Customer Focus
Knowledge of the values and practices that align customer needs and satisfaction as primary considerations in all business decisions and ability to leverage that information in creating customized customer solutions.
Behavior Statements
Discusses general differences between internally and externally focused organizations.
Cites the cost and benefits of good versus poor customer service.
Explains why customer satisfaction is important to successful product/service delivery.
Focuses activities on developing and maintaining positive customer relationships.
Researches and verifies customer needs and expectations.
Helps link organizational objectives to customer needs and expectations.
Communicates the importance of customer needs/expectations and commits to resolving them.
Meets regularly with customers to understand their wants, needs and expectations.
Solicits customer satisfaction feedback and acts on improvement opportunities.
Anticipates customer needs, focusing efforts to proactively meet needs and exceed customer expectations.
Facilitates creation of the 'right' products and services to resolve customer business issues.
Fosters strong customer relationships via delivery on commitments, open communication, and on-going feedback/improvement.
Communicates and models the criticality of customer focus as an organizational strategy.
Measures and observes customer satisfaction levels to ascertain and implement service improvement alternatives.
Advises others on creating customer focused environments in various scenarios.
Champions, models and directs an organization's commitment to externally focused decision-making tied to customer business needs and satisfaction.
Provides customer focused vision, strategy and leadership that exceeds customer expectations.
Develops 'best practices' to create, evaluate and enhance customer loyalty that are sought by others within and outside the organization.
Consults with senior executives regarding critical success factors and details to being a customer focused organization.
Persuasively articulates the link between customer focus and enhanced business success to stakeholders.
Teaches others to foster customer relationships based on mutual understanding, respect, trust and 'business partnering'.
Interview Questions
- Share an experience when you used reported information to assess stakeholder satisfaction. What and how did you gather the information? How did you use it to improve "service?"
- Relate specific activities and techniques you’ve used to enhance a relationship by gaining the trust and respect of key stakeholders.
- Tell us about a time you failed to meet the customer's expectations. How did you address the service failure and how did the customer respond?
- Describe a time when your customer's expectations were obviously unrealistic. How did you address this and how did your customer respond?