The Ken Johnson Group / June 6, 2005 Featured Article

Learning from business: Relating customer service to church health
by Ken Johnson 04 Nov 2004

While browsing through the business stacks at the local bookstore recently, I read the titles of customer service books and an analogy about the relationship between the common goals of the business world and the church came to mind.

Various titles captured my interest: "How to Win Customers and Keep Them for Life," by Michael Leboeuf; "Customers are People," by John McKean; "Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless," by Jeffrey Gitomer; and "The Customer Loyalty Solution," by Arthur Middleton Hughes. The connection to the church became obvious.

Who are your customers? Are you concerned about them? Through visiting more than 40 churches in the last two years I have seen too many church staffs and congregations who obviously have no concern for their customers. These staffs/congregations don’t understand why their churches are dying.

How can a church stay alive without concern for its customers? Many purists will get upset with the church/customer analogy, but I think it’s time to get real and realize what century we are in.

In the business world, the concern is bringing in new customers and finding ways to keep them. Books are written about business like "Be Our Guest," by Michael D. Eisner; "Hug Your Customers," by Jack Mitchell; and "Raving Fans," by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. Wouldn’t you like to say that your congregation is filled with "raving fans" of Jesus the Christ? Church staffs should stop talking about numbers and begin filling their sanctuaries with raving fans, just like the fans on Saturday or Sunday afternoons at football games. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Another book title that almost knocked me over was "A Complaint is a Gift," by Janelle Barlow. How many church leaders do you know that feel that way? If church leaders considered complaints as gifts from which they can learn, where would the church be today? A good newsletter article would be to let your raving fans know it’s all right to complain because you are listening.

Let’s continue down this path to see what leaders should do for their customers. "Deliver(ing) Knock Your Socks Off Service," by Ron Zemke and Kristen Anderson, in every aspect of the church would keep people who come in the front door from leaving out the back door. Knock your socks off service is simply treating your congregation the way that you would want them to treat you.

Probably the one area that the church struggles in more than any other is making changes when they need to. For some reason most Christians who have been in the church for many years don’t want to change anything. But if change has to happen, they want it to be immediate and unnoticeable. Common sense tells you that change takes time, as Bhaskar Chakravorti explains in his book "The Slow Pace of Fast Change."

If you’re like me, you want any new thing that you introduce to happen overnight. There’s nothing wrong with feeling that way, but keep in mind nothing in the world changes in a day. Patience must come with change. And please don’t pray for change or you will get more than you asked for.

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s book addresses this topic. It’s entitled "The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal." Along with the reluctance to change comes the problem that many church leaders don’t know how to manage their customers. They don’t understand that each individual customer possesses unique knowledge, understanding, personality and energy. Additionally, each individual operates under a different time frame, and therefore must be lead differently.

How many of you put everyone in the same box and expect them to all react the same way? I teach and supervise student teachers. One thing I talk about the very first class is that all students are different, and therefore teachers should treat them differently. In fact, by the end of their second week of student teaching I expect them to know each of their students’ names and how each student individually learns. It’s amazing how much better they can teach when they approach their students in this manner. How much better could you lead if you looked at your people as individuals rather than cattle?

If you treat people individually then you will be able to accomplish this: "Follow This Path: How the world’s greatest organizations drive growth by unleashing human potential," by Curt Coffman and Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina. Unleashing human potential! Do you really try to find out what each person’s human potential is and teach to it? If you did, would you unleash that very same potential to the world? What a difference Christians would make in the world if their potential could shine!

My favorite business title, one I have used for many years in several arenas, is "Guerrilla Marketing" by Jay Conrad Levinson. This book encourages you to do whatever it takes to bring the people into your fold. Remember, you will never be able to minister to anyone until you have him or her as a captive audience.

Take these titles to heart, go to your local bookstore, and buy some of them to see what the authors have in mind. Please don’t be afraid to use some of the strategies that the secular world uses to make your church a better, more inviting place.

Ken Johnson has trained with Church Central in church consulting and works with churches and seeking to further their goals.

This Article was first published in the Church Central Newsletter on November 4, 2004. www.churchcentral.com/nw/s