Opening dialogue

Meeting with customers is frankly a higher priority than anything waiting for Tony DiBenedetto at the office.

“If I can focus on the customer,” DiBenedetto says, “not only have I done a good job listening and bringing that information back to our team and setting the strategy, but I also set an example for everybody else that we should be focused on the customer.”

Understanding customers’ needs is the priority that has helped Tribridge grow, reaching $65 million in revenue in 2009.

Really, the key comes down to thinking like your customer, says DiBenedetto, chairman and CEO of the IT services firm. But it’s not as simple as asking questions once.

To stay engaged with customers Tribridge uses multiple techniques, including training employees to ask effective questions and using a customer council to get a cross section of clients talking about their needs. DiBenedetto spends months on the road meeting clients. And the company uses surveys, which indicate Tribridge has a 98 percent client-retention rate.

Smart Business spoke with DiBenedetto about how to understand your customers.

Try on your customers’ shoes. The key, frankly, is to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. When I think about what a customer is going through, I think about what I would be going through in their shoes.

In other words, I run a company, and we have IT needs, and we have business process needs, and we have strategy needs, so anytime I’m talking to a customer, I put myself in their shoes like I run their business.

When I do that, it makes me just listen differently, ask questions differently. It becomes a ‘we’ thing versus a ‘them’ thing. I really try to put myself in their shoes and ask the questions like, ‘Hey, how are we going to fix that issue?’ or, ‘How are we going to fix that problem?’

When you start getting customers to talk, then you’re really learning because they ultimately have been spending all of their time trying to figure out solutions to problems and your job is to help them solve that problem.

So, if you can listen really well and kind of separate the noise of the problem from the real root cause, and then really figure out what the business benefits would be to solving those problems, then you’re in the head of the customer.

The cornerstone is the listening and the attitude that you’re in their shoes, whether you’re an owner or an executive in their company.