OutSystems: 5 steps towards building a customer focused culture
“It is difficult to hear a bad word about the Portuguese software company” starts the dutch publication Computable article on describing the general feedback of customers at the OutSystems NextStep event (check out a _bad_ English translation of the article).
This is common feedback for OutSystems. The product is very stable resulting from our R&D focus on quality. The few times we have critical issues the Support Team bends itself backwards to address and solve them. The Professional Services team regularly gets bottles of wine and chocolate cakes for their focus on delivering, on time, on budget, solutions that are adopted fast by the business.
Last year, one of our US prospects (now a happy customer) laid out a very particular set of needs and asked us to provide a reference call with an existing customer in a similar situation. After the reference call, they told us: “You know, this reference had very few bad things to say about you guys. That was not very helpful. We wanted to know how you handle problems because we understand we have some different needs. But finally they reported a situation where they had to use your support and the whole response, in their opinion, ‘was top of the line’.”
So, regularly I am asked on
“How do you do it? How do you establish an excellency culture that permeates all customer touching units?”
There are many things you can do. A lot is just common sense. However, if I had to summarize I believe the following 5 directions make the most difference at OutSystems:
- Put the customer above everything. This means customer satisfaction is above profits, revenues and even employee satisfaction. KPIs, Bonus, etc need to make this direction clear. Management behavior needs to make this clear.
- Temper customer satisfaction with fairness. A lot of times our obsession with customer satisfaction drives a misguided customer to take advantage of us. This does not go far. We are very tough on ourselves when we make a mistake but we want the same transparency from the customer when they screw up. Fair is fair. Paradoxically, customers end up by respecting and trusting us more.
- Tackle a problem immediately. Speed is of the essence. Act immediately to address any issue with a sense of urgency. Tell your people they have an open direct escalation lines to management to fix any problem.
- Solve endemic issues with process. Constant fire fighting does not scale. Our people are trained to spot recurrent problems and deploy permanent solutions that prevent the issue from happening again. The company is constantly tuning practices and evolving processes.
- Hire smart, accountable, high-energy people. We can only address new issues fast through accountable, high energy people. We can only solve problems permanently with innovative solutions through smart people. This is why we invest so much in the recruitment process and in creating an environment where this class of people can thrive.
