The path that carried BullsEye Telecom Inc. to its 10-year milestone this year has been full of dips, twists and turns. But Bill Oberlin, the company’s founder, chairman and CEO, relies on his customers like a compass, using their feedback to reveal new directions for the telecommunications solutions provider.
“If you ask people around here what’s the real constant, they would probably say change,” Oberlin says. “We have to adapt [to make] the customers happy.”
When Oberlin monitors how his 140 employees interact with customers, he tackles two tasks at once. He listens to the customers to gauge their satisfaction and to the employees to measure the service they provide. Then he tries to bridge the gap.
“Ensure your customers are satisfied,” he says. “Do everything you can to make them satisfied, because it costs too much to replace them.”
Oberlin’s approach has kept the company nimble and led it to 2008 revenue of about $65 million.
Smart Business spoke with Oberlin about staying in touch with your customers through your employees.
Monitor customer service. The major thing that any company should be watching is their own customers and the degree of customer satisfaction that they have. You have to listen every day to your customers.
Our executive staff — including me and directors, plus the people who are managing these accounts — all monitor calls. Every month, we have a different person we monitor. What we’re looking for there is what is it that we’re doing to satisfy customers and what could we do to impact it?
Not only do we pick up teeny little issues that we ought to have some training done on — how to present a new feature or something like that — but we pick up what customers are saying they need. Instead of getting it washed down by staff as it bubbles through the organization, it’s much better for us to get closer to the customer.
Are we formal enough with them, even though they may know their first name and be close to them [or] may have handled them for five years? [Do we] still treat them with respect? They’re our customers. Make sure that we thank them for their business. Make sure we tell them what we’re going to do, how we’re going to do it.
My big thing is if you tell a customer you’re going to do something, do it. If you can’t do it for some reason, at least you should tell the customer. Tell them that you haven’t forgotten about them, that you’re following up. The worst thing for a customer is to expect something to be done and then they don’t hear anything. It does two things: No. 1, they think you’re not doing anything. And No. 2, it causes another call, and then you’re right back to where you started. I call it closing the loop. Make sure that we do what we say we’re going to do, and we do it on time.
