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Thinking Like a Customer
By Bill Self on September 2, 2009
The organizations that will survive and thrive five years from now are the ones that have educated customers. That’s because smart customers will remain loyal to suppliers that deliver high value. This value goes far beyond a generic product or service. It educates its customers as part of the relationship. Customer-centered suppliers understand this as
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Posted in Differentiation | Tagged Customer Loyalty, Customer-Centered, Differentiation, Thinking Like a Customer
By Bill Self on August 26, 2009
Tells are indicators of what others see in you—how you will behave in any situation. Customers use all of your interactions with them to form an impression of how you will treat them as customers in the future. It is really important to understand these tells and to manage them deliberately because customers judge your
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Posted in Customer-Centricity | Tagged Brand Loyalty, Customer Education, Customer-Centered, Great Performances, Thinking Like a Customer
By Bill Self on August 19, 2009
Much of our client work involves assisting leaders in developing their organizations to become more customer-centered. But what if the leaders don’t get it? What if they think they know all the right answers about customers already?
A phrase that you hear a lot these days is “They don’t know what they don’t know”. I recently
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Posted in Leading Change | Tagged Customer-Centric, Differentiation, Great Performances, Innovation, Thinking Like a Customer
By Bill Self on August 12, 2009
There is a simple method for outperforming and growing your business. It involves what author Jim Champy describes as “finding something that you can do better than your competitors.” Every process that touches your customers represents an opportunity to distinguish your organization as better in the eyes of your customers. Here’s how you can identify
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Posted in Differentiation | Tagged Customer Focus, Customer-Centered, Differentiation, Great Performances, Thinking Like a Customer
By Bill Self on August 5, 2009
It is fantastic news that great performance, grounded in being customer-centered, is available for every business if it wants it. It grows out of deliberate practice and design of an organization-wide culture to improve on behalf of your customers.
There is another dimension of the multiplier effect that will add even more to your image of
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Posted in Great Performances | Tagged Customer Care, Customer-Centered, Differentiation, Great Performances, Thinking Like a Customer
By Bill Self on August 5, 2009
The more you do something, the better you get at it. We are familiar with this concept in sports and music, because the more you practice, the better you become. The same thing applies in leading your organization to become more customer-centered.
In economics, a multiplier effect describes the degree of change in one variable that
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Posted in Great Performances | Tagged Customer Care, Customer-Centered, Differentiation, Great Performances, Thinking Like a Customer
By Bill Self on July 29, 2009
It’s amazing how organizations believe they can become great while ignoring their customers.
Jim Collins’ How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In builds off of his Good to Great and Built to Last tenets to analyze how successful companies get better, or conversely, how they decline. He describes how companies can under-perform by forgetting
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Posted in Great Performances | Tagged Customer Loyalty, Customer-Centric, Great Performances, Leading Change, Thinking Like a Customer
By Bill Self on July 22, 2009
I love it when people shake up the way we think. That is what we need in order to stay competitive in today’s business environment. A growing number of new thought leaders are helping us to understand that the best approach to bringing about positive change is to structure our actions around being customer-centered.
Pip Coburn,
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Posted in Leading Change | Tagged Customer Loyalty, Customer-Centered, Customer-Centricity, Differentiation, Thinking Like a Customer
By Bill Self on July 15, 2009
Right-brain thinking will not take you to the next level without distinct business goals. The right-brain approach has always been a metaphor for intuitive, innovative, big-picture decision-making. With specific goals, this underutilized perspective will accelerate your business growth and customer commitment.
Every successful organization needs specific customer-centered goals. These go far beyond narrowly thinking of customers
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Posted in Customer-Centricity | Tagged Customer Closeness, Customer-Centered, Differentiation, Strategic Decision-Making, Thinking Like a Customer
By Bill Self on July 8, 2009
Much has been written recently about right-brain thinking—and it is long overdue. Business has traditionally been left-brained, but its ability to search for greater efficiencies and to innovate while lowering costs has reached a plateau. The new opportunity to take performance to the next level is through right-brain thinking. A shift to this approach signifies
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Posted in Customer-Centricity | Tagged Customer Focus, Customer-Centricity, Differentiation, Great Performances, Thinking Like a Customer
He is a member of the National Speakers Association and delivers dynamic presentations on the transformative power of genuine customer-centric behavior at conferences or in settings for individual companies. Visit Bill's speaking page to learn more.
