Posts tagged “Customer

The Best At…

Posted on December 23, 2016

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“We want to be the best store in the world, the best shop in the world. Now what does that mean? That means a lot of things to a lot of people. When we benchmark other companies, we don’t really look at any retail or fashion companies. We look at food, and we look at hospitality. So hotels and food. Because those are the people that are closest to the customer. And it is super intimate. That’s what we want. We want that kind of relationship with our customer, so they feel completely taken care of.” –Sid Mashburn *

A Customer Perspective

Posted on August 2, 2013

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Far too many discussions in large organizations occur with no mention of the customer. Many meetings I attend focus on the organization itself, and participants usually look through the lens of their business area (e.g., product line, function, geography, etc.) rather than considering a decision from a customer’s perspective. It seems that as a business grows, the focus becomes more about sustaining – and sometimes improving – the internal infrastructure of the organization. Or in some cases, the focus is pleasing a customer proxy. Customer benefits become only tangentially related to daily activities. A slight exception in my experience occurs when office locations are physically connected to tangible places of business (e.g., production plants, distribution centers, sales locations, etc.). Seeing products moving through a warehouse,…