When I joined Fisher's three years ago, it was a scary proposition to ask what our customers thought about our service. Frankly, we had poor service and did not have a culture of doing everything in our power to deliver a top notch customer experience. We are now very proud of the experience we deliver to our customers.
In the spring of 2006, Blueline Grassroots Marketing performed a SWOT Analysis for Fisher’s. To review the results now is truly amazing:
Strengths:
- Time in business
- Industry knowledge
- Product lines (Canon)
- Experienced people
- Willingness to change
Weaknesses:
- Communication
- Unhappy customers
- Not at the level of service we want to be
- Procedures and processes are not customer driven
- Follow through with customers
- Ownership and accountability
- Don’t know which customers are unhappy
That is what they found! Our strengths were that we had been around for a long time and that we had great products, otherwise we sucked at keeping our customers happy and informed. Not a very good business model for a service organization. The one strength that got us from there to here, however, was captured: Willingness to change.
I am so pleased to be blogging at this moment with extreme confidence that our customers will be taken care of… and that they actually “love” Fisher’s service. (The word “love” comes up frequently in our daily customer surveys.) I also have the confidence that if we do stub our toe… the team will respond quickly and make it right for the customer.
Fast response, effective servicing, proactive maintenance, and frequent, useful communication are the keys and we now get it.
That said, we can always get better. Our “willingness to change” is now a cultural requirement. Someone who does not fit that culture cannot work for Fisher’s. We therefore take our errors (and we do still make them) and use them as opportunities to continue to improve.
If anyone reading this blog has any ideas for Fisher’s to be able to improve its customer experience (whether it’s servicing copiers, repairing printers, or responding to questions), please let me know. That feedback is what keeps us differentiated and growing.