Anne Furukawa (Corporate)

What does Customer Focus mean to you?

Customer focus means working with your client/customer in a manner where everyone involved are communicating to a level where all parties are aware that the problem or solution is known. This is especially important where the issue may be more complex, after research and analysis, and the intricacy of the issue is communicated. Also, it’s not about doing the task fast, but doing it correctly.

How could strengthening Customer Focus impact Wilbur-Ellis or your team?

I believe strengthening communication will help strengthen Customer Focus. If everyone communicated on a timely manner (meaning within 24 – 48 hours or at most 3-4 days) whether it is to acknowledge an email, give a high-level explanation, or even negotiating a deadline, this would more than likely stop the frustrations of a customer from continuously following up or contacting several people to get a response.

For my team, we all try to at least acknowledge emails that are sent to us, both individually and as a team. This allows us to communicate to our clients that their issue or suggestion is on someone’s radar. Yes, sometimes email get missed, but from what I have experienced this is rare. Also, my team looks at the problems from as many angles that we can – discussing it amongst ourselves or collaborating with another team to get different perspectives to determine what may be the best solution to assist our clients with their needs. On the flip side our clients need to also understand that sometimes a non-solution is a solution or if they want a task done and done correctly we will ask for more time, and they need to be able to accept that. Again, this comes down to communication.