What do our customers value?On the answer to that question hangs where you need to focus your improvement efforts.
If you continually try to refine aspects of your business that are of no interest to your customer then you may be throwing money away unnecessarily.
For example, in your written communications with your customers you may spend a lot of time and effort in choosing just the right word, in ensuring that the writing is polished and professional. Yet your customer may barely notice it. If the customers you deal with have issues with literacy or with the language (such as English) of your communications then you may need to simplify things to the most basic level, possibly using colloquialisms instead of jargon, instead of trying to make it sound like something they might read in a magazine. Even if it contains some spelling errors this could work in your favor since at least it wouldn't appear to be some standard response that is sent to all your customers.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't have a professional image. But you should focus your efforts in ways that give greater weight to substance than image.
I remember dealing with an employment service once who were very professional in their appearance and in their customer liaison, but were completely useless in almost all other respects. They were continually late with their billing, it was wrong more often than not and they stuffed around the people that they had contracted with us. A year after we ceased dealing with them we were still getting correspondence from them about their billing which they had still not straightened out. They had a veneer of professionalism but nothing beneath to back it up and needless to say they were incredibly frustrating to deal with.
Customers will forgive a bit of roughness around the edges if you deliver on the things they really value. What they won't forgive is failure to deliver, regardless of how polished and professional your image.
The message here is to put your resources where they matter and that means actually taking the time to understand things from your customers perspective. Otherwise, while you are patting yourself on the back about the quality of your communication, your customers may be seething about the poor quality of your service.
