Walk THEIR walk

6 Part Process Part 2: Walk Alongside Your Customers

In yesterday's article, I explained how to distill what your brand represents objectively into what I call "The Brand Fingerprint". Call that a point of self-awareness that prepares you to make authentic connections. From this, you may already have a decent idea of WHO you want to build connections with.

Yesterday was the anniversary of a day of infamy in my field - the 39th anniversary of the launch of "New Coke". Under siege by PepsiCo, who had gained traction and share with a new marketing campaign touting Pepsi as the "Choice of a New Generation", and backing that up with "Pepsi Challenge" blind taste tests against Coca-Cola in stores, festivals, college campuses and other spots across the United States. Coke responded by developing a new "Pepsi-like" formula. They thought they were listening to the market and responding to what they wanted. Did they ask? No doubt they performed blind taste tests. No doubt they worked hard to break down the Pepsi formula in a lab. If you don't remember the results of that launch firsthand, you likely learned about it in a Marketing or Business class in school. New Coke was a flop, and the team at Coke had to rush to reinstate the original recipe to stave of an accelerated loss of market share. For a time, they sold it alongside the New Coke as "Classic Coke", and eventually discontinued sale of the new recipe.

There was something intangible about Coke that made their customers fans, and it obviously wasn't captured in the results of blind taste tests. Is there a way that Coke could have avoided learning this the hard way? The answer is simple in theory, but more complicated in practice . . . they should have "Walked" with their customers. This is an important distinction. There are dozens of ways that companies "talk" to their customers, and several of them are useful (sometimes complicated and expensive): NPS surveys, Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Focus Groups, Customer Diaries, Large Quantitative Customer Studies and more. What you miss with this approach is what goes unspoken if you're not on a ride along with those customers to see how they're making their plans, buying the products and services they need, and then putting them to use.

I worked for a company that sold a very niche commercial maintenance service, primarily to retailers. The job we did was highly specialized, difficult, required significant training and specific tools, and as a result carried a pretty high price point compared to alternatives that were lower cost but less effective. One day, our sales team visited a customer that we were hoping to grow with service in more of their facilities. We left a multi-year service agreement behind for review by the key corporate decision maker, that decision maker accidentally sent it back to our Director of Sales with notes he had made on the document for that customer's CFO to review.

Before looking at those notes, the Director of Sales had reported that the customer was tremendously satisfied with our service, and acknowledged that the stores were all very pleased with the entire experience whenever they used us. There were some concerns about price, but we all viewed that as a garden variety negotiating tactic, and we prepared to reinforce the value in our effectiveness as part of our response strategy. The whole point of that trip was to 'listen to the customer'.

The note on the contract was a gift for us. . . an opportunity to 'Walk along' with that customer in how he viewed our service in the context of what he needed and expected for his facilities. This is what the note said:

"These guys are best in class. They always complete the job quickly and thoroughly, but they're really expensive. I call them when our local vendor can't get the job done."

What did we learn for this customer?

• The superior experience didn't always justify the higher price point
• Sometimes, 'OK' was good enough
• We aren't the first vendor he calls for service

Having already determined who we were as a brand, we had decisions to make:

• Was there more value for this customer that we could add to the experience to show value for the price?
• Could we be profitable in serving this customer if we lowered the price to be more competitive?
• Do we need to "fire" this customer, and focus attention on the customers who place more of a premium on an excellent customer experience?

These are healthy conversations for your brand, and once you've zeroed in on the customers that both through their needs AND their behavior demonstrate that your brand is the best solution, the story begins to write itself . . . but that's for tomorrow's article on Part 3!

Note: Special thanks to Tom England. You can find Tom at [email protected], or on the Appalachian Trail during the summer months under the trail name of "Moses". Tom introduced me to a book that I was able to read on one flight from Richmond to Chicago called "TALKING TO HUMANS" by Giff Constable with Frank Rimalovski that is a great fundamental primer if your company is new to the practice of collecting customer feedback. Tom also has a really cool process for this at Pareto Insight that is worth learning more about.