Business Builders Podcast

How Your Customers Can Improve your Business

September 16, 2021 Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian Season 1 Episode 11
Business Builders Podcast
How Your Customers Can Improve your Business
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

In today's episode our hosts Brenton Gowland and Ron Tomlian discuss how to place the customer at the center of your business and how to keep them there.

Some of the topics covered include: 

  • The importance of customer centricity
  • Seeing your business from the perspective of your customer and how to use this perspective to grow
  • Communicate the perspective of your customer throughout your business from the c suite to the coalface
  • Establish customer review processes
  • How buyer persona's can help with sales
  • Focus on developing positive case studies
Adapt_CO
Helping businesses find their new shape.

Borough Markets
AI driven digital transformation company that exist to level the digital marketing playing field by

SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia

Nucleus – Creative Agency
Specialising in growing business through brand, digital, video, web, print, campaigns and marketing.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Brenton Gowland:

Today on the Business Builders podcast, we're discussing the importance of positioning the customer at the centre of your business and how to keep them there. Brian provides some advice about actively looking to glean just one thing from each podcast you listen to that can help you grow. And I talk about my favourite takeaway from our last podcast, that trust is a must. So welcome to the 11th episode of the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I'm Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron Tomlian. Now, Brenton the response to our last episode on building resilience with Kristen Raisen has been outstanding. It seems to have really resonated with our listeners.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes, it did. And even to the point where I actually had some of my clients talking about the podcast, and resilience and so forth. And I always find that it's a great thing. And the big takeaway for me, and the people that I've been speaking to that have been listening is that at the heart of building a resilient team, it starts with trust, trust with your staff, trust with your suppliers, trust with your customers. So that was my key takeaway trust comes first.

Ron Tomlian:

And that's surprising, really, when you think about it, any relationship is based on trust. And it forms the basis of resilience, therefore, because resilience is about relationships with other people.

Brenton Gowland:

So trust is a must.

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely. And what's also interesting is that was your takeaway from the session last last week, it funnily enough happens to be mine. But it's interesting to find out what people, what the one thing, because I'm a, as you we've discussed before, I'm a great believer in having one thing out of anything you do.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

And acting on it. So it'll be interesting to see what we're talking about today, because you said, trust is important with customers as well. It'll be interesting today to see what people have to say about the one thing that they took away from our discussion.

Brenton Gowland:

And of course, our discussion today is about getting the client, the customer at the centre of our businesses, which is hugely important. So you know, in other words, building trust with clients, where our clients, you know, are an active part of our thinking, when we actually develop strategies and plans and so forth. So our businesses are all about the customers. So trust has to be right at the heart of that. And before we continue, I just want to say I really agree with what you're saying about, you know, in my way of thinking, gleaning one thing from what you listened to in a podcast, like I listen to audiobooks, and all sorts of bits and pieces, and just finding that one nugget that can really change something in your business, or take you to that next level or help you move forward. I think it's so important. So I just like to say when you're listening to this today, our listeners, if if there's one thing that really sticks out to you, let us know, contact us on LinkedIn or you know, one of the channels that we give you towards the end of this podcast to make contact with us. And let us know what that one thing is for you. That's really stuck out about our discussion today.

Ron Tomlian:

And speaking about trust, let's talk about our sponsors.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely, and one of our key sponsors is Borough Markets. If you're looking to grow your business online in what is an incredibly competitive environment, Borough Markets has an excellent track record of helping SMEs do just that in a very affordable way. And they might just be able to be the catalyst for your growth in your business as well. So please check out our latest sponsor Borough Markets at wwww.boroughmarkets.com.au spelled B-O-R-O-U-G-H Markets dot com dot au.

Ron Tomlian:

Great. And we'd like to recommend the SA Business Builders network who we're both a part of. There's an upcoming event in September in about a week's time. So if you're a business leader here in South Australia, please reach out to Brenton or myself on LinkedIn. And we'd like to talk to you about coming along.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely. We'd also like to make a shout out to Nucleus one of our founding sponsors, make sure you check out their website at www.nucleus.com.au.

Ron Tomlian:

And finally, last but not least, we'd like to recommend Adapt_CO and now Adapt_CO offers outsourced marketing solutions that give you high end marketing power without the need to hire a chief marketing officer.

Brenton Gowland:

Fantastic.

Ron Tomlian:

Now, Brenton, as we discussed in our podcast on business to business marketing, good businesses understand their customers and work hard to provide value that seems intuitively correct. And the concept of putting the customer at the centre of your business or customer centricity is it's called it's been around for a while. But is it a necessity for running a business? And if it is, how do you develop and maintain this perspective?

Brenton Gowland:

Interesting? Well, in my dealings with organisations who are struggling to connect with their customers, we just assume that the customer should be at the centre of their thinking. They certainly are when they're grappling with the communication issues with their clients and so forth. And I've certainly seen the problems that occur with organisations that forget the customer in their planning. But to be honest, I've never really considered whether this is necessary.

Ron Tomlian:

I think it's First important to understand what customer centricity is, as some people think that this simply means doing whatever the customer asks for always,

Brenton Gowland:

well, that can be dangerous. What if the customer wants everything free, that's hardly a sustainable business model Ron.

Ron Tomlian:

Exactly. If you're providing a great product or services customers want than simply giving it away, it's not going to keep your business running for very long. The consequence of that is that the customer is denied the service they wanted in the first place, in the end, not very customer centric. So being customer centric is not simply complying with any and every request is about putting the customer at the centre of your thinking about your business. As an example, Brenton let me ask you a question.

Brenton Gowland:

Sure.

Ron Tomlian:

When I say what's the purpose of a business? How do you think most business owners respond?

Brenton Gowland:

Well, from my experience, and this is from helping businesses to find their vision, mission, purpose and strategic plan and whatnot. Nine times out of 10, their existing vision that they want to update, or that they want to progress, is often going to be something along the lines of, we want to be the best widget maker or service provider in our sector. And their mission will be focused on their company growth and their company profit targets rather than what they do for their customers. And it's usually a very inward focused strategy. And I think sometimes that's because people don't know what they don't know.

Ron Tomlian:

That's certainly my experience as well.

Brenton Gowland:

But as companies often come to realise during these strategy sessions, what they've had in the past is not their purpose. It's the outcomes that they're looking to achieve, which they've kind of set out as strategies and so forth, rather than the actual purpose that their business is all about.

Ron Tomlian:

I agree. The purpose of any business, any organisation really is to do something useful for its customers. If it's not doing that, why does it exist? Profit is a motive for conducting business is not a purpose. And once people acknowledge that the reason their business exists, is to do something useful for their customers, they're standing to put the customer at the core of their business anyway, where they really belong.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. So based on this, our topic today is, as we've alluded to earlier, putting the customer at the centre of your business and keeping them there. But for now, we've both brought our three top tips to talk about which relates to how to build a customer centric organisation. So I've got my three top tips. Ron, what about you? Yeah, I brought my three top tips. So let's get started. Firstly, and it may sound obvious from what I've said above, define your purpose, from the perspective, what you usefully provide to your customer try to think of it from their perspective, Yep, 100%, I found that a lot of businesses grapple with that. But once they get that, right, it really opens up their thinking and get some pointed in the right direction. That's

Ron Tomlian:

And here, it's important to think about the great. real value you provide your customers not just what you make, and what you do for them get to the core of what value you provide them. As an example, a restaurant might provide food and service, but this is the real value to customers, or is it the social experience with friends and loved ones, there are some famous examples that missed the boat, because they define themselves by what they did, instead of what value they provided their customers. Kodak comes to mind, they've defined themselves as a company that makes great films. When in fact, they weren't a film company at all. They were a company that helped people create memories.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's just as important to make sure that this purposes are understood not just at the top levels of a company, but right the way through. So it's communicate, communicate, communicate, and reinforce what you're all about with your staff. Because if your staff know about it, then every interaction with your clients are going to reflect what that purpose and those goals and agendas and and the focus that you've set for the company is.

Ron Tomlian:

I couldn't agree more. Ideally, it's going one step further, though, I think it's not just about communicating after the event, but involving staff in development of that purpose. Making sure that they're on board by engaging them in the creation of that purpose for the organisation

Brenton Gowland:

Well that tends to be what we do when we're doing vision, mission values, and, you know, strategic plans and so forth. Because that purpose, let's say, it's the vision and the mission that we're talking about here that a company establishes, and it's why it's so important to have that kind of solid direction, because that then influences what the values are that the business holds dear. And if you then you know, if you've been in larger businesses, you've got value kind of posters all around the place or you know, they communicate in certain ways. Having that communicated through the business means you start to live, breathe, eat, think in that kind of way.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, the only way you really know the values of an organisation is through behaviours.

Brenton Gowland:

That's 100% correct.

Ron Tomlian:

Okay, let's move on to tip number two.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely.

Ron Tomlian:

And this may be a precursor to tip number one, but I'll go with it anyways. Spend time looking at what you do from the customer's viewpoint. As the first nation peoples from the Americas would say walk a mile and another man shoes. If you accept that the purpose of a business is to do something useful for customers, then it becomes critical to understand what would be useful to them in the context of what you can provide as a business and the sources of information that are available to you are legion. You know, some people think that they've got to spend a lot of money on doing market research. But the truth of the matter is, you can use market research, but you got information from interacting with your customers, just asking the questions, getting groups of customers to sit down and talk to them about their experience, and what's important to them, talk to frontline staff, they're interacting with customers all the time, they might have different perspectives. But they certainly can provide part of the the perspective to you about what's important to customers, I always like to say, if you want to find out where you are, at any given time, you look on your phone, that phone is using a triangulation mechanism, okay, it's bouncing off different points. And that means getting at least three sources of information to find out where you are. I think the same is true with customers as well, you need a whole bunch of pieces of information or sources of information, so that you can get a good handle on where you are from the customer perspective. And never underestimate the power and the information value in complaints. Complaints are gold.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

Most people run away from complaints at a million miles an hour.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

Because they're uncomfortable. But in fact, the sources of the complaint is a source of where you're going to do better. And what's important to the customer.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely, it's always the people that are least happy with you that are generally going to be the most honest. But I've got to say about this tip, I think this is literally in my mind, the most important and the simplest thing that a business can do. And I would say it's simply this, talk to your customers with a view to listen. Because all the information you want is there. Because the customers can basically tell you how to market your business. They can tell you how to sell your product. They can tell you how to improve it, if you just talk and it doesn't have to be complex. Just you can get on the phone to them. You can talk to them, you can interact with them. And I'll talk some more about that my tips. It's because I think this is what you're on here is right where it's at talking to your customers.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, I'd say in talking to your customers ask a question and shut up.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, as we've said, in other podcasts, you know.

Ron Tomlian:

I'm a simple guy. I like to keep it simple.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. 100%.

Ron Tomlian:

Okay, tip number three, bring this knowledge and perspective into the operations of the organisation don't keep it at the top management. Too often, I've seen a disconnect between the idea of customer, the core and the C suite. And the reality of the way value is provided to customers at the coalface. The way you provide your product or service and the way you interact with your customer on a daily basis should take into account their perspective as well. This includes a business's policies procedures, especially as they relate to the interaction with a customers. How do you invoice customers? How do you allow them to pay? How do you handle complaints? Do customers have to go through a lengthy process just in just to tell you what you're doing wrong? Or is there immediate interaction, when a complaint is made. All these things relate to the way an organisation presents itself to customers. But it means that the people at the coalface are living this idea of providing value to the customer.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, it's every interaction with the customer, right? And what you were talking about how they pay, how they receive service calls or complaints. Every interaction says something about you. And we've talked about that before. But I think you know, to this point, so many people create a plan or a vision or a mission, all these things and it might just sit there on the shelf. And so all your good intentions end up getting left behind in the day to day workings of the business. So what you're saying is if you can then put these visions, missions, directions and insights from your customers into action through policy, then you start to live and you start to breath it as an organisation and that that's organisational change. That really is putting the customer right at the centre of everything you do because they're driving your policy.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, I think you know, to try and sum that up great ideas or intentions often get left behind on a day to day grind a business and we forget that it's our behaviours, not our intentions that customers judge us on.

Brenton Gowland:

So if you want to put the customer at the centre of your business, you got to make your behaviours, behaviour sorry, reflect that. Yes?

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

Great.

Ron Tomlian:

Okay, they're my three top tips, what are yours?

Brenton Gowland:

I think I got 50 top tips on this one, because this is again, a passion point for me. Because if you as I said earlier, your point two, if you listen to your customers, they are the best source of information about how to build your business. They really contain just so much insight and value that if you actually listen to them and talk to them, you will actually be able to change, grow, achieve the results that you want to achieve etc, etc by delivering something really of value. So I'll get on to my tips. My first tip is to establish a review process with your customers where the purpose is into it to improve the relationship that you have with them and deliver a better service. Now this doesn't have to be complicated in a B2C environment where you're selling your products to customers and you may not have an ongoing relationship with them. There's something that a lot of businesses use, which is called Net Promoter Score. Now, that's a bit of research backed science to actually gauge what your customers sentiment is towards you, but the real value in it. So let me just if you haven't heard of net promoter score before, let me just give you that it's based on one question, and then a follow up question. Now the question is, on a scale of one to 10, where one is highly unlikely, and 10 is very likely, how likely are you to recommend our product or service to other people, then people will give you a rating, right. And I won't get into what the ratings mean. But if you want to look it up, just google Net Promoter Score, and I think it's netpromoter.com. It's got all the information about it. As I said, it's a well established method that people use to measure customer sentiment. But the really important question is the follow up question. What can we do as an organisation to improve that score? Now, if you listen, like Ron was saying earlier, to what people say about how they think you can improve your business by actually, well, how can we actually improve our product and service to the point where you'd recommend us and they give you that information, the information they give you is incredibly valuable. So my tip one is to create some sort of mechanism, whether it's Net Promoter Score, or one of the others that exists to actually delve what people think of you and get the feedback, you need to grow your business. Now, this could be the same tip or a secondary tip. But if it was a B2B business, I would actually recommend setting up a review process where you go into that business periodically, and ask them questions about what they think of your service, and then potentially give them some feedback about how you think they could actually improve as well so that you can improve your relationship and the three areas I usually look at operations. So what are we delivering? So the product, then the account management, how well do we service you? And I always ask questions about price as well, because I think that's one of the things that people sometimes are afraid to talk about. And sometimes it's really interesting to see what people think of your price. And more often than not, you'd be surprised that they might think you're the right price, or they might think you're too cheap. And I've come across that before when I've been doing reviews with clients. And that's always been like, wow, you think we're too cheap. Okay, that's, that's really interesting. Why do you think that? And the information they give you actually can help you from everything to setting up your pricing structures to how you improve your operations to how you improve your product to how you sell it? So that's my tip number 1 and 1A.

Ron Tomlian:

Very good. Very good. And and you're absolutely right on the price issue. I mean, people think that everyone's looking for the cheapest price. But let me ask you a question. I've got two cars here. One's $5,000. And one's $20,000. Which is the better quality car?

Brenton Gowland:

Probably the one that's more expensive if we just think...

Ron Tomlian:

Exact. And when people are looking for quality, they're not looking for just price.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. So Apple just released their new iPhones at three o'clock this morning, Australian Eastern Standard Time. And they've got an iPhone that now is way more expensive than the iPhones have ever been before. But it's not a problem. They know that people are going to buy it, and probably people will go, you know, I'm that person. I'll be like, yeah, I want to buy the one at the top of the range. Because you know, I just want it. So yeah, price isn't always the thing. And Apple are a great example of that they haven't, you know, been a company that's discounted. They've been a company that's focused on quality rather than price.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah there are legions examples of people who put up their price and sold more, because....

Brenton Gowland:

People value it.

Ron Tomlian:

.....because it's a quality equation.

Brenton Gowland:

So don't be afraid of talking to your customers about price. Sure, you will always get someone who says just make it cheaper. But if you really delve and you really listen, you'll find out, you know, right where you should be positioned as well. Or at least you'll get some insights into what people think. So my next tip is to develop buyer personas for your customers. Now if you don't know what a buyer persona is, because I could see that in your eyes that you want me to explain that Ron. But buyer persona is a fictional representation of your customer, their wants, needs, goals, challenges, etc, etc. Now, while it's a fictional representation, you build a buyer persona. And I would just recommend that you Google it because there's a million examples of how this is done. And if you need help with it, that's when you talk to people like myself or Ron or your marketing team, etc, etc. But a buyer persona is built by asking questions of your customers. And what you'll end up with like a company might end up with seven buyer personas. And they understand that we're selling to seven different types of people that we might need to speak to those people slightly differently. You can call it segmenting. You can call it whatever else but at the heart of it, it's understanding your target market. So those buyer personas really help you understand who are we selling to what value do we offer? How can we help them and how should we market to them?

Ron Tomlian:

And that's about getting the customer again, into your consideration of how you conduct your business.

Brenton Gowland:

Like with some customers. We've even had buyer personas where we will literally stick A4 sheets of paper in front of them to seven different buyer personas. So when they're talking to these people, they can go, this person said, this particular persona or this person's or this particular persona, and if they've got a CRM, then, as in a piece of software that then helps you manage and collect contact information, etc, etc. You can then say that these people, and you can actually set them up as those particular buyer personas in your CRM, and then send different marketing communications out to that group, different marketing communications out to that group. So you really start to become specific in how you communicate with people. And people appreciate that. Because the more you talk to people, they get bombarded with email and different messages. And it's always well, the ones we hate the most that are just not for us, are wow, you're sending me products about babies, and I don't even have a child. You're just sending me the generic stuff. Whereas, oh they know that I like a particular piece of clothing, or I like a particular this, and they'll send me items around that. And that's where personas really help you segment and define how you speak to your market.

Ron Tomlian:

Excellent. And that whole concept of segmentation is the core of good marketing.

Brenton Gowland:

And it's actually part of getting the customer at the centre of your business because when you think about your business, your customers are not all a one size fits all your customers can be very different. And you really need to understand how many different customer types do we actually serve?

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, and and being able to say, for each one of those customer types, what is the problem that we're solving for that type?

Brenton Gowland:

Correct. Okay, and my last tip is focus on become a company that focuses on developing positive reviews, or positive case studies, depending whether you're B2B or B2C, right?

Ron Tomlian:

You're gonna need to explain this because being customer centric, and this doesn't seem to gel with me explain more.

Brenton Gowland:

Right. Okay. So what I mean by that is, obviously, if you're in the digital world at the moment. There's obviously, I say, obviously, I probably shouldn't. There are a number of different ways that you can establish trust with people right back to our conversation about the previous podcast with Kristen. One of those ways is through product reviews. Now restaurants are probably one of the groups that come to mind the most they survive on customer reviews on Google and different platforms, etc, etc. But so do a bunch of other companies. Loan companies might use software called or pieces of software from TrustPilot, to product review to whatever else. You see those on the website and they'll actually have customers views on what they think of the product or service. And now the'll be negative reviews, and there'll be positive reviews and what I'm talking about, if you become a company that focuses on how do we develop positive reviews, you're going to have the customer at the front and centre of your mind. If you become a company that goes we want to create great case studies, then you're going to be working very carefully with your clients to deliver on their expectations or exceed them so that once you've done the piece of work, you can use that piece of work as a sales tool. So that's what I mean, if you want to develop positive case studies, or positive customer reviews, it means you need to focus on those groups to see how you can actually do that in an organic or a planned fashion.

Ron Tomlian:

Okay, you've won me over. I agree. It's a mechanism for making sure that you're always trying to keep the customer at the forefront.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. And, again, that's restaurants bread and butter. I know so many people who run venues, and they'll be like, can you give us a positive review? Can you give us a positive review? And they bend over backwards to treat people really, really well? Because that's what's driving them. And I mean, Uber and all these other platforms have actually driven that in the past in the sense that you know, you're a five star Uber rider, you're this. So we want to give better service, because we're focused on developing good reviews.

Ron Tomlian:

So it's a nice carrot and stick type of approach. I like it. Yeah, in terms of practicality. So as a result of our discussion today, and the top tips that we provided, I would say we've established customer centricity, not as a just a quaint nice to have, it's actually crucial to business sustainability.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely. And it's not just something that's done once and forgotten, markets, change, customers change, and helping keep in touch with these changes. And modifying your business accordingly is all about keeping this as a progressive part of our business. So for instance, if you're making your customer persona, you should always be checking it like a buyer persona, as I was talking about earlier. If you're talking to the market, about your product, you know, this particular time of year, you should always then be double checking with them and have mechanisms in place to go back and make sure that you're still on the right track, because the strategy is a living breathing thing.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, I'm just thinking about yourself. You know, am I the same person I was 20 years ago? No,

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely not.

Ron Tomlian:

I've changed. Unfortunately.

Brenton Gowland:

Every time I look in the mirror, I looked at some old photos earlier, and I looked in the mirror today I'm like, wow wee, I really need to start working on myself.

Ron Tomlian:

So if we're changing that, yes, our customers are changing as well.

Brenton Gowland:

100%. Yep. And if you like the podcast, as we said earlier, there's some real importance in being able to glean useful bits of information for yourself, and we would love to hear any useful bits of information that you've got out of the podcast. What's of most value to you because to our point, we need to listen to our customers as well. We need to listen to you, our listeners to make sure that we're bringing you information that's useful. So finding out what you find useful helps us build content for the future. So you can contact Ron Tomlian on LinkedIn or Brenton Gowland on LinkedIn. And let us know your thoughts and that'd be really appreciate

Ron Tomlian:

And please remember to check out our sponsors.. We might even turn some of t ose thoughts into actual e isodes. There's Nucleus at nucleus.com.au

Brenton Gowland:

Borough Markets at boroughmarkets.com.au that spelt B-O-R-O-U-G-H-Markets dot com dot au

Ron Tomlian:

And Adapt_CO.

Brenton Gowland:

And don't forget SA Business Builders.

Ron Tomlian:

Oh, yeah, SA Business Builders as well. They're on LinkedIn. Yep. We really appreciate you checking out our sponsors, even if it's just to look at who they are, what they're doing. Anyway, thanks for joining us. We hope you found this podcast useful. And we will see you in the next fortnight. So we managed to get in two weeks this time rather than the four that we've been doing. Yeah, let's keep it up.

Brenton Gowland:

It might be due to this studio that we've got now.

Ron Tomlian:

It's much better isn't it.

Brenton Gowland:

It is and we thank Borough Markets for providing that for us.

Ron Tomlian:

Thank you very much.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, Ron, I will see you in two weeks time.

Ron Tomlian:

See you in the next episode.

Brenton Gowland:

Bye for now.

Introduction
About our topic - putting the customer at the centre of your business
Tip one - Define your purpose from the perspective of your customer
Tip two - Spend time looking at what you do from the customer's viewpoint.
Tip three - Spread the customer viewpoint through the whole business
Tip four - Establish a review process to improve your relationships with your customers
Tip five - Set up buyer personas
Tip six - focus on developing positive reviews and case studies
Wrap up and goodbyes