Setting a sincerity test on service issues

We are now regularly treated to the sight of international business leaders being grilled after corporate scandals, and not being taken seriously; even being accused of being on another planet.

It's a fate most CEOs would prefer to avoid. Thankfully, the avoidance strategy is not too complicated.

The founder of The Leadership LaunchPad service excellence consultancy believes the damage to reputations and company capitalisation can be enormous if companies fail to stay rooted in reality - which means the real needs of their customers.

Administer a reality-check

One type of remedial action is for CEOs to administer their own reality-check.

CEOs simply need to ask themselves some serious questions before indignant third-parties do so under the glare of publicity. A sincerity test on service issues is a good way to start.

CEOs should ask themselves 10 simple questions:

1. If we went out of business tomorrow, who would miss us?

2. How often do I ask my customers and people for ideas for making it easier to do business with our company?

3. How many hours a week do I spend with customers; visiting them, talking to them, listening to how they feel about doing business with us?

4. How many times are customers on the agenda of the meetings I chair - how many times do they top the list?

5. How many times do I handle customer complaints or compliments? Do I even see any?

6. How often do I talk to staff about customers?

7. How many letters to customers did I personally sign last year?

8. How often do I personally thank delighted customers and how often do I phone or visit disappointed or dissatisfied customers?

9. How many customers or staff know my phone number?

10. How often do I try to 'do business' with my own company by phoning a switchboard or call centre or making an anonymous visit to a shop, warehouse or factory floor?
    

CEOs do a big job. It's easy to be sidetracked and get swamped in technical or strategic matters, but customers are the core of every business.

Give yourself a self-assessment test like this and you will stay focused on the real world and the real needs of customers.

It will ensure that you don't take the wrong strategic route and end up in that parallel universe one very prominent British business leader was recently accused of living in.