A five-fold process to lay the foundation for customer satisfaction

Achieving customer satisfaction is the end goal of all businesses- both big and small. However, customer satisfaction doesn’t only stem from good quality products and services, it is rooted in something much deeper – core principles that dictate the way a particular product was ideated to how it was delivered. In my last blog, I spoke in great detail about inculcating a product engineering mindset as the most important ingredient to achieve delivery excellence, and subsequently customer satisfaction. In this  blog, I would like to go back a few steps and discuss the groundwork required to inculcate such a mindset.

While I was penning my thoughts down, I realized something interesting. The foundation required to achieve customer delight can be replicated in several other aspects of life. Uncanny, isn’t it? But at the end of the day, just like our lives revolve around our relationships, the most important relationship in a business is one that you have with your customers.

In our day-to-day lives, we must nurture five aspects for our personal wellbeing-mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and social. Similarly, inculcating a mindset that fuels customer satisfaction also has five key aspects. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to these critical aspects that will enhance your relationship with your customers and help you in laying the foundation for achieving customer satisfaction.

My personal five-fold mantra to professional wellbeing

Values

In order to succeed in your life,  you must adopt and nurture a good set of values, same applies to your careers as well. Values provide a solid framework for a person to function and simplify their decision-making process. A business leader must focus on laying the foundation of customer satisfaction with a good set of values. These essentially include:

• Clarity– In thought process as well as communication. Knowing the why and the how of traversing from ideation to conception to evolution of a product is key.
• Honesty– Absolute honesty every step of the way has unparalleled long-term benefits and works wonders in concretizing customer loyalty.
• Integrity– Just like in life, people respect individuals and leaders who have a high moral compass. Integrity is reflected in channelizing honest efforts to ensure that the end goal of customer satisfaction is met.
• Self-delight– Ambition allows individuals to achieve their goals rapidly. Putting in consistent efforts and persevering to ensure that the end goal is achieved is an important value in your personal as well as professional life.

Engagement

Our lives are shaped by our relationships. Smooth relationships fueled by clear and concise engagement is the secret to achieving personal and professional goals. Like I’ve mentioned before, the most important relationship that businesses have is with their customer. This relationship can be enhanced with the help of proactive communication with which understanding the customer’s needs becomes easy.

Additionally, an agile and quantified approach to integrate these needs into the value delivered is pivotal in ensuring customer satisfaction. I will soon be penning another blog on the importance of engagement- multi-level connects and the like, watch this space for more.

I would like to point out at this juncture that like every other relationship in life thrives on transparency, swift actions, and subsequent introspection, a relationship with customers also demands the same and goes a long way in solidifying trust.  

Emotions

An enhanced emotional quotient entails maintaining a healthy relationship with those around you by leveraging positive aggression. The positive aggression carries a lot of conduction effect, and it translates subconsciously to all stakeholders.

In case of customers, routine transparent communication, status updates, feedback checks etc. add value to the relationship.

Furthermore, I have learnt from my years of experience that to maintain a healthy emotional relationship, it is of utmost importance to ‘respond but not react’. This mantra is true for each and every one with whom we interact. The journey of product development is a topsy-turvy ride and not every day is similar, some days have challenges whereas some have achievements.

This mantra will mitigate conflicts and ensure a healthy customer relationship.

Empathy, understanding, mature thought process and working towards the common goal are few important contributors which improve the emotional quotient.

Focused Efforts

At this point, our foundation is about 60% built. The last few laps demand some focused efforts.

• Engineering management – as I have mentioned in my previous blog and spoken in my podcast is to be given topmost focus
• Outcome orientation – keeping the final goal in mind, having orientation to move in the path to achieve final outcome
• Value has to be delivered over the entire journey to create best in class outcomes – the values can be in failing fast, tackling complex parts first or course correction too, while engineering values need to be instilled throughout
• Learning and development – These include honing your skills with continuous learning and development and leveraging these skills for outcome-oriented actions.
• Certification – Getting certified for newer technologies, tools, processes is part of sharpening the axe – which is undoubtedly the key of growth

With these freshly polished skills, and some experience of course, you will not only be able to convince and convert customer needs into tangible value but also be able to deliver beyond customer’s imagination.

Achievement Analysis

After following principles one to four mentioned above, our last step would be to learn from our findings and analyze the areas in which there is room for improvement. Only then can we be  fully prepared to move on to developing a product engineering mindset.

Achieving continued customer satisfaction at the end of the day is a result of a compounded effect of following these principles diligently and ensuring that every member of the team follows them with you as well.

A solid foundation goes a long way in building robust relationships with customers. Trust me when I say this, with the right mindset and some smart work, you can conquer your goals.

Write to us or visit Nitor Infotech to learn about how we cater to our customers and take the next step in your journey to achieve customer satisfaction with my blog on developing a product engineering mindset.