The main problem that arises when establishing a client-oriented approach is alienation. This is the very alienation that Karl Marx spoke of, illustrating how a person becomes estranged from the results of their labor. A simple example: a temple built by people from stone and glass becomes an alienated symbol, something greater than just a structure and in no way connected to its builders.
The essence of capitalist exploitation lies precisely in the maximization of alienation. The less connection there is between the producer and the consumer, the more profit the capitalist makes. When we see tomatoes displayed in a store, none of us thinks about who picked them and how much they were paid for harvesting that crop. Yet, harvesting tomatoes is the only type of fieldwork that has not yet been automated. Everything else can be done with machines. Meanwhile, the person who carefully picks the fruits one by one and places them in a box is paid only three hryvnias for every 10 kilograms harvested. But no one ever thinks that each tomato you eat bears the fingerprints of a specific person with their own unique story.
The same thing is happening now in the office. A clerk working for their company thinks they are working for the company. However, it is the clients who bring in the money. Getting them to realize that they are actually working for the clients would be a double challenge. First, it would require reducing the level of alienation, which goes against the idea of earning from added value. Second, it means completely changing the paradigm of reality perception: what is beneficial for the client is not necessarily beneficial for the company. The client wants more for less, while the company wants less for more, if we put it simply.
But I have two pieces of news for you. The first piece: we haven’t had capitalism for a long time. The second piece: the problem I just described is not a problem, but a symptom. In other words, it can’t be treated directly; it’s either pointless or incredibly expensive. However, we can understand the source of this problem, and by addressing the source, we can automatically and effortlessly resolve the issue.
You understand very well that your clients are the ones who pay your apartment bills, your grocery expenses, your vacations, your medical treatments, and so on. You also know that your friends are unlikely to come to you with money and say, “Here, pay for your car repairs.” However, your clients will do that. Clients are more valuable to you than friends, and you build genuine relationships with them. Well-established relationships lead to an expansion of your client base through mutual referrals, and sooner or later, you reach a point known as the “saturation point.” At that moment, you can no longer expand your client base.
If you are selling buns at retail, then this is not a business, but self-employment. You have no prospects for business expansion and no clients. A faceless retail crowd is not a client. On the other hand, in retail business, there are clients. If you are a bakery and bun sellers purchase your products for resale, then they, not the bun consumers, are your clients. Even if you are a mini-bakery on your own, you still develop a fairly narrow circle of regular clients—consumers.
A client is not always someone who consumes a product. A client is always someone who brings you money. From this perspective, we start to understand that a promotional poster featuring a beautiful frothy drink is primarily intended not for the person drinking it, but for the one selling that drink to the consumer. If you are a top manager at a large agency network, you know better than anyone that it’s not the consumers of your services who plead for increased advertising spending, but the sellers who are selling your services.
Please note. These people are your clients regardless of what you think and how you behave towards them. All your management efforts, if they do not take the form of customer orientation, will not be demonstrably effective. If you are achieving something, it is likely that you are unconsciously providing these people, in exchange for the money they bring you, something you are not even aware of.
In other words, if this person brings you money, you need to give them something in return or at least be aware of what you are already providing them. What exactly? Huh? That’s motivation. It’s the real daily work of every manager.
As mentioned above, the lack of customer orientation is caused by employees feeling alienated from the results of their work. Employees believe that they receive their salary from the company, and the company constantly tries to reinforce this belief. However, if each employee is carefully questioned, they will admit that they understand their presence at work is beneficial to the employer, which means they are not being paid a salary, but rather receiving back a portion of what they themselves have earned. In other words, the true confidence and what the employee believes are in serious contradiction.
The employer or the direct supervisor of the employee also believes that they are the client of the employee, rather than the employee being their client. This leads to situations where, for example, everyone can gather for a meeting while ignoring their phones. After all, the meeting was called by the boss, who we work for, while the clients are just people who come in. This means that a conversation with a client can be rudely interrupted by some “urgent” request from the manager, and there are many implications to this. We see all the signs of a typical alienation syndrome. An employee will never be client-oriented in their work if their supervisor is not oriented towards the employee as a client.
Thus, the elimination of alienation must start from the top, from the head of the company. It is the CEO who must first believe, and then prove to themselves, that all other members of the Board are essentially their clients. Customer orientation is born at the top.
No amount of beautiful posters or super training sessions will help staff become customer-oriented if the entire structure of the company doesn’t embrace the same principles. A company will never achieve success if, for example, the accounting department sees itself as the client rather than viewing everyone else as their clients. A sales team will never succeed if it doesn’t understand that all other departments in the company are its clients, for whom they work. The IT department will not ensure the company’s success if it focuses solely on printing rulebooks, setting up firewalls, and installing spyware. And so on.
When I see that clients are treated in a way that makes them uncomfortable, I immediately realize that this is not just a problem with a specific manager, but a problem that runs throughout the entire company, starting from the top. This company has no future.
Customer orientation is not just posters in the sales hall; it is a deep philosophy of the company. A customer is someone who brings in money, not just someone who consumes your products. Your employees are your customers, and they are the ones who pay you money, not the other way around with salaries. Without establishing internal customer orientation, we won’t be able to build external customer orientation.