The Purpose of a Business Is to Create and Retain Customers and Company-Certified Employees Help
Business is tricky and always seems to get trickier. CEOs and board directors are focused on shareholder value, meaning the business’s primary goal is to create and retain profitable customers. Creating and retaining customers is predicated on consistently providing great experiences. That means creating an excellent brand, and it works best if the customer-facing employees are company-certified.
What Is a Brand?
The technological research and consulting firm Gartner explains that brand is what the customer perceives, remembers, and feels about a company’s products, services, and employees.
You can almost say that brand and customer satisfaction are interchangeable. However, the brand goes as far back in time as someone remembers, while customer satisfaction (CSAT) is usually much closer to real-time.
Since brands depend on their impression of the people representing your company, ensuring these interactions create a positive feeling makes sense.
Understand Purchasing Behavior
Consider these two definitions:
1. A Sale
A sale is the exchange of currency for goods or services. In many situations, the value of these goods and services surpasses the money spent.
For OEMs, the exchange is money for both the product and related services.
2. Customer Value
As I stated in my article “Businesses Must Innovate to Create Customer Value Post-COVID-19,” at Middlesex Consulting,
“We define customer value as the buyer’s perception of tangible (economic) and/or experiential (emotional) net improvements (benefits minus costs) to business outcomes (profit, CSAT, etc.) resulting from using or owning the supplier’s products and/or services, compared to all alternatives.”
So, a sale occurs when a prospect or customer believes they will receive positive value when they purchase from you. Since the value of products rarely varies from one industrial OEM to a competitor, the significant variables are price and the supplier-to-buyer relationship. Since no one wants to compete on price, the primary differentiator is the seller’s workers.
The best way to ensure that all your prospects’ and customers’ interactions with the people working for you are consistent is to follow this three-step process:
- Step 1. Define the behavior you want.
- Step 2. Teach the employees how you want them to behave.
- Step 3. Allow these employees to interact with customers only when you are sure they will do what you want. To show your confidence, award a professional certification when the people are ready to “go on stage.”
Being Company-Certified
A professional certification signifies that an individual is proficient in performing a specific task or job. To earn such a certification, one must complete a course and oftentimes pass an exam. Additionally, some certifications are only granted after the individual undergoes a certain amount of work in the field. While many professional certifications do not expire, some must be maintained periodically through additional coursework or testing.
When designing your certification program, you must consider which people you will train and what appropriate interactions will be had.
Example 1: Equipment Installation
Here’s an example: You decide to certify people who install your equipment and provide initial training to end users. The roster of individuals who need to be certified includes your field technicians and technicians working for your sales and service distributors and value-added resellers in all locations worldwide where you sell and install equipment.
However, things do not stop there. Your first-line support people must also be competent enough to discuss installation problems with customers. Often, salespeople discuss installation as part of their sales process or are on hand when a product they sell is installed. Therefore, the people doing hands-on installation work may be company-certified installation engineers, while the others are certified installation support associates. The associates may only need an eight-hour course, in-person or using Zoom. However, the engineers may need a four-day classroom program, hands-on training in the factory, and finally, assistance from another fully certified installation engineer in an actual customer environment.
You often want employees certified to perform maintenance tasks on customers’ equipment. If you use a third-party maintenance organization, their service technicians must also be certified.
Example 2: Sales Executive
When designing salespeople certification programs, you must consider the products and the sales process. We have already discussed the product-related side, and you have probably sent your sales professionals to a sales training course run by well-known trainers.
Completing these programs usually results in your workers becoming company-certified, but what about the individuals selling your products but not your employees? For that scenario, you might prepare a one-day in-person course to be administered the day before or after a major sales meeting or remotely if practical.
Capitalizing on the Certifications
It is best practice to list the high-level certifications on people’s business cards and LinkedIn profiles. When you issue a proposal or a service agreement, you should be clear that the workers installing and servicing customers’ new equipment will be company-certified to do the job.
All your documents and web pages should refer to certified workers using genuine spare parts. You can even say that violating these rules will void the warranty. Recently, when CIRCOR announced a renewed service partnership with AGI Industries, they used their website to provide details about their audit review and certification.
Following this basic instruction, you erect two hard-to-break barriers: certified people and genuine spare parts. Equipment buyers and owners will likely enjoy the peace of mind of knowing their equipment will have a long and useful life.
Take a Cue from Caterpillar
Cat® is one of the world’s most highly regarded industrial equipment manufacturers. While you are probably not as large as Cat, remember they were your size when they started, so think big. You can make a difference in your industry by taking advantage of their early work and doing the right things.
1. Genuine Parts
On its website, Cat sells more than 1.4 million parts. Cat also clearly advocates buying genuine parts by stating that its engineers design them to work precisely with its products. The company also offers a year-long warranty covering labor costs for those first installed by one of its dealers.
2. Career Growth with Titles
Caterpillar also uses its website to provide transparency on its workers’ career growth, giving insight into the type of training staff they have. The company indicates that someone with a formal college education or hands-on training on the job can advance in their careers. The skill set and training they receive from Cat, not where one first gained their knowledge, matters most.
3. Company-Certified Commissioning Techs
Before being allowed to work in the field, Cat’s certified commissioning technicians must undergo rigorous training from instructors and online and complete assessments. The company requires that they stay up to date through ongoing testing. The team also gathers regularly to share new insights they’ve learned.
Key Takeaway
Setting up, maintaining, `refreshing, and administering a company-certified employee program is a lot of work, but the long-term impact on your growth will be worth the effort. Your brand will benefit!
Related reading –
- Field Service Gig Workers Can Negatively Impact Customer’s Satisfaction.
- 3 Choices When a B2B Customer Needs Service
About Middlesex Consulting
Middlesex Consulting helps our B2B product manufacturing clients grow their service revenue and profitability by applying the methodologies and techniques associated with Customer Value Creation and Customer Experience professions to assist its clients in designing and commercializing new services and the associated business transformations. Contact Sam here.