I am sure all of us have walked into an office and seen one of those corporate pictures with a strapline such as “The customer comes first” or ”the customer is king” emblazoned across it as a mantra to help us remember what is important.
Yet all too often companies are just going through the motions – they just pay lip service to this critical component within their strategy.
Chief Executives, Managers indeed all of us often get caught up in the challenges of daily corporate life. Proposals, project plans, chasing the numbers, maintaining margin, writing reports, attending workshops – all essential operational activities to look after the health of the business and implement the strategy
But when it comes to creating that strategy, how many of us really take a step back and start with the customer? In business where digital marketing plays a fundamental part, this activity becomes imperative.
All too often companies focus on products, technologies or an internal perception of what we believe the customer wants. Granted, many companies go through some form of “voice of the customer” survey or customer review as part of their strategic review or planning purpose, but very few really leverage the insight that such activities provide and use it to analyze or challenge themselves around what their customer really wants.
Which is madness because in a world increasingly dominated by social media and the web, the customer “owns” your brand, your reputation and is the key to your continued success. Turning customers into advocates because they love both what you do and how you do it is what is differentiating between success and failure in an economy where digital is both disruptive and a force for good.
Last week I was invited by Dominic Hawes-Fairly to work with his executive team of a fascinating young company that is looking to revolutionize how digital content is licensed. The implications for sectors such as the music industry or sports industries will be profound when this company comes to market.
Why?
Well simply put they are starting by identifying what the customer would want and then making that as simple and as easy as possible for them to get it. They joked about creating the People’s Republic of Music – a world in which the current blanket licensing is removed, where you and I can legally broadcast for free and where everyone in the chain from unsigned recording artist to consumer can make money.
I won’t spoil their thunder by outlining anything more about their business in this post, but what was refreshing was to work with a young business that was thinking truly digitally. By challenging their own processes, their own assumptions, they were able in the course of a few hours to refine their strategy to something that was truly compelling, differentiated and exciting.
Suddenly their whole process of how to monetize their products, what to charge and who to charge it to became crystal clear. 6 months of technical deliberations and wrangling with product propositions suddenly melted away in to a crystal clear vision and a sequence of clear next steps.
The lesson here was not the choice they made, it the process they went through. By asking themselves questions such as “what would I have to believe for this to be true” or by using simple “Situation – Complication – Resolution” thought processes they were able to challenge some of their old assumptions and focus on what would make simple, compelling proposition to their intended customer base, allow those customers to become advocates, for the news to spread virally and for them to accelerate their business model as a result.
So when you are next involved in a strategy session, don’t be afraid to challenge about who the customer really is (it could be internal or external customers), what They really want (not what you think they want because that fits with your product or business model) and be open to changing your strategy to accommodate this new perspective.
