Customer Care Revisited
by Paul Catiang
Based on a presentation by Nilo S. Cruz

At their recently concluded Annual Sales and Production Conference, the people of John Clements Consultants, Inc. took a step back and reexamined the way they related to clients through a presentation by Nilo S. Cruz, managing director of Hewlett-Packard Philippines, entitled “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful IT Vendors”. The customer-centered presentation reviewed well-known business practices and interpersonal skills and placed them in the light of today’s professional context.

“The goal of every service provider is to turn every shopper and customer into clients,” Mr. Cruz began. The people one transacts with are ranked on a ladder of loyalty, based on how much these people relate to their providers. In order of increasing loyalty, they are: suspect, prospect, buyer, customer, client, and advocate.

Winning their trust and loyalty requires several things; for starters, one needs to provide excellent customer service, not only in the short term, but also in the long term, ensuring lifetime profitability. To provide the customer service required, a provider has to know a customer’s needs, and this isn’t always as easy as it seems. Some customers protect their deep-seated emotions by disguising their needs, and a provider has to be patient, friendly and understanding to gain their trust and determine what their customer’s needs are.

Moreover, there is a distinction between customer needs---logical, rational necessities---and customer wants---generally irrational and emotional cravings that have little to do with expedience. Knowing the difference between both and being able to provide for both customer needs and wants is a sure way of winning customer trust. This relates to what John Atkers calls mind share and heart share. Mind share is won when people know and understand the value of a company; heart share is won when they move from that knowledge to wanting to do business with that company.

Mr. Cruz also referred to Les Giblin, author of How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People. He says here that regardless of whom one deals with—housewives, workers, executives, convicts—there are certain human aspects that remain constant all throughout. Human beings are all egotists, and are more interested in themselves than in anything else in the world. An extension of this principle is that every person wants to feel important, to amount to something. “We are all ego-hungry. It is only when this hunger is at least partially satisfied that we can forget ourselves, take our attention off ourselves, and give it to something else. The person who has learned to like himself can be generous and friendly with other persons,” Mr. Cruz concludes.

Therefore, such principles can be applied to customers. A well-cared-for customer can afford to be loyal to the company that not only understands, but anticipates his or her needs and wants. It is in appreciating these core principles and applying them in a professional setting that a company may effectively serve its customers.

For a copy of Nilo Cruz's presentation, click here.