We’ve come a long way since a business leader could pin a poster on the office wall displaying a picture of a lion sitting atop a line of text reading “the customer is king,” congratulate himself for creating a customer-focused culture and stroll off for a three-martini lunch.
All businesses now grasp that exceeding customer satisfaction has become the table stakes for staying in the game, and appreciate the intense effort that must go into truly understanding their customers in order to surpass expectations. They also know that the combination of sophisticated databases and web-based technology allow for unprecedented customer knowledge.
We’ve also learned that phrases like “exceeding customer satisfaction,” “table stakes,” and “unprecedented customer knowledge” have become mandatory in Internet strategies, and may occur more frequently than correct punctuation. And we also know that the powerful technology is frequently under-utilized. Despite ubiquitous statements professing the desire to know customers better, and the unprecedented technical ability to truly analyze their needs, it’s still rare to see companies which genuinely execute a web-enabled customer satisfaction strategy, and illuminating to witness the positive business improvements when they do.
A “cool” strategy
A recent case study in CIO Insight provides an excellent example of how Ben& Jerry achieve terrific results by using its site to execute a simple task: ask their customers what they want. Author Edward Cone observes that the site promotes brand consistency, important for such a “cool” brand, but in addition collects data that is critical for managing operations.
“The Web site also supports Ben & Jerry's hippie-licious brand image with prominent links to an anti-global-warming page, and another page that promises ‘50 ways to support peace,’” writes Cone. “But however altruistic the corporate culture, the site is built to sell ice cream. The Flavor Locator, which uses scanner data from Information Resources Inc. to track inventory in real time, is the most popular customer-service feature.”
The latter feature enables customers to find stores in their area that stock particular flavours, and in turn, allows the company to forecast demand for product and plan production. Anyone who has had to manage a supply chain based on the vagaries of sales forecasts will instantly appreciate the implications for cost and efficiency, and we can all relate to the customer satisfaction that results when a popular product is available. And students of Peter Drucker will recall his observation that the essence of marketing is having the right product in the warehouse at the right time.
In our experience, clients that retain Prescient Digital Media to provide strategic planning services are all seeking to link their Internet strategy to their overall business objectives, they all know that they must incorporate customers’ feedback into their plan and they know that executing the strategy requires hard work and dedication.
Because they often lack specific methodology for collecting user input on their web sites, however, they are always impressed by the detailed feedback we gather through a comprehensive heuristic evaluation of their existing sites, for example, which provides invaluable data regarding how customers rate the usability of the site.
Such strategic insight ensures that when the Internet strategy is presented internally, it contains phrases like “exceeding customer satisfaction,” “table stakes,” and “unprecedented customer knowledge,” but the phrases have genuine meaning and the strategy is supported by a thorough execution plan.
By the way, if anyone has ever had a three-martini lunch, please let me know. From my experience, they exist only in legend, along with marketing budgets too excessive to deplete and executives who don’t expect a return on their marketing investment. Of course, three-martini customer appreciation events, after official business hours, are another matter and I don’t need to hear about those.
