The importance of SMART objectives

The SMART acronym for setting objectives is useful here. All objectives you set should be:

• Specific: “65 per cent of new customers who book a ticket for an event through the Internet booking service I manage will buy through us again within a year.”
• Measurable: “I will ensure that all buyers’ details are entered on to the database, that it is used for all calls, and that at the end of every month/quarter someone checks the percentage of new customers who have bought a second time (or more).”
• Agreed: “I will check with my manager that this 65 per cent target is relevant, reasonable and in line with the company’s overall objectives.”
• Realistic: “Although our current data is limited, anecdotally we believe that about half of our customers come back again. I have read articles in trade journals that suggest that once people become familiar with and actually complete a particular internet buying process, most are reluctant to seek out others.”
• Timed: “This target applies as from 1st September, although it will be a year before we can fully analyse whether we are achieving the target.”
  

Audit
An audit is the gathering and analysis of information about what is happening and changing in the environment. The next stage for the Slovakia jewellery business was to start finding out about and listening to customers and learning about their expectations.

This might have required specialist staff, research and forecasting techniques. You may not be in a position to get help from such specialists, but even if you receive regular and comprehensive information about the environment, the market and your customers from elsewhere in your organisation, this can still be usefully supplemented by your own input.

Any manager can make a big difference to an organisation’s customer orientation by being more inquisitive. The more you try to understand the needs and expectations of your customers, the more likely you are to satisfy them.

It is up to individual managers to take responsibility for seeking out information, and then to think about, share and learn from it as a core part of their management roles.

A telling feature of customer-oriented organisations, in the public or private sector, is how good they are at:

• Stage 1: obtaining information about their customers, past, current and potential, knowing what they think, like and dislike about their services or products
• Stage 2: encouraging a culture of sharing information about customers
• Stage 3: responding to information about customers, wanting to make sure that episodes which upset customers will not happen again, making suggestions or implementing processes that will improve customer satisfaction.

Stage 1 Obtaining information
The first requirement for this stage is curiosity in your everyday dealings with colleagues, suppliers, competitors or other similar organisations, and of course with customers or clients. Typical questions to ask are:
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• What do our customers like and dislike about our services or products?
• How did that new way of doing things work with that particular group of clients?
• How did this customer hear about us? What do these customers think about our or our competitor's latest advertisement?
• Could that piece of new technology I saw on television help us to deliver a better service to our customers?
• How can I learn about our processes by looking at that organisation, which does what we do?

The simple and regular management activity of keeping in touch with the world and with customers happens far less than most managers believe it should.

Next week we’ll be looking at the example of two frequently voiced objections to carrying out this sort of investigation...