Leaders need to put customers at the center of their day-to-day decisions and work.
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We hear the following all the time: “We need our leaders to ‘obsess’ more about our customers and put customers at the center of their day-to-day decisions and work. What can we do to make that happen?”
Most of the people expressing such concerns already have tried the usual things, such as getting the CEO and other leaders to visit branches, spend time on the call-in line listening to customer inquiries and complaints, and tag along on occasional sales visits.
The fact that we’re being asked the same question over and over again, however, would appear to indicate that the “usual things” aren’t working.
The Customer Experience
We all know how important the customer experience is. As J. Christopher Westland of the University of Illinois Chicago pointed out in a recent journal article, some 30 years of academic research has shown a clear link between “superior customer experiences” and all of the following:
- “increased customer loyalty and retention,”
- more-frequent and larger customer purchases,
- stronger brand value,
- easier new customer acquisition—at lower cost,
- “fewer complaints and returns,”
- less attrition among customer-service employees, and
- improved company agility and resilience.
But not every organization has figured out how to provide superior customer experiences on a consistent basis. And often, it’s because the organization’s leadership is focused elsewhere.
In fact, research suggests that most CEOs spend very little time with, or focusing on, customers. Data indicate that most already are working some 60-to-70 hours a week, and there’s only so much they can do. Meetings alone consume nearly three-quarters of the typical CEO’s workday.
There’s Never Enough Time For Everything
A detailed study by Harvard Business School’s Michael E. Porter and Nitin Nohria, meticulously plotting the daily activities of 27 large-company CEOs over a 13-week period—day and night, seven days a week—illustrates the point. Their study, published in Harvard Business Review (HBR), found that:
- “CEOs are always on, and there is always more to be done”—with study subjects averaging 9.7 hours of work each weekday, several additional hours per day on most weekends, and a couple of more hours on most vacation days. “As these figures show, the CEO’s job is relentless,” Nohria and Porter write.
- Face-to-face interactions “took up 61% of the work time” of study participants, while another 24% was spent on electronic communication (Who says email is dead?), and the remaining 15% on reading, replying to written communication, or on the phone.
- “CEOs attend an endless stream of meetings, each of which can be totally different than the one before and the one that follows.” On average, Porter and Nohria reported, the leaders in their study averaged “37 meetings of assorted lengths” per week, consuming 72% of their total work time each week.
- Customers? They averaged about 3% of the study group’s work time each week.
That defines the problem, writ large. The solution, however, lies in the concrete steps C-suite leaders take (with assistance from their chiefs of staff) to integrate “customer centricity” into their daily routines and embed it in their organizations’ DNA.
What Others Are Doing
So, how do we get CEOs (and other leaders) to obsess less about the endless meetings and obsess more about their customers?
The obvious place to start, of course, is by reducing the number and duration of meetings on their schedules. Nohria and Porter discuss that at length in their article, “How CEOs Manage Time.” And my colleague Deborah Lovich, a former Forbes contributor, also provides some great advice .
But that’s just the opening move, freeing up valuable time, applicable to virtually every leader at every level at every organization.
The big question is: What do you do with that freed up time? The answer should be: Meet with customers. Press the flesh. See what customers are saying about your products, and prices, and those of your competitors. Just do it.
Here are some examples:
- At Amazon, every manager—including founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, we’re told—is required to spend at least two days every year working at a company Call Center “assisting [in the words of ZipRecruiter]customers with inquiries, orders, returns, and technical support via phone, chat, or email.”
- At Dutch Bros Coffee, the expanding Oregon-based drive-through coffee chain started by Travis Boersma and his late brother Dane, all regional store operators and regional leaders are now required to have hands-on experience working in a Dutch Bros store before taking the larger roles.
- At the end of last year, Home Depot, the DIY home improvement supply company, reinstated a policy that had been dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic. To wit: all corporate employees are required to put in an eight-hour shift every quarter at a Home Depot store.
- At Raising Cane’s, a fast-casual dining chain specializing in chicken fingers, headquartered in Baton Rouge, CEO Todd Graves still does shifts as a cashier in his Louisiana hometown. During the pandemic and the post-pandemic labor shortages, some 750 corporate employees did shift work in company stores as well.
Whether you’re a senior executive with a giant multinational corporation, or run a small mom-and-pop business in a local strip mall, the best way to know what’s on the minds of your customers is to talk to them, one on one.
One day a quarter on the floor of a store, or one day a month, may be all you can spare. If you’re really honest with yourself, however, you know it’s not enough.
In a 2022 HBR article, William W. (Bill) George, former CEO of Medtronic, explains how and why he allocated his time during his years at the medical-device company. His formula, which made him an “outlier,” he notes, was 30/30/30/10: 30% with customers, 30% with frontline employees, 30% with his fellow senior executives, and 10% with “external constituencies.”
That’s somebody who’s customer-centric. That’s what I’m talking about.
