On the 7th day of Christmas my COO said to me “How can our operations be more customer focused?”

It’s one thing to talk strategically about customer centricity in B2B but it’s another thing completely to engender a real passion for the customer experience amongst the staff who are often tactically managed (even outsourced) and the least well paid in the business.

Yet it is crucial to do so because these staff are the people who actually deliver and support the day-to-day experience that customers receive – the delivery drivers, receptionists, back-office workers, warehouse & factory workers, etc. who represent your company every day. Here’s a checklist to consider how customer focused your Operations are:

People

None of the other parts of this checklist will work if you don’t have your HR aligned to your customer strategy:
How are people targeted & measured and what mandate is there to change things?
Is there a “Way of Working” set out based on defined positive behaviours that are driven by attitude rather than rules?
Is there a standard induction for staff or does it vary by location? Do you put the managers through it as well?
Have any cultural assessments been done? Any other gauges of staff morale?
Does training cover customer centricity as well as product/process/compliance?
What’s the relationship like with outsourced suppliers?
What’s staff turnover like vs. benchmarks and are absenteeism / disciplinaries / off-culture behaviours well managed?

Processes & Compliance

What quality systems are in place?
What proportion of management time is spent on firefighting?
Are the operational processes mapped and maintained? Have they been translated into simple procedures for people to follow?
How well do we comply with the compliance regimes that cover the operations? What’s the relationship like with regulators?
Are levels of leakage, undeliverable, rearrange, returns, etc. in-line with sector norms?
Do the complaint process, social listening, Customer Services etc. link back into Operations?

Data & Technology

How is IT structured in the business – centralised or devolved across divisions?
Are the systems fit-for-purpose across channels & media? Is there a ‘single customer view’?
Do staff care about data quality?

Standards

What’s promised to customers and are there corresponding internal standards to ensure they’re met? Who sets them?
Are there clear SLAs (service level agreements) and LTAs (lead time agreements) in-place with internal and external customers & suppliers?

Measures

Are measures joined-up from divisional objectives down to staff?
What measures REALLY drive the operations and culture of the division – very often not what’s reported!?
Is a balanced scorecard operated (hard and soft measures)?
Is there a measure for every quality standard? Is data quality prominently reported?

If your business can give positive responses to the above questions then I would rate its operations as very well run.

If it can’t then the areas of uncertainty would be a good place to start in the coming year.

Our diagnostic tools can help you quantify any gaps to best practice and prioritise the actions to improve.

Have a view on this? Tweet to @CustomerAttune // or Tweet to @PeterLavers//

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Peter Lavers

Peter Lavers is a co-founder and Director of Customer Attuned Ltd.

An expert in CRM and customer experience management, Peter is regularly recognised as a top influencer in the subject.

He's a SAS Collaborator and IBM Futurist; and regularly features in "top people to follow" lists for Customer Experience, Customer Service and Customer Success.

His early career was 18 years with Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motors, after which he jumped the fence into business consulting, helping clients improve customer experience and value.