In the book “Management” by Richard L. Daft, the term “customer” is defined as people and organizations in the environment who acquire goods or services from the organization. It’s common knowledge that happy customers are important to make a business sustainable and successful. If there are no customers, there is no profit. Without the customers, there is no life.
In an episode of Breaktime Breakthrough on Plus Network, Training and Management Consultant Mondo Castro emphasized that customers are not just essential, but they should be prioritized. Presently, most businesses focus on trends and tend to forget aligning to their customers’ needs and expectations. Businesses have to know what their customers are looking for and that must be their goal. When a company stops focusing on its customers’ needs and expectations, it will lose its customers.
Needs are things, tangible and intangible, that customers can’t do without. A need can be food from a restaurant, a novel from a bookstore, or a pair of trainers from a sports depot. Meanwhile, expectations are how one would want his or her needs to be served – the quality of service, timeliness, how hot the dish is expected to be, the format of the novel (paperback, hard-bound, or e-book) or how durable and comfortable the trainers are.
Who are the customers?
We often think that customers are people who are not part of the company. Since we have already established that customers have needs and expectations and that everyone is considered a customer, we can agree that we have both “internal” and “external” customers.
Internal customers are the officemates, maintenance folks, desk officers, drivers, and staff. External customers are clients, suppliers, outsourced conglomerates, extended family members, and close friends. Look around us! Anyone can be our customer – the person sitting beside us during our train ride. Hence, respond and smile! Every person that we see, encounter, and we occupy space with is our customer. We should have the inherent desire to engage with them to better understand who they are and what they need.
Customer service is one of the most undervalued assets in business. With all of these in mind, we can prove its worth and make it a priority! For more stories about professionals, visit PLUS Network on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
