Long-term deals

Bring customers to you
If Lipps was the only one concerned about building customer relationships, Omnicell wouldn’t have grown like it has. Instead, he works to ensure employees are adopting his approach, as well.
“If you’re going to be customer-centric, it starts at the top,” Lipps says. “It’s a constant communication. It’s just not every now and then or in the users’ group.”
So, like most companies, Lipps has meetings, but his are a little different.
“Every company has employee meetings, right?” he says. “But we make sure that there is a customer at about every employee meeting we have. We have the customer say what they like about us, what they don’t like about us or maybe what they’re struggling with — maybe not necessarily in our area, but just what’s on their mind.”
Involving customers in your meetings and letting them talk showcases their importance to your employees.
“What’s really amazing is that when a customer speaks, and we have the whole company on the line, and the customer is talking about their day or the systems or the good job someone did or the improvements they want to see in the systems, the whole room is just quiet,” he says. “You could drop a pin because it’s like a hallowed moment — a customer is speaking and deserves the ultimate respect, and they’re speaking truth. There’s no interpretation used by marketing or someone on the front line to tell you what they’re saying. They’re saying real stuff.”
He also has a policy that when he’s in town, he has customers come on-site to do training for Omnicell’s next product releases. He’ll go and speak for about 10 to 15 minutes at each customer training session.
“Our customers took the time to fly here and some may have been our customers for a while and what a great opportunity to connect with them,” he says.
Between all of these efforts, Lipps says one-third of his job is to spend time with customers, and he gladly does it because it builds the relationships necessary to propel Omnicell into the future.
“I’ve been here for the last 18 years, and I’m going to be here another 18 years, and I want to make sure that the things we’re doing today are not just going to help us win a contract in the next 30 days but are going to be the things that will help us and our customers be successful over the next 18 years, as well.”
How to reach: Omnicell Inc., (800) 850-6664 or www.omnicell.com