If there’s one thing I’ve learned over time, it’s that the questions you ask are often more important than the answers. Leaders know what questions to ask and when to ask them so they can get their people to come up with the best solutions. They know that their people often have the best answers if they are given a chance to figure it out. Customer obsession is no different… except you have to know what questions to ask.

But how do you know what questions to ask if this is not your area of ​​expertise or expertise? How do you know when to ask certain questions along a specific trip if you haven’t been on that trip before? And how do you come up with the right questions so you can get the right answers and the support of the other leaders and managers in the organization? Let me help you with this…at least when it comes to being customer obsessed.

Customer Obsession is putting the customer FIRST in everything you do.

Leaders of an organization that is not customer-obsessed find that there is a need for some education that preempts their ability to ask the right questions. Part of this education is realizing that customer obsession is not the same as simply “liking” and “supporting” your customers. Since Customer Obsession is so much more than this, there is always a learning curve they go through before they can start asking the right questions.

As a side note, all companies care about their customers and want the best for them… this goes without saying. This is not customer obsession. Everyone likes their customers… after all, they are the ones who write us checks for our products and services. What’s not to like. It all comes down to how companies interact with their customers. He’s cool for the most part, but he’s not usually amazing or obsessed.

Being customer obsessed means that the customer is at the center of everything you do…they come FIRST in everything you do as a company. No decision is made until we understand how it will affect your customer. No decision is made until we understand how you are going to help your client improve their life or business. And no decision is made until we understand how we can give the customer the experience that will blow their minds and make them say, “WOW, he treats me like I’m his favorite customer all the time.” This is customer obsession.

Customer Obsession has a completely different set of questions.

As I mentioned at the beginning, one of the things that makes leaders great is their ability to ask good questions so that their people can come up with amazing answers and solutions. This is where the dilemma comes into play. How can a leader ask big questions if he doesn’t understand what he’s trying to accomplish? they can not

When it comes to customer obsession, how can a leader ask the right (and great) questions if they don’t understand where they want to go with the answers? For example, if your organization is “product or service centric,” it is much easier for a Leader to ask specific questions regarding new products, or product development, or even new services that they feel might fit into the company’s mission. They are attuned to these questions because this is the company’s approach.

But since most leaders aren’t “customer-focused,” how do they ask their people the right questions to get great answers? they can’t. If a leader decides he wants to be more customer obsessed, he must start asking the “right” (or different) questions to get the answers that will help him move forward and be more customer obsessed.

So how do you know what questions to ask?

There are many different questions and they can be very specific to your organization. I won’t try to dive into this level of detail here, but let me give you some guidelines that you can follow. If you’re customer obsessed, you’ll want to focus on questions in these different areas…

• How does this new product or service help our customers?
• How does this new product or service impact the life (or business) of our customers?
• If we make this change to our product or service, what impact will it have on our customers?
• How many customers will this change affect?
• What will our customers say if we make this change?
• How do we know if this product will help our customer improve their life (or business)?
• And many others…

You get the idea about the mindset and approach of an organization that is customer obsessed. They start by asking about the “impact” this will have on their customers before asking about the impact it will have on their business. The first questions change from “internally focused” to “externally focused”. Customer-obsessed companies don’t care if it’s a good idea internally (drive more sales or reduce costs) until they know it will add significant value to their customers. Only then does it go to the next level to determine if it is a good opportunity for them as a business.

Customer Obsession is the culture of the company, so everyone thinks and acts this way, it is not the exception, it is the rule. It is “who they are” and it is “how they operate” as a company. This is very different from product/service focused companies. As it is a cultural (or DNA) issue, it permeates the company in all departments, in all employees.

As is the culture of the company, now it allows the leaders to ask different questions to the employees. And now these questions are not unexpected for the employees because they are already thinking of possible alternatives or solutions to address the leader’s questions. For example, if a leader asks what impact a new process would have on their customers and employees respond with something more than “it will help save them time and/or money,” then the idea probably won’t see the light of day.

It’s critical to be honest with yourself and not do something that goes against your focus areas. If you’re not customer obsessed (yet), then you don’t want to ask your employees these questions because they aren’t trained to know how to respond appropriately. If you want to ask questions about customer obsession, you need to start with the process that will help you become customer obsessed.

What to do next…
The first step is education… learning more about why being customer obsessed could make a complete difference to your organization. Once you see how this works, you’ll be able to determine if this is the approach you want for your company culture and DNA. If this is interesting and you feel that something would set you apart from your competition, then you will be more open to learning how you would go about making this a reality in your company.

While there is a lot of information out there, it can be a bit daunting to dive into as it is fragmented and analyzed in a variety of ways. If you’d like to save some time and get to the core quickly, let me know and I can help. My passion and my principles for WOM10 are simple… to help all companies “LOOK” by being customer obsessed.

The only question that remains is: “Are you ready to be customer obsessed and become able to ‘WATCH’?”