Joe W. Forehand
Chairman & CEO
Accenture
Outlook Journal, May 2003
At Accenture, we take the customer relationship very seriously. Every day, we collaborate with clients to help them get the most value from their own customer interactions—whether it's revitalizing a specific selling or service capability, or transforming their customer relationship management capabilities end to end.
At the same time, we strive for continual improvement in how we develop and manage our own client relationships. In fact, this theme has never been more important to us, given the consolidation under way in our industry and the ever-changing needs of our clients. We need to demonstrate, in every interaction, our commitment to our clients and our understanding of their business needs. We must hold ourselves accountable for delivering results that improve performance.
With this in mind, we are focused on building even stronger client relationships. For example, we have revitalized core training for our consultants, so they have a deeper knowledge of what creates economic value for clients and a greater understanding of what they can do personally to improve client loyalty and satisfaction.
We are developing new curricula for other Accenture workforces to ensure that all our employees—whether they specialize in technology or outsourcing solutions, or support our day-to-day operations—are aligned with our business strategy and understand how their individual contributions help Accenture deliver innovation for clients.
In addition, we have a sales effectiveness initiative in place to apply even more rigor to our sales and business development capabilities. We are focused specifically on growing more, larger-scale client relationships. We are also looking at how we can stimulate growth for all clients and prospects, regardless of size.
I meet regularly with senior executives who have been Accenture clients for more than a decade. I'm immensely proud of these client relationships, and it is always energizing for me to discuss with these leaders how we can continue working together to build on our success.
To conclude, leaders cannot underestimate the value of world-class sales, service and customer relationship management. This issue of Outlook explores some innovative, yet actionable, approaches for executives to consider in taking customer relationships to new levels of success and profitability.
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