Raving Fan Customers: Creating Customer Focused Teams

Points to Remember

Customer-focused teams and victims (people who refuse responsibility and accountability for their behavior) don’t go together. Members have to want to make the team successful. You cannot create a team with a group of victims.

Enemies and customer-focused teams do not go together. Team members must have a basic regard for each other. They do not have to love each other, but at minimum they should have mutual professional respect.

Expect conflict. Because performance standards are high, team members will have differing points of view for how to achieve performance standards. Open dialogue and discussion are useful to moving things forward. Remember that it does not matter who is right, but that the customer is served in an extraordinary fashion.

Finally, do not be afraid to experiment. Customer service strategies need to be planned, but it helps to be flexible and try new ideas that will make your organization indispensable to the people it serves.

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Raving Fan Customers: Creating Customer Focused Teams

Developmental Stage Movement

In time, Stage 1 teams arrive at Stage 2. Stage 2 teams will either get stuck in Stage 2 or move on to Stage 3. Stage 3 teams can slip back into Stage 2 or move on to Stage 4. Progress or slippage depends on whether the team builds on its momentum or rests on its laurels. In Stage 4, the team can move on through consistent improvement or slip back by becoming arrogant and overconfident. Keep in mind that none of these stages are good or bad. They are necessary stepping-stones in the process that leads to high performance.

In the process of development, teams most often get stuck in Stage 2. In order to move to Stage 3, the team must hammer out the performance standards and commitment to achieving them. Also, team goals must become more important than personal agendas, which need to be congruent and in alignment with the group agenda.

 In Stage 3, the group starts to take on a life of its own and begins to aggressively move in the direction of its performance standards.

Stage 4 is where teams come into their own and truly create customer loyalty. If the team becomes relentless in providing superior products and anticipating the changing needs of the customer, it becomes possible to become indispensable to your customers. Equally important to customer focus is internal responsiveness for employees and shareholders who directly benefit from high performance with increased earnings. This is the win/win/win stage of development.

Stage 5 is a bit tricky because it can occur at any phase of development and can be triggered by any change that significantly alters the team. Examples include gaining or losing a member, altering the performance standards or receiving a new coach. Similarly, a major change in the internal or external environment will impact the team’s progress. Examples of this type of change include new products or services, new customers or a change in rules and regulations.
For more information about moving through team stages click here.

Raving Fan Customers: Creating Customer Focused Teams

A Normal Process for Team Development

Like people, teams go through different phases during their development. This is normal. A two-year old human is very different than a 16-year-old. Likewise, a team that has been together two months behaves very differently than a team that has been together 16 months.

There are five stages of development for customers focused teams, each with its own distinct characteristics:

Stage 1 - Getting to Know You

• Feeling that this customer service stuff could be fun combined with some anxiety about how to do it
• A degree of excitement about the concept of team
• Figuring out who is in charge
• Clarifying the rules and developing standards
• Dependence is on the coach/leader
• Coach/leader uses a directive approach

Stage 2 - Wish We Weren’t Here

• Feeling that this is not fun
• Leadership and/or members are all screwed up
• Feeling that “something is definitely wrong here”
• Feeling uncertain and incapable
• Performance standards not being met and a lot of finger pointing
• Little agreement among team members regarding standards
• Customer focus is rhetoric only
• A lot of internal strife and no sense of mutual accountability
• Task driven but a lot of individual agendas
• Performance standards are not agreed upon

Stage 3 - Getting Behind the Game

• Performance standards hammered out
• Increasing ownership of those standards
• Decreasing hostility as the team begins working out personal differences
• Focus on customers
• Starting to like and feel comfortable with mutual accountability
• Positive feedback from customers starting to come in
• More honesty among team members
• Failing forward -- learning and improving from trial and error, with rapid recovery from mistakes
• Enthusiasm and energy levels increasing
• Support for each other evident
• Small wins bring large smiles

Stage 4 - High Performance and Raving Fan Service

• Customers are consistently overwhelmed by the service and product
• Team standards are met and moved outwardly by the team
• Members feeling good about consistency
• Shared leadership
• Open and honest communication
• Meetings are full of straight talk
• Results are recognized by customers as high performance
• Members feel deep concern for each other’s personal growth and success
• The team outperforms all reasonable expectations
• Team members are having a lot of fun

Stage 5 - The Times They Are A-Changing

• A major change occurs, such as members joining or leaving, a new coach, new performance standards, etc.
• Confusion
• Uncertainty regarding the implications of change

 For more information about Team Stages click here.

Raving Fan Customers: Creating Customer Focused Teams

Customer Focus, Feedback and Service Strategy

To create customer-focused teams, employees must understand that they win when the customers win; there is more to this positioning than meets the eye. The customer win has to be defined so that the company also wins. If you ask customers what they want they will tell you I want the service and product for nothing. Typically companies cannot stay in business by doing this. So the raving fan service strategy needs to be designed so that the company and its employees can deliver. Back to Apple, their products are easy to use and their informed employees can teach consumers how to use their products. All this conspires to make many raving fan Apple customers. Every service strategy needs to be designed so that this concept is constantly reinforced. 

The front line (people who directly impact the customer) has to get feedback so that they can:

• Know what it is doing right in creating raving fan customers
• Know what it is doing that is not working 
• Coordinate and fix problems with other departments that impact the delivery of raving fan customer service
• Ensure that the customer consistently perceives great value from the product and service that they are getting.

Two challenges exist in creating successful, high performance, customer focused teams. The first challenge is getting the voice of the customer clearly delivered to the front line regarding the service or product. Therefore, it is important to create forums and opportunities for the front line to listen to the customer. The other challenge is to make sure everyone understands the standards by which customer service is measured.

For more about creating customer focused teams click here.

Raving Fan Customers: Creating Customer Focused Teams

What is a Raving Fan Customer?

I first saw this term used in the book Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard. A “raving fan customer” is a customer that is excited about the company’s service delivery and product way beyond normal. Raving fan customers remain loyal given price pressure from a given service’s competition. These customers would go through a lot to get the company’s service. Even a price increase would keep these raving fans loyal buyers. Raving fan customers would wait in long lines; pay extra shipping fee; all for the service or product that their favorite company offers.
For more information about creating raving fan customers click here.

Can You Hear Me?

Listening is what will make the difference. Once a group is listening, anyone can lead. Once ‘listening’ is present, understanding and problem solving occur naturally. People can focus and work together. Prior to this there is reaction and yelling. Listening, the power of listening is one of the lessons I have seen groups get from utilizing stupid games.

Another lesson that groups learn from stupid games is the value of practice. For many groups it is a revelation to discover that to improve a group’s performance will take conversations, learning and practice. When people realize that practice is necessary while playing a stupid game, the drama suddenly ends and people relax. They get that it is ok to make mistakes and learn from them. That is what happens when you ‘practice.’ We learn that we can be safe with each other.

Learning about failure is still another lesson that can be learned in stupid-game land. There is failure and then there is failure. Whenever humans learn and develop, there is failure. There are failures from not doing something that needs to be done as well as from doing the wrong thing. The problem is that there are real consequences for failures during real business.

I have seen corporate groups play the same game over and over again and yet still get value from them. The standards can change, the parameters can change, what people learn can change, and it still is all training and development.

In business, when a group alienates a customer there are consequences. With a stupid game when the group alienates the customer (who is really the bozo facilitator pretending to be a customer) there is learning and development. This goes back to the games as a practice field that is safe and in which members of the group can learn and develop. There are no long-term consequences on the practice field.

For more information about CMI's team building events click here.