Why Do Companies Fear Customer-Alignment Screening?

Have you ever had a cancer screening? If so, you know how scary it can be. You really don't want to find out you have cancer—but if you have it and don't do anything about it, your life is at risk.

In the business world, there's another "big C" that's invisible to the naked eye but often deadly if left undetected and untreated. As with people and cancer, business executives fear customer-alignment screening of their companies. And if the organization is out of alignment and you don't know it, customer misalignment can wreak havoc on the organization's corporate health.

So why aren't companies running to customer-alignment clinics? Partly from corporate hubris. Executives just don't believe customers can bring their companies down. Never mind the plethora of dead, dying or sick companies: all three U.S. automakers; most major U.S. airlines; Blockbuster Video; CitiGroup (not for the mortgage mess, but for failing to realize that "big" is not a customer benefit); Circuit City; CompUSA; Home Depot; Macy's; Lucent Technologies; Siebel Systems; Sprint Nextel. They all zigged when customers zagged—or stood pat as customers and customer needs changed—and wound up misaligned with customers. Despite these and many more examples that should send a red flag shooting up the corporate pole, many corporate executives maintain a "won't happen to us" posture.

There's another reason companies fear customer alignment screening—or at least the outcomes. Say a company does a customer-alignment check-up and discovers serious misalignment. What happens next? Treatment. For cancer patients, it's chemotherapy and/or radiation—"treatment" you're very reluctant to undergo if your life isn't on the line. And for misaligned companies? It's developing new business strategies that cede more control to customers; redesigning business process to align with and support new strategies; then expanding and reconfiguring information systems to align with and support new process; plus empowering customer contact employees to be customer advocates. Treatment you're very hesitant to undergo if your company isn't on the line.

Unfortunately, and despite all the evidence to the contrary, many executives still don't believe they're putting their companies at risk by failing to address customer-alignment issues. Some give lip service to improving customer relations but wind up "putting lipstick on the pig." You know the scenario: advertising slogans saying, "We love our customers"; corporate memos saying, "Be nice to customers"; "staying in closer touch" with customers by pounding them with email and postal mail; believing that cross-selling is a customer benefit because it encourages customers to "do more business with a trusted brand." That last one really makes me want to hurl.

Then there are the corporate managers who don't even bother with lip service. They believe they have an inherent right to manipulate customers and "control" customer behavior by whatever means it takes. Talk about la-la-land.

Fear of change
Then there are those who sort of "get it" but fear change too much to act. We worked with a COO on a process alignment project a year and a half ago. His first direction was, "Whatever you do, don't break my company." Several months later, we showed him our report. He called the entire management team together and said, "Our company is broken, and these guys showed us how to fix it." Since then, stasis, plus several missteps contrary to our advice: "frozen at the wheel" syndrome. Over all, it results from managers not walking their talk or talking the language of business 10 years ago—or is that 20 years?

So how do you get people to change? We can sure tell you what not to do. My research partner David Mangen and I labored to develop a customer-alignment assessment; then we put it on the web and promoted it: a free assessment with real-time scoring that takes less than 15 minutes. Heck, we had difficulty persuading our own clients to take it. Summing up their feelings, one exec confessed to not wanting to take it because, "I didn't want any negative feedback I'd feel obligated to do something about."

Making customer-alignment screening free and easy definitely isn't the answer. So what else? More education about marketplace realities will help, slowly. But waiting for the message to sink in is like watching paint dry. And then there's the "reality bites" approach—waiting for companies to stumble and then trying to persuade them to better align with customers. But by that point, they may be past rescue. What else is there?

Actually, the answer's pretty simple: Change the conversation. Rather than talking to senior execs ad nauseum about something they don't want to hear, we can get their attention when we address an issue that's top of mind for almost all execs: cutting costs to stay competitive.

Ironically, aligning around customers streamlines the organization. When we apply our Visual Workflow process approach, the potential reduction in full-time equivalent count in functions we're redesigning averages about 10 percent. That gets folks' attention. But what about all the "customer stuff"? Although that "customer stuff" will produce exponentially more returns than cost cutting, from a management perspective, it's the icing on the cake. It's not exactly the way we'd like to persuade our companies or clients to improve customer-alignment, but it's, perhaps, a practical necessity.

All this makes me think: "Too bad business executives aren't as brave as cancer patients."

If you do want to "subject" yourself to 15 minutes of real-time, customer-alignment feedback, the assessment is still up at www.h-ym.com. And it's still free.

Consultant, author and educator Dick Lee, a pioneer in the development of office/service process design, is founder and principal of St. Paul, Minnesota-based High-Yield Methods. Dick is the original developer of the Visual Workflow office process methodology. In addition to designing front and back office process, HYM helps clients align process with customer-focused strategies and technology with process. For free downloads about HYM's process design and CRM implementation approaches, visit www.h-ym.com.