Do CEOs experience a true feel of their service?
I have always wondered if Jeff Bezos shops at Amazon. He is not only the CEO at Amazon but also the founder. Bezos is ranked the best performing CEO in the world according to Harvard Business Review and Amazon is rated as the leader in customer experience shopping at Amazon.com the same as mine or does he get preferential treatment because he is well known ?
Given that Amazon is an online store I doubt that. Has Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore ever tried using M-pesa services at a neighborhood kiosk or called 100 for assistance ? Does Dr. Julius Kipng’etich go shopping at Uchumi Ngong’ road ?
Does Richard Alden use Zuku services at his home ? Does the Nairobi Hospital CEO uses the hospital outpatient services? Does Mr. Oigara Joshua use the KCB mtaani agent services?
If they do or they did what would be there experience be? Would there experience surprise them or would it be as there expectation?
How does Dr. Ben Chumo for instance react when the power goes off unexpectedly? Does he call the Kenya Power care center? The interesting thing about using the services of the companies where we work, is that we DO NOT really get to experience what a regular customer would. In most cases, the CEO gets preferential treatment because he is well known. For instance in KQ , the staffs in ground services and inflight seemed always aware when the CEO was travelling. The staff would never be caught off guard. Do CEOs need not have a true feel of what a regular customer goes through?
As a CEO, having a true feel of your services does not mean using your services or going undercover like home depot CEO did. Smart CEOs need to be deeply involved in the customers’ experience by getting regular feedback. They need to know what the majority of customers are happy about and what makes them unhappy. They need to know if their overall customer experience is Improving or deteriorating. The worst that a CEO can do is to wait for a crisis for them to get involved with the customer side of business. The best time to get involved is at the start of their career with a new organisation. Better still, if one is the the founder, getting involved with the customers has to start at the onset. I believe this is exactly what happened at Amazon. At the onset, Bezos was keen on a building a brand that customers would trust.
Two years after inception, Barnes and Noble then a fully brick-and-mortal bookstore sued Amazon alleging that its claim to be “the world’s largest bookstore” was false. Today, the company is the world largest retailer by market capitalisation and its focus on the customer is un matched. It is argued that the business of business is the customer, therefore, if the CEO does not have a true feel of what the customers are experiencing then, there is a gap. Customer service will remain the lifeblood of smart companies. We are living in the age of the customer and only the CEOs who have a true feel of their customer service will live on.