Focusing on customers to get results

Bernice Walmsley, the author of Instant Manager: Getting Results talks to Sue Mann about achieving excellent customer service, getting employees to own problems, and her own USP as a writer of books on a wide range of topics from managing change to practice tests for the Armed Forces and potty training.

What skills do managers need to be successful in achieving results?

First of all, I don’t think you can be successful in any area without the right mindset. If you look at most successful people you will find that they have a belief in themselves and a ‘can do’ attitude.
But having the right mindset won’t, by itself, help you to achieve a successful business or bring success to a business. You have got to have the necessary skills as well.
These include good general management skills, for example, being able to communicate at all levels, plus the ability to delegate, where appropriate.
In addition, there are specific skills and knowledge that managers need to work in a customer-focused environment, including marketing, planning and analytical skills to go alongside general management skills.
In my opinion, not enough attention is paid to marketing information in business and the analytical skills needed to make proper use of it. You need to be able to collect the information, and for this you must have planning and admin skills, and then you need to use that information.
It is important to analyse this information before you make changes in the business, or in your job.
Effective communication is another vastly overlooked skill. This trend towards giving people scripts (in call centres, for example), doesn’t work. You really need to train people about the meaning of what they are saying.

Getting employees to own the problem is clearly a key objective in building a good customer-friendly reputation. Do you have any advice about achieving this?

 If employees feel that they own the problem, they will stop thinking about how they can pass the buck and start thinking about how they can solve it.
There are a number of ways that companies can solve this issue. First of all, you have to reduce the blame culture in general within the company. You need to foster a culture of ‘we are all in this together’. We all own the problems and let’s just deal with them.
You could produce results and rewards, showing how customer satisfaction is key to the business. If you can just prove with figures how important customer satisfaction is, if you can see when there has been a problem with customer complaints, and if you can tie that in with a drop in sales, then that can give people an idea of what the consequences of not owning the problems are.
Obviously training in how to deal with customers is important, as is encouraging them to welcome a complaint as a chance to get customer feedback. I actually make this point in the book; you really need to get staff to say ‘Oh great, a customer complaint. I will solve this and will keep that customer on board’. It has got to be viewed as a chance to get feedback.

What is your top tip for becoming successful in ‘getting results’?

Think about the difference between features and benefits. Features are what a product does and benefits are what your customer can get from them.
If you understand that and become customer-focused then success is pretty much assured.
Features and benefits are a perfect example of how customer-focus works. For example, a company may perceive the length of time it has been in business as a feature but this fact in itself is not a benefit to a customer although a lot of organisations seem to think it is.
You see it on websites – we are this and we do that and we do the other – when really customers want to know the answer to the question ‘what’s in it for me?’
And that’s the benefit.
You really need to focus on the benefit of a product or of a company rather than the features of a product or a company.
That is my top tip: Fully understand the features and benefits of your product and become customer focused through that.

What is your background?

Originally, I worked in sales and administration management for one or two large companies, and smaller companies, with export as a specialty.
My first book was on numerical reasoning for a series that Hodder did called Succeed at Psychometric Testing.
Some ideas, like my book on Decluttering for Hodder, for example, came from me. Another title I co-wrote for Hodder was on potty training.  It is definitely not an area of expertise for me. I have one son and he is 40 so if I ever did know anything about it, I have forgotten it.
But a former midwife, Geraldine Butler, had approached Hodder with the idea for the book and it fitted perfectly into their series about baby care and childcare. However they needed a co-writer who could hit the correct style for the book - friendly, informal and succinct - and they thought of me.
It is amazing how much you can write on the subject of potty training. It was my first collaborative writing experience. I have also done some ghostwriting.
Selling skills are absolutely key when you run your own business as I do as a self-employed writer. A lot of people who are very creative think that all they have to do is produce a fabulous product. But really, if you are self-employed, selling has got to be your number one skill.

As a service provider (an author), what do feel is your USP?

I never miss a deadline. I know there are writers that do, but I just never do.  I wouldn’t take a contract on to write a book if I didn’t think I could meet the deadline. And I usually deliver two or three weeks early. As soon as I agree the deadline I work back from that deadline as to when I have got to have this stage complete and that stage complete. I write a 1000 words a day when I am writing a book. Your average book in the Instant Manager series or the Teach Yourself series would probably take me about three months, especially if I have planned it correctly in the first place.
I had a motto on my computer for quite some time – ‘Discipline is so much rarer than talent’. I think most things are about discipline.

Reader Offer

Readers of Professional Manager can purchase Instant Manager: Getting Results and other titles in the series at £2 off the recommended retail price (RRP is £9.99 for new titles), including free postage and packing.
Order online at www.pressoffers.co.uk/HOD194 or telephone 0870 755 2122, quoting offer code HOD194. Lines are open Monday to Friday between 9.00am and 5.00pm.

(Extract from article published in Professional Manager, March 2010)

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