All small businesses have an aspiration that their product or service should be so good that customers become raving fans. A customer who is a raving fan does not just repurchase the product, but also recommends it to others.

This is achieved by designing and providing a high-quality product backed by impeccable service. However, one thing that is not discussed is the role played by the business owner/CEO to make this happen. As a matter of fact, these individuals demonstrate a certain set of habits which play a significant role in creating this bond with customers. So what are these traits that are demonstrated by these leaders. Let us look at them.

Give top priority to customer issues
A CEO or a business-owner has many things big and small on his plate. However, when the mission of the company is to make customer’s their admirer, they make sure the customer issues and concerns get top-most priority. These leaders typically begin a day with a morning meeting with their leadership wherein the first thing they discuss are matters around customers.

During the day if there are complaints they do not wait for the next day’s morning meeting for initiating actions. Instead they immediately initiate actions to ensure the customer concerns are closed. Once a week they keep aside some time to go through the root cause analysis done by their teams. In these meetings, he is just not a mute spectator, but delves deep to understand that the teams are addressing a root cause so that the problem does not recur again.

They make regular visits to customers’ place to see how their product is performing and if there are any customer issues. Even if they are travelling outstation they are in touch with their teams to check if any customer issues have been reported. As a matter of fact these leaders create a framework within their company where any potential and actual customer issues are reported to them at the earliest. These business-owners know their success and business growth depends on the customers.

On this matter I spoke to Jacob Mathew, the CEO and Founder of Mangalam Plastics, a leading manufacturer of plastic blow moulded and injection moulded products in Jharkhand. He pursues customer issues with a maniacal zeal. He told me, “When I started my business almost two decades back I was clear that I will start small, but always follow a ‘customer-first’ philosophy. If there are customer issues which I get to know I make sure it get’s required priority above everything else.” This has clearl ..

Create a ‘measure to manage’ culture
A business-owner passionate about customers focuses on building a measure-to-manage culture. He focuses on creating a metrics-based organization where decisions and actions are driven by data.

The underlying principle driving this philosophy is what you cannot measure you cannot manage. With this objective in mind he focuses on broadly two types of metrics. One set targeted towards ascertaining economic performance. While the other set is targeted towards assessing the operational performance.

The metrics targeted towards business performance include things such profit margin, gross profit, working capital, return on total assets etc. The operational metrics include things such as machine utilization, productivity, lead time, customer order cycle time, inventory turnover etc.

What is critical here is to make sure the right set of operational metrics are installed. These metrics are externally focused, end-to-end and connect with the customer. What differentiates a customer-centric business-owner from others is that these metrics have guided and helped him to predict the business outcome. As Jacob Mathew told me, “Metrics help me to sense and respond to my business challenges”.

Act as advisors and not mere suppliers
What a forward looking business owner does very effectively is to change the relationship game. He does not behave as a supplier groveling in front of the customers. He turns the relationship on its head and behaves as an advisor who works with the customers to meet its organizational goals.

He does not act as a supplier who quietly takes orders but acts as a partner who sits with customers to understand his needs and then supplies what best meets the customer’s needs. Over a period of time he develops such a relationship with customers that he becomes the first port of call for any queries. His relationship is so robust that the customer regularly invites him to participate in product development process, strategy development and so on. These business owners also keep the customers ..

Spend a lot of time at customers’ context
A business owner passionate about customers spends a lot of time at the customer’s place. The objective of this is not just to meet relationships with influencers, but to understand how the product or service is performing at the customer’s end. What drives his actions is to learn about issues which the customer does not express but is important for the product performance. He knows that these issues can be understood by observing them using the product or service. I call it the customer immersion. His objective is to understand the behaviors, practices and motivations of users of the products or service which the customers are often not able to convey.

Never compromise on quality
A business owner who relentlessly focuses on customer’s interests makes sure that the quality of the product is never compromised. He works towards embedding a quality system that touches just not the processes within the organization but also touches its suppliers and partners in its ecosystem.

They work towards embedding quality as a larger organizational value and make sure all actions that employees take do it keeping the interest of product quality and customer in mind. Most importantly, they never make sale at the cost of quality. So if he knows that a certain batch of products does not meet the required quality standard, he will never send it to the customer even if it means missing on sales and losing the associated financial benefit.

The writer is an internationally recognized name in Lean Management & Customer-Centricity and author of eight books. He is a Fellow of American Society of Quality and recipient of 2014 Phil Crosby Medal. He is currently the managing partner at Proliferator Advisory & Consulting. To know more about him, visit: www.debashissarkar.com