Part 4 Customer Focus - 4.1 Seek to Understand

Part 4 Customer Focus

4.1 Seek to Understand

64. What Do Customers Really Want?

The easiest way to answer this question is to say ‘It depends’ and leave it there. When I tried a search on Google for this question with in double quotes, I got more than seventy thousand results!  It is because this question is a fundamental but complex question.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and answer this question. Alternatively, try to articulate your needs as a customer who purchased a software package or a smart phone.  You will come up with a list of common things that every customer wants and I am sure it will include caring attitude, focus on quality, inclusion, willingness to seek help, simplicity, ease, flexibility, personal connection, new perspectives and ideas, collaboration, result orientation, listening and understanding, apt solutions, knowledge sharing, value for money, efficiency, and so on.

Once I attended a seminar on customer orientation. It was a daylong session with talks, workshops and demonstration.  In one of the talks, a slide titled ‘What Do Customers Really Want?’ popped up! 

And it read,

• Show me that you care
• Appreciate and value my business
• Treat me as an individual, not a member
• Demonstrate that you know me
• Anticipate my needs

What an impressive list!

I opened up this question over lunch with my friends. One of them said, ‘Let me tell you, customers want the Moon! Can you bring Moon to the customer?’

Of course, we cannot.  Nobody can do that.  Moreover, no customer wants Moon. I am sure we agree. That customer wants Moon is nothing but an exaggeration or exasperation resulting from tough experiences.

There are tough customers. Who makes them tough?

Do everything you can to understand your customer and if you find a mismatch, there is someone else competing to win your customer!

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65. Getting it Right

Everyone in my team, including me was very tired and worn out after a project that resulted in significant overruns. Our customer was upset and so was our senior leadership.  We had several reasons such as incorrect estimates, schedule pressure, incomplete requirements, unstable environment and the likes.  We reflected on the happenings. One thing was clear.  That is, we were not getting it right.

We organized a team activity to identify two things - things that upset our customer, things that our customer like.  We chose a member of our team to facilitate this activity.  One by one, our team members started sharing their thoughts. These two lists started expanding. When everyone was done, our list looked like this.

Things that UPSET the customer:

• Partial or incomplete bug fix that would open other bugs
• Adding new files in wrong path in the source code tree
• Assumptions and/or incomplete understanding of the functionality
• Repeating same mistakes pointed out by customer
• Defect fix that is not comprehensive
• Communication that could lead to more than one interpretation
• Passing on additional work to onsite or to the customer
• Inconsistent format of reporting
• Taking deviation from design without getting an approval
• Not checking in all the related files into source code tree for a feature or defect fix
• Lack of documentation
• Violation of coding standards
• Not asking questions in spite of functionality not being clear
• Removing commented code or comments
• Partial build
• Code that is not optimized
• Design doc that is not comprehensive
• Frequent changes due to lack of understanding of requirement
• Delivery of code without adequate instructions for deployment
• Deliveries not being deployable due to lack of support or detailed instructions
• Not using checklists and/or using old checklists that are not up-to-date
• Check-ins without proper check-in comments
• Bug fixes without proper comments in the code
• Using “get latest” for file modifications
• Check-ins that result in inconsistencies or overwrites
• Not compiling and building the code before handover
• Skipping modifications to configuration files in configuration repository
• Code that does not adhere to architecture and/or design
• Incomplete response or no response to emails
• Lack of follow-up, action planning and tracking after conference calls or meetings
• Not communicating project delays with adequate reasons early in the game

Things that customers LIKE:

• In-depth study and knowledge of customer’s business, project requirements and technical architecture
• Timely support in crisis
• Commitment and sincerity
• Adequate documentation
• Intelligent queries
• Suggesting better work-around / alternatives
• Time management practices that lead to efficiency
• Quick response time
• Code with no P0, P1, P2 defects
• Openness to analyze and discuss changes - Flexibility to accommodate changes
• Assertiveness with business and technical capability in controlling changes
• Understanding customer’s priorities / focus in executing tasks
• Optimizing the performance of applications
• Thinking at higher level and having the big picture in mind while implementing a feature or fixing a defect
• Detecting and fixing errors in early stages
• Suggesting new processes / protocols that could save customer’s time and money
• Communicating what works and what does not work with our any delays
• Good status reporting mechanism that provides a high level of visibility

With these two lists, we identified five key things to make it right.

• POSITIVE ATTITUDE IN WORKING AS A TEAM TO SATISFY CUSTOMER
• BE GENUINE AND TRANSPARENT (COMMUNICATE WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOES N’T WORK)
• PROCESS ORIENTATION (Query Resolution, Reviews, Testing, Configuration Control, Build, Deploy, Deliver)
• EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION (Organizing and conducting effective meetings, communicating with the customer through emails / phone)
• DEEP UNDERSTANDING OF CUSTOMER’S BUSINESS, PROJECT REQUIREMENTS AND ARCHITECTURE

This team was very collaborative and helped us align.  We got it right and turned around the situation in the next project.

Try this approach!

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66. The Deliverable

We were in our project kick-off meeting.  Our project manager was presenting an overview of the project.   One of the slides listed a set of deliverables. “What are our deliverables? I have listed some of them.  There can be more. Let us identify them.  We need to document what we are going to deliver in our plan”, said our project manager.

We identified all deliverables.  We identified all intermediate deliverables too – some of us used the team non-deliverable deliverable to mean something that is not a deliverable to our customer.  Yes. There are deliverables and there are intermediate deliverables.  Intermediate deliverables are important but their life spans are short.

Two months after our kick-off meeting, we were preparing for the first release. According to our plan, our deliverables were the candidate build and release notes.  Our build engineer tested the candidate build in our local environment, created a release note and sent an email to the product manager of our customer.  His email carried the release note and all details to download the source code from our code base.

We were happy until the product manager of our customer came back to us with several questions. His questions revealed that our build did not deploy in the first attempt and there were several issues. He tried but it did not work. He was upset. He was firm.

Two of our team members helped us in that situation. They worked with our customer in making things right. Finally, the next day what we delivered worked.

You can connect with this story. This happens when we buy gadgets. This happens when we purchase software. This happens because sometimes we go with an assumption that a deliverable is a thing that is delivered. It is not.  We must think deep. We must ask several questions such as,

• What are deliverables?
• Why? What is the purpose or meaning?
• Who are our consumers?
• What is the life span of each deliverable?
•  How do we know whether a deliverable is complete and ready to go?
• What do we need to do to validate if a deliverable is ready to go?
• How are we going to deliver it?
• When is it considered delivered?
• Who is paying for it?
• Is it transactional or does it need deep collaboration?
• How about non-deliverable deliverables?
• Can the receiver maintain the deliverable? Will she need support?
• What are our quality standards?
• What are the preparatory steps do you consider to create and deliver what you deliver?
• What follow-up measures do you consider after delivering the deliverable?

A deliverable need not be something you can deliver over email or courier.  Sometimes you need to connect with the consumer to deliver it.

Once I was very close to selling a consulting assignment in which I was going to be the consultant. I prepared a proposal and a statement of work.  My customer wanted me to include a section in the statement of work to list all the deliverables.  What can be the deliverables in a consulting assignment? Think!   You go to your family doctor for consultation. What deliverables do you expect?  Definitely an assessment report with observations and recommendations. What else?

Sometimes there are no deliverables. That is when you need to realize that the deliverable is within you! A good example is meeting a prospect.  Unless you do it right with the conviction that the deliverable is within you, any marketing collateral you deliver would become eventually ineffective.

Are you ready to identify and deliver?

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67. A Baker Who Does Not Taste the Cake

Baking is a step-by-step process.

The end goal is to deliver a tasty cake to customer, on time within budget.  Quality is paramount to customer satisfaction!

If you do it right, the result will be delicious!

Cakes come in different forms. They are special. Sometimes they carry a theme.

Backing is a step-by-step process.  Will you prefer a baker who does not taste the cake?

You are the baker when it comes to creating high quality software.

Start and understand requirements.

Pay attention! Design and develop each component carefully!

Know what to integrate first! Integration requires systematic planning.

Integrate the sub-systems carefully. Remember, reuse improves productivity.

Prepare each layer of your architecture. Make use of utilities. Test as it evolves.

Integrate all parts.  And envision customer experience.

Do we do this always? Sometimes we forget to taste the cake before delivering!

You are the creator. How do you consume a monthly status report or dashboard? It is your product.

Do you devour it, ask right questions and improve it?

You create an architecture vision document or a case study.  Do you check if it fits customer context?

You create source code. Do you smell it and refactor it enough?

You write build and deployment scripts. Do you make sure that your scripts are error free?

Do you taste the quality of your test framework, test scripts and test data to ensure that they can help you assure quality?

Think! This is not about reviews or testing!

It is about our attitude to take ownership of what we produce and cultivate the habit of ensuring the right deliverables!

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68. Customer Value and Value Creation

Let us imagine for a second! Your project team starts a customer value-add initiative. It takes about a year or two to complete. Your customer is happy!  And you are happy too!  Given a chance, all of us would love to be in this situation.  Don’t we?  

An initiative is meaningful and can create a win-win proposition only when we deliver all the basic services well in the first place - i.e., there are no gaps in delivering base value or you delivered what you are committed to deliver!    This is mandatory to satisfy our customers. With satisfied customers, you initiate value-add initiatives. You formulate a strategic intent and vision.  You identify initiatives that align with the needs and goals of the customer. You ensure that proper governance and feedback mechanism are in place.  You demonstrate results. Your stakeholders are aware of this. They talk about this. They celebrate our accomplishment. This results in business expansion or new business or service offerings.   At least one or two of these initiatives create a high impact and etches your brand in customer’s mind. That is a win-win situation.  Your customer wins and you win too.

You can’t deliver lip service. You have to deliver results. You can’t romanticize value-add and keep the good news to us. You have to fine tune your approach, optimize the results and communicate your accomplishment to all internal stakeholders. You have to choose the right forum to demonstrate your accomplishment to customer. You have to push it some more notches further so that it creates a win-win proposition so that you can choose to work on a new initiative. 

When we do all these, what is the guarantee that our value-add initiatives - at least one of them, is going to result in a new business or new service offering in spite of creating a high impact? There is no guarantee.   The longer you take to find a win-win proposition the worse it gets!   This is when it can turn into a ‘win-lose’ proposition.   You make your customer win but eventually you lose!   If you take some corrective actions, you may find ways to turn this into a ‘win-win’ proposition. 

Think about a situation when you win but the customer does not! This happens when your initiatives seem to provide short-term value. However, due to reasons such as expensive tools or high maintenance overheads, the long-term value to customer turns out to be negative. You win but your customer loses in a long run.   If you anticipate this situation, you have to introspect and do course-correction. This is because you cannot win when your customer loses!

Do you focus on value-add initiatives for an unhappy customer who is upset because of recurrent issues in your basic services or related aspects?    This is a turbulent environment.   Spotless basic services are the essence. Value-adds come on top of that as a décor.  In this environment, to unhappy customers, in the name of value-add initiatives, all you do is ‘decoration with no essence’.   You cannot decorate something to make an unhappy customer happy because there is no alignment on basic services and engagement governance. Every other month or quarter, you change value-add initiatives thinking that you are making course correction to satisfy your customer. Anyway, the customer is not happy.   Eventually, you lose. Ensure that you deliver all basic services and make the customer satisfied before embarking on any value additions.

What is your initiative? How can you make it a win-win initiative?

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69. Why Do Value-Add Initiatives Fail?

We understand that in organizations across the world, a good number of value-add initiatives fail every year.  By this, I do not mean to say that they fail all of a sudden. I mean to say that they weaken over a period, go nowhere and fade away. Why does this happen?

Flawless execution - Do you think flawless execution is a value-add? It depends. In most cases, it is not. Flawless execution is one of the foundations to start thinking about what else can we do to add value. Flawless execution is a critical component of operational excellence. Operational excellence can help us improve SLAs. Can we consider SLA improvement as a value-add? Ten years ago, yes, we considered that as a value-add. Now, it is subjective.

Demonstrate flawless execution. It is in the list of your customer’s standard expectations. You know what happens when there is lack of flawless execution!

Flawless execution helps you deliver what is expected.  Sometimes it is transactional. It may turn out to be mechanical as well. Why not? Even to remain a flawless order taker with highly satisfied customers, you need to demonstrate flawless execution.

With flawless execution, you can transact with your customers. Sadly, there is no guarantee that you are going to penetrate deeper to create greater impact. Isn’t it?

Process compliance - Neither process compliance nor process excellence can guarantee value-addition. Not always! Flawless execution and process compliance is a fine combination. It can be deadly too! You keep doing what you have been doing for years. You have experts in your team. All your team members are dedicated. Flawless execution and process excellence are your top traits. Does it mean that you are adding value to customer? Not necessarily!

Let us come to the main question. Why do value-add initiatives fail? Here is the answer. When we revolve around flawless execution and process compliance or excellence and do only those two repeatedly, we make our value-add initiatives fail. A tough statement to accept and digest. A bitter truth! Let us accept!

Can we do one thing to make our value-add initiative successful? Of course, yes.

What is that one thing? It is deep collaboration. Deep collaboration enhances human touch. It nurtures human relationships. It will make you go closer to your customer. With deep collaboration, eventually you need to fall in love with your customer. Let me rephrase. You need to genuinely fall in love with your customer – not to cut corners or offer discounts but to understand and offer the right things for your customer to succeed. It is not enough. You need to nurture deep collaboration with your sales team, industry groups and support functions. When all of you dream together, you will differentiate. You will become remarkable. You will add-value. And your value-add initiative will sustain and succeed.

Remember this too. Successful value-add initiatives end for a good reason. Those are the win-win value-add initiatives. You know why and how they end. They create a high-impact or result in new offerings or scale existing services. After months or years, they become the new normal. That is when you need to identify something else – I mean, yet another value-add initiative.

Go beyond flawless execution and process excellence and embrace deep-collaboration!

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3.1 Orchestrating                                  Table of Contents                                5.1 The Silver Bullet