Episode #198: RECOGNIZING THE “CUSTOMER” IN EVERYONE

Imagine perceiving that all of our daily work activities serve a customer! Well, in reality they do! Whether it’s an invoice paying patron, an associate, a teammate, vendor, supplier, direct report, or even a boss, we have an opportunity to demonstrate good business stewardship. Set aside five
minutes for this contemplative message. Imagine adopting a simple mindset that can leave a trail of smiling fans along the road to a rewarding, fruitful and productive career? Enjoy!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Simple Biz 360 podcast. My name's Jeff Mason, I'm your host for this next five minutes. We're in the middle of our T-shirt and cap series. We're trying to dress down, have some fun in summer, taking things a little , uh, you know, less seriously than we have in some episodes. Have some fun, right ? We're in this three business tips in five minutes , um, type of a , of a , uh, podcast series, and we are now found on Rumble tv. So we're , uh, YouTube, I G T v Gab TV Rumble 28 listening platforms. And today we're gonna be talking about seeing the customer in everyone, right? So what do we really mean by that? Well , we feel dip back into the eighties, there was this kind of mindset and business that, you know, everyone serviced, right? So that everyone in the company serviced people. Well, this is a mindset that I'm just kind of bringing up, that, that, that basically says, Hey, listen, everyone is deserving a good experience and everyone has customers in the organization, whether you're, you know, in the distribution center, whether you're sweeping the floors or whether you're in the C-suite, you've got customers. And we can look at some of the customer types , uh, in a minute, but, you know, we wanna make sure that we see everyone as a customer. This has to come from the C-suite down. So our CEOs , CFOs, COOs, CIOs, CBOs, they all have to have this mindset and, and have it trickle on down through the organization so that they demonstrate, and these, and these, these, you know, actions have to align with the words on a page. They can't just be words on a page and some corporate culture, you know, notebook, chapter seven in your three ring binder, it's really gotta be lived out. And, and what does it really mean to see the customer and everyone? Well, let's take a look. What could the customer types be? Well, certainly teammates, right? So you're a team, you're on a team of four people, and you're one of those four people. Those three teammates are your customers, and they deserve to have good business experiences, just like an invoice paying customer. So, you know, we wanna take, we want the mindset to envelop that, that teammate part of the business equation, vendors, superiors, right? You're , you've got direct reports that report to you. Same thing. You want them to have a good experience, you'll get more out of them if you provide one. And of course, that invoice paying customer, right? So everyone deserves operators to be in this three y challenge zone. What's the three y challenge? Remember, we've, we've talked about it before. We've had it up. It's saying yes to responding to every inquiry, saying yes to follow up , saying yes to follow through . It's that jersey thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That triple, yeah. Right? You're saying yes to respond to all inquiries, follow up and follow through . Everyone deserves that. Your three teammates on the team deserve that from you, right? Everyone deserves a a little respect for their time. Time is money. Everyone's time's important. So when you interact with, you know, your different sorts of customer types, how are you interacting in ways that respect their time? Because you're really showing them that you're respecting their pocketbook by respecting their time. Everyone , uh, needs to absorb the appropriate weight bearing loads. We've talked about weight bearing loads, tons of times here. It's those things that, hey, I can ask you to do it to make life easier for me, but is that really fair to ask you to do it? Or should I absorb that workload and in turn clear your schedule up, give you a little free time and , uh, you know, you don't have to be saddled with this mundane task. Let me worry about that. Certainly an important thing to look at when we're talking about customers and, you know, companies. Are we companies transferring these weight bearing loads to our customers because we wanna make it easier for us? Like that , that that customer dealership application, is that really something you wanna force them to do online because it's easier for us to do? Or do you wanna give a p d F to your salespeople and say, Hey, why don't you pre-fill these out with all the variables, the address and the fax number and the email, you know, address and all this, and do it for the customer and, and, you know, do half the work for 'em so they only have half the work to do. That's a wait bearing load. So are you making it easier for you or them? Right? Everyone deserves a little courtesy communication. What's that all about? Let's take a look at teammates, your three teammates, you know, they're wondering things and what are you gonna do? Not tell 'em anything and force them to ask you for updates on things. No. You sit there and you go, you know what? My teammates probably are wondering about these three things I'm responsible for. Let me just type out some courtesy communication. They didn't ask for it, but they're gonna get it. I'm gonna give them an update on these three things. They didn't ask for it. It's my way of showing them respect. I'm gonna be courteous in this communication. Everyone deserves that. And everyone deserves a mindset where we aim to create a good experience. All the customer types, they deserve it. So why don't we try to do it? So we're gonna do a lost in the shuffle tune today, man, I haven't touched on this guy yet. I think we may be doing a double shot. This is Steve Miller Band living in the u s A from 1968. And , uh, we're doing u s A today. You can see we're in that zone today, so enjoy this tune. You'll see it up in the upper right hand corner of the screen when you're looking at it on the visual experience. It's called the Lost in the Shuffle track. Click on it, it'll take you to YouTube. Steve Miller? Yes. Living in the U ss a folks, thank you. We will see you in 168 hours.