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October 18, 2004
Overcoming systemic company blindness
How often are customers consulted for company decision-making?
If the illuminating map at left from Valdis Krebs is any indication, it's not every often.
Krebs is the man behind InFlow software; he produced the map based on interviews and a survey of an unnamed organization. It shows two key failures at the company in question:
1. Of the four senior directors in the company, only one sought customer input for decision-making.
2. Of the 45 managers in the company, only one directly sought customer input for decision-making.
The map shows a clear relationship between general manager and customer, thankfully. Considering, though, their limited time, access and ability to understand voluminously minute challenges between company and customer, most GMs are an information bottleneck for ensuring that valuable customer input is part of company decision-making.
One argument consistently made against customer feedback is "we don't want to bother our customers with numerous requests for feedback." Granted, most customers would probably prefer that 45 managers in a company not ask them for feedback for virtually identical issues.
But if big organizations are to create customer evangelists, they must ensure they routinely gather customer input and make it easily accessible within a central repository. Then they must hold their line managers and senior directors accountable for incorporating customer input into their decision making.
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