“Solve It” For Your Customers

Asking the Solve It question–what else can I do to solve my customers’ problems?– is more crucial today than ever before. Every business enterprise takes pride in solving its customers’ problems, but such confidence often leads to an “all is well” or “we’re good at what we do” attitude that can distance an organization from its customers, dissuade employees from “looking beyond their immediate successes,” and lull executives into defending “tried and true” processes. Making matters worse, the world is always changing, often more rapidly than before, making it impossible to rest on current competitive advantages or strategic positions.

FedEx not only thrives on the challenge of solving customer problems, but it also believes that profit is a by-product of solving customer problems. To solve its customers’ problems, FedEx has introduced a variety of new services over the years, including special home deliver services, ground transportation services, high volume business to consumer services, urgent freight services, Kinko’s office and print services, customs brokerage services, trade advisory services, supply chain management services, and cloud print services, all representing new solutions to new customer problems. FedEx Chairman and CEO Fred Smith describes their “Solve It” philosophy this way:

The simple truth of today’s consumer is that they expect more, they expect different, and they have more options for getting those expectations met … no matter how good you are you’ve always got to get better … satisfying your customer is a never-ending process … the sooner you accept that premise, the sooner you’ll begin raising the satisfaction quotient for your customer.

Solve your customers’ problems and the profits will follow.  If you are already solving your customers’ current problems, then focus on solving their future problems, the ones they don’t even realize are coming. There will always be new problems and new solutions; if you don’t discover them, someone else will and when they do they’ll take your customers away, so See It, Own It, Solve It, Do It.

To learn more about how a Culture Of Accountability can help your organization solve customer problems better, faster, and cheaper than your competitors, join our Accountability Community at www.partnersinleadership.com, where you can review actual client case studies.

Solve It, See It, Own It, Solve It, Do It, Culture Of Accountability; and Accountability Community are all registered trademarks of Partners In Leadership, Inc.