demanding because the customers' employees need to protect their own self-interest and they do this by protecting the interest of their employer. When customers are difficult to work with and demanding of their suppliers, it's really nothing personal, its just business.
Even though we don’t often get the opportunity to interact directly with our customers, believe it our not, we as manufacturing leaders, do have the majority of control over the success of the customer/supplier relationship. Customers have very high expectations of their suppliers but when you get down to it, our customers just want a good price for high quality goods delivered on-time. These expectations all fall under the control of manufacturing plants and their leaders.
Who are your customers? – Are they Industrial companies? Are the retail customers? Are they distributors? or are they some other wholesale buyer or institution? Most factories are producing products to support a business-to-business customer relationship. Manufacturing companies rarely produce products that go directly to the end user.
Consider the daily impact that you have on these B2B customers. For example when you consistently produce high quality products, then your customer consistently receives high quality products and when you produce products on-time, then your customer receives products on-time. And when you run your department efficiently, then your company has the opportunity to offer competitive prices. Realistically you can’t control every aspect of quality, service and price, but you do control the lions share of it.
When you’re a B2B supplier, your factory’s performance accounts for majority of your customer’s experience. And in a competitive market, your goal can’t just be to satisfy your customers, you want to thrill your customers. When you thrill your customers, then you have a competitive edge!
What Do Your Customers Expect? B2B Customers have fourteen expectations of their manufacturing suppliers. The fourteen expectations are: 1) Occasionally bailing-out the customer, 2) Delivering 100% on-time for all live (hot) orders, 3) Maintaining at least 95% long-term OTD, 4) Fair and competitive prices, 5) Capable production facilities, 6) Product change notification, 7) Quality that meets industry standards, 8) A professional experience, 9) A supplier that seeks understands requirements (VOC), 10) An expert supplier, 11) New products and technology, 12) Flexible capacity to manage demand spikes, 13) Honesty and integrity, 14) Friendly sales people and customer service reps.
It's a lot to ask for, but in a competitive market, there are always suppliers looking to steal your market share. You just need to thrill your customers and close the door on competition! Make customer service a team effort by developing the skills of you shopfloor leaders. Checkout Tools for the Trenches manufacturing training and learn about our effective, flexible and affordable factory solution.
Stay connected with news and updates!
If you want some weekly T4T wisdom coming straight to your inbox for your reading pleasure - look no further! Join our mailing list to receive the latest blogs and updates.
Don't worry, your information will not be shared.
We hate SPAM. We will never sell your information, for any reason.
