Category — What Customers Want

Many organizations ask customers what they want: that’s a mistake. How does the customer know? Errrrmmm I’d like that widget in pink and tuned into Radio Mars please.

Meanwhile, in HR the latest employee satisfaction survey (fashionably renamed engagement survey) shows that front line employees dislike the lack of two way communication, and a ‘them and us’ attitude by managers. Although job roles are clear, customer service is seen to have a high priority, and only 7% rate it a poor place to work.

Killing two birds with one stone

In the traditional, unconnected organization these issues might well remain unconnected. When the answer to both is the same – engage front line staff by asking them to be the voice of the customer, and involve them in product and service design. Set them free from the chains of transactional measures, and recognize their importance as insight workers. For not only do they understand what customers want – after all they deal with them day to day – but they also understand what the solutions are - because they know your business.

It may be very true that senior managers are out of touch with customer needs, but it is highly unlikely that your front line staff are!

When your service giving staff are used in this way, customer service moves from the end of the ‘make and sell’ process into the heart of the customer proposition design – and lo sales through service gets in the DNA.

(Extract from Engaging Employees the John Lewis Way more…..)

Proctor & Gamble have been experimenting with social media since 2001 when a plummeting share price led them to conclude that they needed market responsive R&D. They set up their ‘connect and develop’ programme, and detailed a group of ‘technology entrepreneurs’ to search out new ideas, and connect with “the majority of the world’s consumers” – a tall order. They then left them to work out how to do it. The result is now a huge bank of workable social techniques that gives P&G competitive advantage and which, as a by product, has reduced R& D costs by over 20%.

It is, perhaps, prophetic that one of the great 20^th century mass consumption, product marketing brands, is now doing the same with 21^st century relationship marketing for mass innovation. For as manufacturing moves to lower cost economies that is where Western competitive advantage lies. Sustainable business is why socialising with customers in the long term is of enormous value. Rather than the one way ticket of ‘go to market’ channels and communication media, we have to create the return on conversational marketing and web 2.0.

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.