I recently had the opportunity to meet with one of our successful graduates in Chicago who is running a major software company. It is knowledge worker environment with demanding customers all over the world. It is an industry that is helping to make sense of the terabytes of data generated in the normal process of doing business in the 2011 and beyond. We were later joined by five other recent hires (also ISU College of Business alumni) for lunch in the boardroom and had a wonderful conversation about the general preparedness of students when they graduate and begin their careers.
There were observations of keen insight by all attending, both experienced and newly graduated managers. Some comments centered on the specific professors who helped a student find an internship or a job. Another individual mentioned that a departmental etiquette dinner helped identify some weaknesses. All agreed that major projects with real organizations as a capstone experience was extremely valuable in helping to frame a problem and in crafting alternatives that the managers could actually use.
These were all great ideas and it was useful feedback for me. However, then the conversation turned to the challenge of working with demanding customers. Customers were global and were working in a 24/7 environment that was intensely competitive and filled with extreme pressures to solve problems quickly and accurately. Our discussion also revealed that there were internal customers within the company itself who were requesting information in order to do their jobs effectively. Just as other units within the company were requesting help, the individuals around the table similarly recognized that they were customers of entities both internal and external to the organization.
To most of the people in the room, the demands of the customer was strikingly foreign. It was not something that they as students had thought seriously about in most of their coursework. The coursework often centered on problem solving, complex content assignments, critical thinking exercises, writing and oral presentation skill development, and building skills to work cooperatively in teams. To be sure, all of these skills can enhance effectiveness and productivity on the job. Yet, the central importance of the customer in the workplace was somehow not a primary part of their thinking while they were students.
What is a customer orientation? In a broad sense, a customer orientation is simply a way of recognizing that your organization exists to serve the wants and needs of another organization or individual. As a wise person once said, your organization does not exist to employ people; rather it exists to add value to your customers.
There is also some confusion about the notion of customers. Customers are known by different names within different industries. However, a customer by any other name is still a customer. Customers voluntarily enter into a transaction in which something of value is exchanged for something else of value. Value can be found, for example, in promises, ideas, cash, and tangible goods. Customers are sometimes called clients, patients, students, residents, or guests. However, one must recognize that calling a customer by some other name does not mean they are not customers.
There are some courses offered that help students understand a customer orientation. Professional sales courses, for example, tend to address this topic directly. However, my lunch meeting did raise an important question. Should a customer orientation be embedded in all business courses? For example, who is the customer and what of value is being offered in courses and topics related to auditing, risk managment, sales forecasting, estate planning, advanced financial accounting, industrial relations managment, organizational leadership, and integrated marketing communication?
What will the identified customers defined by such course topics demand? How will these customers evaluate the performance of your organization? How will your organization sustain a long term relationship with customers built on trust? How will your organization demonstrate that it is adding value to your customers? Such questions embedded in all business courses may serve as a useful context for helping to prepare students for the real world of demanding customers.
