I am presenting “Applying Baldrige to the Marketing Function” at the ISA Marketing and Sales Summit. This post originally appeared as a guest post on that site.

How high do you set your customer service bar? Think about the KPIs you use. Do you set goals for those KPIs based on your results from the previous year, against industry averages, or do you actually use benchmarks to ensure you are providing best-in-class customer service. Many companies set the bar too low. They want to satisfy or maybe just satisfice customers and really don’t care enough to put extra effort into gaining their customer’s engagement. Magic happens when you care enough to engage customers. They become fans. Fans are force multipliers for marketers!

Engaged customers don’t tell their coworkers and friends that your product isn’t easy to use. Engaged customers tell you why it isn’t easy to use and specifically how to correct it. Engaged fans are willing to tolerate beta releases because they know deep in their hearts that you will eventually give them access to Version 2.0 that specifically addresses their greatest needs. Engaged customers tell everyone that your products solve their problems.

If you truly want customers that are fans, customers that have a sense of ownership in your company, you have to measure customer sentiments. You need to understand how loyal your customers are, how many customers you retain, and how willing your customers are to advocate for you. How many of your customers are willing to recommend your offerings to people they know?

These results must be used to close the loop in your customer focused activities. The saying you can’t manage what you don’t measure applies to customer engagement as much as anything else. But results measures like any statistic that doesn’t have a comparison is worthless. Comparing “how you did” to “how you did last year” does not result in high levels of performance. You have to benchmark or compare these measures to someone that you know does those things well. Comparisons compel change and build a sense of urgency especially when they show that you aren’t as good as your competitors or as good as you thought you were.

The good news is it is easier than ever to engage customers. Not that the measures are easier to capture, but it is easier to engage with customers. Social media tools, inbound marketing techniques, and the always-connected world we live in gives us ample opportunities to connect and engage with customers but you have to have a plan. What’s your plan for moving customers down the continuum from satisficed to satisfied to engaged and beyond?

Contact me to discuss your specific marketing and sales challenges, how the Baldrige Criteria can help your organization, or look me up at the ISA Marketing and Sales Summit in St. Louis.

Where do your best ideas come from? Do they normally occur when you are slaving away at your desk or during your normal work functions? Or do they come in unexpected places? Do you have places where you can go, where you can plan to go, where you know you will get brilliant insights?

I watched a Chipotle customer throw away a metal tray last night despite the laminated sign above the trash bin that said “Please don’t throw trays in garbage”. I knew I’d read posts related to Poke Yoke (error proofing) at fast food chains before. I rediscovered this post explaining how In-N-Out Burger uses simple error proofing to prevent customers from accidentally chunking plastic trays into the garbage. While searching for that specific blog post I found another good example of error proofing in the restaurant industry.

Both examples are brilliant insights. Related to error proofing – but brilliant insights. The authors of those posts stumbled upon those brilliant ideas. There was no plan to discover the insights. The authors were especially observant but the insights were pure accidents. Do you also have these moments of clarity, great ideas when you are eating out or in other unexpected places? Wouldn’t you love to be able to schedule these insights?

I have a way to ensure at least once a year I have out of the box, super-smart, brilliant insights. I participate with my state-level Baldrige program every year. In Tennessee, the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence is the resource for Baldrige expertise. It’s also the place where I have my smartest, most diverse, interesting conversations all year.

If you would love a way to schedule insights-a way you can make sure you discover new ways of tackling your biggest issues on a schedule. Find your state’s Baldrige program. If you are located in Tennessee (especially the Chattanooga region) contact me. I’d love to tell you about Baldrige and TNCPE.

The Chattanooga Section 1101 of the American Society for Quality is graciously hosting a meeting and letting me discuss why we need a regional Baldrige group and what we can do to get the movement started.

It is easy for all of us to criticize our local school boards, city and county officials, the companies we all work for, and our policy makers at the national level. But rarely during these gripe sessions are solutions to the problems offered. As a matter of fact, we mostly all agree that the biggest problems and opportunities aren’t even identified let alone being addressed.

The Baldrige criteria and the state and national Baldrige programs are ways for organizations to identify and address big problems and big opportunities. Isn’t excellent performance what we all want out of our employers or companies, our schools, churches, and associations, and our government?

The meeting will be held Tuesday, September 26th, at 6:00 P.M. at the Blood Assurance across from McKenzie arena on E. 4th Street. The cost is $12 per guest or member, $6 each for students. Reservations are required by Friday, April 22nd, 12:00 Noon. Comment below or send me an email and I will get your reservation information to the right person.

This is a great opportunity to show your support for the local Baldrige movement or to learn more about Baldrige and the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence.

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article about the Disconnect Found Between CEOs and Top Officers in yesterday’s paper. (Need to have a subscritpion to access the online article.) How many of you find that especially surprising?

According to the article, CEOs have a far different perspective of what they think employees including C-level officers want and what those employees really want. How many of those CEOs actually have a process in place that encourages conversation that would reveal the true opinions of their employees. The root cause for the disconnect is the lack of fact-based management processes.

The same thing happens when companies assume they know what customers want. The senior leaders and managers take anecdotal conversations, take the parts of those conversations that support what they already thought and decide they know what customers need. Few companies gather all of the information that’s needed to develop a true fact-based picture of customers. The information should be obtained from current, former, and potential customers as well as competitors customers. The process for gathering the information should also include measures of both customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. All of the characteristics are part of the Customer Focus category questions in the Baldrige criteria.

You have to develop ways that you listen and learn from both customers and employees. The ways you gather information have to work consistently and you have to actually analyze what you learn. If your mind was made up already then why bother asking? That was the problem identified in the article. Right?

Anecdotes whether from customers or from employees make for horrible decision making tools. Facts are far and away harder to find but will make for far and away better decisions.