Aligning Business Goals with Customer Needs  

Shep Hyken interviews Jeff Gothelf, author of Who Does What By How Much?: A Practical Guide to Customer-Centric OKRs. He talks about how aligning objectives and key results with customer needs can transform business success. 

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:   

Top Takeaways:   

• OKR is an acronym meaning Objectives and Key Results. They are a strategic framework for setting clear goals and measuring outcomes. By having clear goals and knowing what results are expected, everyone in the organization moves in the right direction. When these OKRs are focused on the customer, they help companies make decisions that make their customers happy and loyal to the brand.  

• Objectives are qualitative goals describing the end state you want your customers to experience. For example, you want to offer the best product or be the easiest to do business with. The key results are the quantitative measures of human behavior that tell us we've achieved that state. It answers: What will your customers do differently, and by how much?  

• Customer satisfaction is important, but understanding customer behaviors is crucial. Often, dissatisfied customers stop using the product. They show up less often. They spend less money. They stop telling their friends about it. If you can understand these patterns of your customer's behavior, you can proactively take action before it becomes a problem. 

• Determine which behaviors (trying out products, asking more questions, etc.) will deliver the results that your company is looking for. Then, create an environment, a system, a service, or a store that positively amplifies those behaviors for the customer. 

• Providing your team with the objectives and allowing them to figure out the best way to achieve them communicates that you trust your employees to use their skills to meet customer needs.  

• Not all strategies will work from the start. Organizations need to develop a culture of learning. It allows teams to learn from mistakes and objectively measure the success of an idea. Then, businesses can make informed adjustments and improve with each attempt.  

• Plus, Jeff explains why some employees end up working on the wrong tasks  and how organizations can avoid that. Tune in! 

Quote:  

"Customer centricity puts the customer at the center of all our decisions. Every time we make a decision, the critical question is—What impact do we think this will have on the customer? And, is that something that we want to do?" 

About:   

Jeff Gothelf is a business strategy and customer-centricity expert, speaker, and author. He is the co-author of Lean UX, Sense & Respond, and Who Does What By How Much?: A Practical Guide to Customer-Centric OKRs. 

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.   

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