Advance your career via customer delight

Posted by Sarah Hobbs

In a support function, doing a really good job for your business customer is a really good way to get noticed and advance your career. How do top professionals build a great reputation with the business?

Let the business get to know you. You don’t need us to tell you that when you are in a function supporting a business area, you need to get to know it: its structure, products, key people etc. But you might have missed the key point that you need to let them get to know you too; how you like to work, what you are passionate about, what you are driving to deliver, and how you will contribute. Great professionals work to ensure their business customers know them on a personal level as well as a task level. To build your reputation you need to become more than just “the HR person” or “the Finance person”. Take time to meet people, and importantly to get round the business, visit offices, increasing your visibility. It will pay huge dividends.
Understand their business drivers. It’s critical to understand what drives success of the business area you support – it will influence your work priorities, and help you understand the decisions people make. Are the core drivers financial? How do they make or lose money? If it’s not money, what is it that builds their reputation with the Board? It’s easy to get frustrated with the people you’re supporting, but understanding their decisions will help you stay more in tune with the business and correctly filter your own decisions.
Measure your contribution. As a support person it’s harder for you to influence top-line growth, so how can you show you’re impacting the bottom line? The people you support will often have very little idea about what you do day-to-day and being really clear about what you’re doing and the impact your contribution has helps them understand what you’re trying to achieve.
Share successes. Are you actually collecting great data on your impact and that of your department – but only sharing it upwards, rather than sharing it with your business customers? Can you remember the last time you were seen to add value and people publically recognised that value? Find ways to articulate to people what it is you’ve achieved and the impact it has on the business.
Don’t fight the jargon. A lot of people laugh about jargon or push against it – don’t. Often jargon is a part of the culture and creates a sense of belonging and identity. It’s a very quick way to become ‘one of us’. Don’t use your words, use their words, talk about joint efforts using ‘we’. You’ll be more readily accepted as part of their culture.
Remember to challenge. You want to delight your customers/colleagues, but sometimes you have to do that by telling them what they don’t want to hear. At the end of the day, don’t forget you’re working in partnership – they won’t thank you for not challenging them when they need to be challenged.
Educating customers – one of my managers, via Michael Caine in the Italian Job, gave me one of the best pieces of advice I’ve had in how to support a business area. When it comes to customer service, he told me, “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” What he meant was that I was doing everything for the business area – going above and beyond – packing in the explosive and blowing up the whole van. But in the process I was encouraging my colleagues in the business area to be helpless. I needed to think about how to skill up the business area – educating them to feel confident to take action themselves. Business customers shouldn’t rely completely on support functions. Instead, your role is to balance support and education so that they learn and grow. Are there times when you are doing things your business customers should be doing themselves? How could you hand over the knowledge and skill that helps them take great action?

The Takeaway
Which of the 7 tips would make most impact on building your reputation with your business customers? What opportunities are there this week for you to up your game?