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What's Driving Your Business?
No, we're not talking about your BMW or 4 X 4, but the "driving force" behind your company. Is your company sales driven? Product driven? Or, is it internally focused, driven by its systems and procedures? Consider whether either of the following descriptions ring true in your organization.
"Sales promises whatever it takes to close the sale regardless of the company's capability to deliver. Then they go around beating up on other departments to get their promises fulfilled."
"Our objective is to control costs and create production efficiencies. We standardize everything. There's no place for customer exceptions here."
While we know these are extreme tendencies, there is a far worse scenario-everyone's trying to drive the business from their own unique perspective. In this case, the company exhibits different driving forces simultaneously. It perpetuates unhealthy competition between departments and produces systems that perform at cross purposes.
The fundamental problem with each example is the customer is just a passenger along for the ride. The customer is not integrated into the company's objectives.
In organizations that deliver exceptional service, the customer is always in the driver's seat. In a customer driven organization, sales and operations (the service and support supplied by the rest of the company) are two sides of the same coin. Sales is the demand side-identifying, understanding and creating need for the products and services. Operations is the supply side-producing and delivering products and services. Only when sales and operations work in a customer-oriented partnership, can meaningful service delivery begin.