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| Consulting Firms |
Your
primary asset is not your employees.
It's your customers' confidence in your
next engagement. Every services company
wants its customers to be as fiercely
loyal as the people who stay at the
Four Seasons. Your community extends
the company beyond employees: Invite
the real experts into the conversation.
If you consult, your primary asset is not your employees. It's your
clients' confidence in your next engagement. Every consulting firm
wants its customers to be as fiercely loyal as the people who stay at
the Four Seasons. But the problem is that your satisfied customers
don't have public spaces where their elegant treatment is enjoyed with
their peers. Without that feedback, your customers may receive excellent service, but they don't experience
excellent service. Unless you, like the Four Seasons, provide a public
space where they can show off to each other, how will they know they're
in good company?
And if they don't have tangible evidence of the
wisdom surrounding your services, your clients are open to overtures
from other consulting firms.
The expertise that surrounds your
services extends the company beyond your employees: In a sense, a
services company is a university where best practices are discovered
and shared, for a fee. Now that the mechanisms for online communities
are so well understood and accessible, your choice is whether you
should operate like a university or as a series of correspondence
courses. If you choose to operate like a university, you can call on
your star pupils to join the discussion, which you host and moderate
online.
Your duty to your clients is to expose them to the best
thinking available. The real experts in doing what you advise are your
existing clients. Maybe it's time to invite the real experts into the
conversation. |
"ORGware
engages the rest of us who want to ‘get
involved’."
Arthur
Einstein, Jr. |
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