Best Practice #2: LURN your Customers' expectations

LURN stands for "Listen, Understand, Respond and Nurture".

Of course, the context is once again the Customer (current and future), as well as the marketplace in general. LURN is a continuous system of methods and actions to be your eyes and ears for your Customers.

LISTEN means to listen to your Customers and hear what they really expect from your products/services. Simply ask them and listen to what they tell you. There are several powerful best practice techniques to help acquire such qualitative feedback, including QFD and Kano Analysis.

Once you know what your Customers want/need you should UNDERSTAND how satisfied they are in meeting those expectations. Satisfaction surveys, interviews, QFD, Customer Segmentation are among the common best practice techniques to gain this feedback.

If there are any gaps between what your Customers expects and their level of satisfaction you need to RESPOND by closing those gaps. Best practice techniques such as Customer-impacting metrics, full-stream process management, issue management, quality improvement methods (e.g., Six Sigma, Lean) could be employed to help close those gaps.

Of course, you should constantly be doing whatever you can to NURTURE the relationship you have with your Customers to continue to earn their trust. There are several best practices techniques and actions to put into place to help. Some are common, such as Customer Service, Executive Sponsor Programs, Account Management and Service Level Agreements. Others, though, are extraordinary such as Customer Radar Screens and Systematic Innovation.