Putting Your Customers' Needs First

• Original Ideas

There are not that many original ideas in the world. The task at hand is to find those ideas worthy of development for your company or business and to customize them to fit your situation. Enhance the ideas, put them into practice, replicate them where possible, continue to refine them when necessary so that your customers will benefit from the unique experience that you have created for them.

• Justification for New Projects

Never use “Headcount Reduction” as a justification for a new customer service enhancement. Nobody wants to support an endeavor where the justification ends up being a reduction in personnel of the very people who are serving the customers needs in the first place! Over ten years or so of system enhancements, Thomas & Betts probably had a customer service department of 25 or 30 personnel doing what once would have taken over a hundred people to do, but we never once had to reduce the department’s headcount. Fortunately, we were able to grow and expand our business at a rate that kept our employment levels at a stable level or slightly growing. As a last resort, look to retraining existing personnel for new assignments in other areas of the company to avoid layoffs or employment reductions. The end goal should always be to get total “buy-in” from all your employees when making system changes and enhancements to improve service to your customers. Companies soon realize that they can never do everything they want done in the timeframe that everyone desires. Thus, we have invented priority lists. In many companies, the Information Technology or Computer Resources department is a major roadblock simply because so many of today’s desired improvements require system enhancements and upgrades. Every department wants their top projects completed first. Hopefully, you have prioritized your projects according to how well they will benefit your customers needs, but even so, you likely have far more projects on your list than you can hope to accomplish within the next twelve months. What I have found to be a useful tool in getting more work accomplished is not to simply focus on the top one or two projects on my list, but work with the IT folks in pursuing any of my priority items. IT folks are specialists in different disciplines…accounting, sales reports, EDI, order entry, web development, human resources, etc.; therefore, by working closely with the IT department management, you may be able to schedule some of your smaller projects or lower priority projects earlier simply because IT may have a programmer freed up in that project area. In this manner, over time, you will likely be successful in getting more of your priority list completed sooner…rather than later. After all, even the lower priority items on your list are important and will be an aid to someone at your customers’ business. • Setting System Enhancement Priorities