Posts from — November 2007

Heaven knows, but we are all aware of the quickening competitive pace and shift to customer power in our markets. Political changes to the social meaning of business; social changes in customer needs; economic changes in global competitive advantage; and technology changes altering business models, pile up on us daily.

How do you manage this amount of change? ‘In the Dark’, a 2007 study by Deloittes, has found that an increasing number of CEO’s now recognize that non-financial measures, like customer satisfaction, innovation and employee commitment, are as important to their investors as traditional financial figures. But, they don’t know how to tune into markets and what indicators to use. Whilst 87% of companies are happy that their financial measurement is good, only 29% can say the same about non-financial indicators. A fact corroborated by corporate reporting specialists Black Sun. They found that in the year to 2006, although non-financial indicator reporting had risen amongst the FTSE 100, these centred on employee retention and CSR. Markets, customers and innovation, the very essence of sustainable organization, still take a back seat.

So what is needed is an adaptive customer strategy - a shared, directional, detailed, plan for delivering value to customers in an ever changing environment.

In the world of customer relationships, Tesco is a leading light: and that is why they are successful. But in the world of’ ‘a certain type of journalist’ capitalism is the evil stalker. Stuck in a 20th century mindset, such people know little about judging the economics of good marketing, relationship building and social responsibility: as a result Tesco’s success is constantly denigrated. Here are some lines from a vitriolic weekend article:-

“It is here, in deliberately drab company headquarters, that a small clique of capitalists holds up a mirror to modern Britain. The reflection we see is not pretty.”

“A legion of grey suits commute in at the crack of dawn to scrutinise overnight till receipts for the first sign of a mass market mood change.”

“Tesco has invested in a carbon labelling scheme during the last few months. Of course, it’s all about as convincing as those fake Georgian clocktowers.”

Fortunately, Tesco’s hard work in building relationships and advocacy went into action in some of the comments to this piece.

“Tesco provide good value foods in an immense range. If you want to shop at your mucky expensive village Spar then go save it! Why do the same people who criticise them put up with a single monopoly in the NHS, the Police, Education and Local Government and the BBC? The state provides **** services at enormous rip off prices. “

“I tried my local shops: the butcher was closed at 2.40pm (presumably still on his lunch - there was no notice), the greengrocer had nice produce, but the assistant was stood outside talking to her boyfriend whilst several of us queued patiently. The local Post Office/newsagents staff were as miserable as sin. The local pharmacy (run by an Indian couple) was brilliant, offering home delivery. I am now back shopping at Tesco, except for medications and other sundries stocked by my local pharmacist. It’s called voting with your feet.”

“If you don’t want to buy at Tesco’s, don’t. Buy in small outlets, or farm shops, or Lidl or wherever, but please don’t tell everyone to stop shopping at Tesco just because you have a problem with them.”

Full article and comments.

How to respond to the ‘man made’ climate change debate is difficult for business.  If you run a staff workshop on ‘brand or product development’ you will encounter swathes of ‘foot dragging’ cynicism: and that goes for customers too.  But if you don’t consider the issue, then other stakeholders and ‘interest groups’ may not look on that favourably. 

Now, in spite of the claim that all scientists agree that climate change is mostly man made, we have had yet more contradictory evidence in the last few months: a film in the US ‘An Inconvenient Truth or Convenient Fiction’ and a court case in the UK which has ruled that ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ has overlooked, well, some inconvenient truths of its own. 

Then comes ‘Cool It - A Sceptical Environmentalists Guide to Global Warming’, by Bjorn Lomborg, telling us that no climate model has predicted the Gulf Stream will turn off.  And ‘Scared to Death’ a book by Christopher Brooker and Richard North which tells us that:-

•  The 1998 hockey stick temperature graph is now a totally discredited scientific thesis. The hottest year of the 20^th century was 1934 not 1998.
•  Many scientists now say world temperatures have fluctuated for centuries, and tend to correlate with the radiation from the sun, not CO2 levels.
•  In 1998 the UN’s enquiry into climate change asked 1,500 experts to report. But in the final huge document the prefacing Summary for Policymakers did not include the caveats that the experts reports had put forward.

The book also states, that consumers will not tolerate the drop in living standards that the EU’s 2050 emission targets demand.  In the end it will be the corporate world that needs to react on behalf of customers: and the Carbon Trust is already advertising for innovators to help business develop new ‘low carbon’ technologies. 

Maybe the best way for business is to depoliticise the whole issue and take the middle ground: split climate change away from CO2 emission, both are happening it’s the correlation that the issue .  Saving resources including energy is laudeable; after all it cuts down customer’s energy bills.  Innovating methods of CO2 control will save customers the extra tax they will be charged at least.  Looking after the natural environment enhances well being. 

In addition make sure your staff have access to ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, ‘Convenient Fiction’ and ‘Scared to Death’ as balanced inputs to workshop thinking and corporate debate.

Clearing out the kitchen cupboard where I throw all my papers this week, I came across an IBM proposal dated November 1997 outlining how they could help me with the Customer Information Programme I was running at the time - for a mutual organization as it happens.  As I’m a great believer in serendipity, I had to wonder why this particular document had suddenly decided to reveal itself?

Flicking though its pages the names of the wide variety of people I worked with so closely on that ground breaking work brought back memories: the collaborative mix of IT and business skills; the innovative ideas from outside that we shaped to our own business needs; the smiles and tears, success and politics.  Some names, I still know well others I’ve completely lost touch with.  However, I’d like to thank Merlin Stone, Andrew Law, Derek Starling, Pete De’Giovanni, Chris Atkinson, Kate Lennard, Leslie Ross, and Alistair Stevenson for all their support and guidance.  The results of the work we did ten years ago has travelled the world and been the base of good CRM practices in many companies.

And if you’re goggling your names and find this, and we’ve lost touch, do send a hello, I’d like to tell you what happened to all our ideas!!