o2businesscoach

Ken Demma

Taking a Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Data & Analytics Officer focus to driving strategy, Customer and business outcomes

“You Gotta Serve Somebody…” the Bob Dylan song from the Slow Train Comin’ album in 1979, has been playing in my head a lot lately, inspired by having sat through Dan Albaum’s servant leadership presentation, (If you don’t know Dan — author, podcaster and consultant — you should check him out), and a recent discussion with Jesse Hopps on being of service to other businesses regardless of expected outcome. (If you don’t know Jesse, you should check him out too…entrepreneur, charismatic leader, business-builder).

The reason that Dan’s and Jesse’s messages resonated with me is they speak directly to my belief that the central reason for a business is to serve Customers. Plain and simple. As I recently shared in a talk on loyalty, earning loyalty is more than good business (which it is!) but more importantly it fulfills the mission of serving Customers to the point that they seek-out your business to continue meeting their needs.

To be sure, businesses, especially running a business or its operations, can be very complex—often large groups of employees in myriad locations, deep product lists, channels to market, numerous Customer segments, data, processes, policies and on and on. Adding in KPIs, metrics, ratios and percentages are all useful and necessary in monitoring and directing the operation as are any number of guardrails, regulations and activities. There’s a reason businesses have many experts, MBAs, engineers manuals and guides.

That said, the mission remains simple – to serve Customers, with all the operations in service of that mission.

A leader must keep 2 essential points in mind, especially as they embark on important decisions:
1) being in service of the customer, and/or
2) being in service of the people who serve Customers. This is supported by a body of research on the connection between employee experience which many businesses are beginning to understand and address.

As Bob says, “You gotta serve somebody” … might as well be Customers and those who serve Customers…

White Paper:

Customer Growth & Retention – The Key to Sustainable Revenue