Randy Wilcox is a Principal in the firm of Long and Wilcox which is a central-Ohio based real estate development company, a partner in Wilcox Development which is a Chicago based real-estate development company, and the Founder and Owner of Quest Business Centers. He founded Quest Business Centers in 1998 and Quest is currently the leading provider of business conference space in central Ohio.  He founded SARCOM, Inc. in 1983. SARCOM grew to become a national provider of technology products and services and had nearly $1 billion in sales by 1999. 
 
Randy Wilcox has served on a number of non-profit boards including the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, United Way of Central Ohio (board member and Treasurer), the Technology Leadership Council and the OhioHealth Foundation which he chaired. He is also the former Columbus Chapter Chairman of the Young Presidents’ Organization, and a member of both the World Presidents’ Organization and the Chief Executives Organization.

Randy was a featured speaker of the TechColumbus 2011 Leadership Series sponsored by Vorys in December.

Randy talked about the key themes for success of his businesses over the past several decades:

• Customer service must be a priority
• Culture matters
• Hire and retain great sales people
• Implement strong financial reporting and controls

While all of these themes were critical to his success, the one that struck me as most interesting was how he differentiated a technology service business through creating a culture of exceptional customer service.  If your product is not differentiated, price is the main factor in making the buying decision.  Why Culture?  It is hard to create and copy so a company that gets it right can create a relatively sustainable advantage. 

How did he use culture of customer satisfaction to create a premium product in IT Services?

Every employee at SARCOM knew that customer satisfaction was the most important thing they did.  When customers came in to meet Randy, he indicated that if they could walk around and ask any employee what their top priority was, all employees would indicate customer satisfaction.  If they did not, the person asking the question would get $100.  Evidently, universally, employees gave the same answer, customer satisfaction is most important.  So how did he create this culture?

• Employees were given customer skills training
• Employees were empowered to spend up to $500 to fix the customer complaint
• He personally attended monthly meetings at 18 locations
• They conducted surveys and USED the data as the foundation for root cause analysis and change

What did the company do to fix problems?

They tracked employee ability to solve problems and created a standard process based on the success they observed.  The process was:

• Listen
• Agree with the customer
• Apologize for the inconvenience and frustration they experienced
• Fix the problem
• Follow up to ensure the problem was fixed
• Offer a token to restore the balance for their inconvenience – often a note of apology with a tin of cookies. 

This culture of satisfaction was very similar to the culture Cheryl Kruger created at Cheryl’s Cookies.  Her company was also known for a very high level of service as well as innovation.  The proof of success is in the level of customer retention and in the top and bottom line performance.  SARCOM was a very successful company at the time Randy Wilcox sold it.  He is using similar principles for Quest Business Centers.  I am a regular customer of Quest and select them over other providers because of their exception service. 

Randy Wilcox has combined his value of customer service the following elements to create a winning formula for the success of multiple companies he has run or advised as a board member:

• time to attend regular customer satisfaction meetings,
• empowering employees to spend the company’s money to address issues,
• creating consistent processes to address customer problems, and
• surveying customers to find ways to improve

What are your company differentiators?  Are you creating a comprehensive system of leadership behaviors, culture, processes and measures to leverage those differentiators?

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