Lexington, KY - Play the part of a customer and consider this: Why did you choose your bank? Why did you choose your real estate agent?

Most banks provide the same set of products. Most real estate agents provide the same set of products. So, what differentiated your bank or your real estate agent — or for that matter, your advertising agency or your component supplier or your investment banker — from all others? The reflective question for us is: Where does our differentiation come from? For most of us, it comes from having a service that is different from our competitors, or even more so, from having better relationships with our partners.

How do we have better relationships with our partners? To answer this question, we can most certainly rely on the Ten Commandments as a starting point. After that, we have to make it actionable in corporate speak and play. A wonderful basis for reviewing and improving your relationships is to follow the "SCOpE" framework, which refers to four basic aspects of your business relationship: structure, control, operation and emotion. Remember, the important vantage point is that of your customer. What is the "SCOpE" of your relationship from your customer's point of view?

The first part of the "SCOpE" framework analyzes the structure of your relationship. Do your customers always know what they want? Do they change their minds as the discussion or relationship progresses? Do they learn as they go along? Will competitors try to educate them? This leads to the first structural component: flexibility. In good relationships, the provider is perceived as flexible.

There are always uncertainties in every relationship and every market. Customers need the assurance of knowing how uncertainties will be dealt with — especially the nasty ones. This leads to the second structural component: formality. Good relationships need to be commemorated with a formal agreement that is readable. (Try reading the license agreements with software vendors. Who has a good relationship with a personal software vendor?)

Customers, especially business-to-business customers, want to know if you will be willing to listen to their needs, their suggestions, and the profitability quests that underlie their reason to do business with you. In other words, the third and final structural component: openness. How open are you?

Beyond having a suitable structure to the relationship, customers also prefer to work with partners who demonstrate greater control of their operations. How do we have greater control, and for our purpose here, how do we show customers that we are indeed an organization in control? The answer involves four parts. First, customers like to know how and who in the organization will be accountable, as well as whether or not they are dealing with representatives of the organization who themselves are accountable. Second, how is that accountability enforced? In other words, do those who the customers hold accountable have the authority to deliver on their behalf? Do the individuals they are dealing with have the right to act without needing to obtain prior approval from higher management and without being challenged by their peers? Third, customers need to know that the organization has enough control over its own suppliers, technology development, supply chain, etc., to react with dexterity as their needs and contexts change. And fourth, do customers perceive that the organization or its representatives feel an obligation to perform? In other words, are they responsible?

Customers are better served and are closer to companies that they perceive to have superior operation. There are five major components to how superior operation is perceived. The first is knowledge. Does the organization and its representatives possess adequate knowledge to satisfy the customer? Is the information that the organization and its representatives possess and present accurate? Does it have sufficient resources? Does it work with ease of operation? Is it responsive to the customers need for information, needs and changes?

The last element of the SCOpE framework is emotion. All decisions are made under uncertainty, so naturally, long-term satisfactory relationships have to be emotionally satisfying. Emotional satisfaction is based on six broad components. Are the organization's representatives trustworthy? Will the customer be treated fairly? Will the customer be treated with respect? Will the customer's behavior be viewed with approval both by the customer's own organization and by the relationship partner? Is the customer satisfied by the outcome of the relationship? And finally, does the customer sense a bonding with the partner? In other words, is there a comfort level and a mutual feeling of commitment to a partnership that will be mutually beneficial?

That is a quick overview of the SCOpE framework. Every element of it can be measured from a customer's point of view. Even more interestingly, when internal measures are compared with how customers view the organization, surprises almost always arise. So give yourself a SCOpE checkup and improve your relationships.