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As it relates to customers, everyone in your organization should be able to access everything they need to know, any-time or anywhere. This is difficult, yes, but not impossible.

How many times have you heard, “that’s not my department” or “that’s not my job”? That’s a pitiful response, and if anyone in your company says that, you should be embarrassed. He or she is costing you money and stifling your growth.

There are plenty of reasons this attitude surfaces. Maybe your employees don’t personally have the technical knowledge to address the request. Maybe there are too many territorial disputes in your organization. Maybe that particular person is just plain lazy. You need to fix these problems, either through better training, better people, or better technology—probably all of these. The problem of inadequate technical knowledge is one of the easiest problems to address. Technology allows you to solve problems seamlessly, without ever showing what steps got you there.

How many times does it look like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing in your organization? See if any of these look familiar:

· Have you ever sent out marketing materials to people who are on credit hold?

· Have you ever invoiced people with standard terms after they’ve negotiated custom terms with your sales organization?

· Have you mailed out brochures to people who haven’t worked at that company for two years?

· Has your marketing department advertised services that the sales department says nobody wants to buy?

· Has your shipping department sent packing slips that bear no resemblance to the customer’s invoice or sales contract?

· Have your people answering the phones been clueless about what your customers have ordered and what offers you have sent them by e-mail?

· Have customers ever tried in vain to return a product that they purchased online to your physical location?

To grow your business, you need a total view. You need to make sure anyone who interacts with customers in any way has a total view or at least knows where to go to get the answers in a hurry. Through training and our next T, technology, you can make it happen.