Knowing your customers is critical!!!

This morning I received a telephone call from a colleague.

It was immediately obvious they were frustrated.....and after listening, I shared their frustration!

As way of background, my colleague develops and implements digital transformation strategies. And, to achieve a robust strategy, their focus has always been on deeply understanding what experience customers want of the market.

 So, what frustrated my colleague?

The executives of the company they are currently working for, have just told them that understanding what customers want is unnecessary, and just focus on 'building it'!

It distresses me that intelligent, successful executives, believe the approach to developing new products and services, is to 'build it and they will come', particularly when a company is an incumbent in a disruptive market.

Rapidly advancing technology and access to more information and choice, are constantly contributing the changing attitudes of customers. Consider yourself - think about how much your attitude has likely changed in the past few years as a customer, or how you might interact differently to making purchase decisions. As customers we have changed. Businesses must keep pace with these changes so they remain attractive to do business with.

Keeping pace with these changing attitudes is not only critical to remaining relevant and competitive, it is also necessary to find opportunities to out-pace the market i.e. being ahead of or influencing us as a customer to a new way of doing things that is better than the previous way we were used to doing things - a position I believe every company should be aspiring to achieve.

Amazon, the world’s most successful company, drives a customer-centric approach to every new product and service. It's mission is to be 'the earth's most customer-centric company', and it lives and breathes this ethos from the VERY TOP to the VERY BOTTOM of the organisation; every activity, every decision.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, was once challenged that his company's customer-centric approach seemed 'backward'. Bezos response was swift -

“most companies write the software, they get it all working, and then throw it over the wall to the marketing department, saying, 'here's what we've built, go write the press release'. That process, he said, is the one that is ACTUALLY backward".

So, take heart my friend - it is 'they' who have it backward. Hold your ground or....... find a company where your values are aligned. Statistically, without a customer-centric approach, what are the odds - precision dive or bellyflop?

Linda Ginger is a B2B market strategist. She applies a proprietary methodology that combines data and technology to rapidly and statistically identify what customer experience is most influential and leverageable for competitive advantage.

#focus #confidence #businessowners #competitiveadvantage #innovation #disruption #decision-making