“They serve like we lead,” said Sir John Sainsbury, founder of the UK supermarket chain. Research at Harvard in the 1990s (1) showed there is a measurable continuum running from inside your organization to outside, like a connecting thread. Treat employees well, they in turn treat customers well, customer satisfaction goes up, profits go up. It’s measurable, apparently. But, only VERY satisfied customers are loyal. And a more interesting offer from elsewhere can make them defectors overnight.

Designing the experience

But treating people as you would like to be treated is not enough in itself. It’s necessary but not sufficient. Rather than simply selling products and services, you now need to move your organization up the hierarchy, stepping up your thinking from ‘product’ to ‘service’ to ‘experience’ as if moving up a staircase. (2) And your customers are players in this process, not recipients on the outside. From ‘consumer’ to ‘prosumer’

Alvin Toffler first coined the word ‘prosumer’ in 1979. Conflating the words ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’, Toffler used the new word to describe the next generation (this generation) of customer, one that is not just passive, but becomes involved in the production process. For evidence of prosumption in action you only have to stand in a Starbucks queue and listen to the customer in front tell the barista the specifications of the tall, skinny, dry latte with an extra shot of espresso that they want right now. The customer is designing their own coffee and telling the production department how to make it.

"Consumers did not have much share of voice. Now they do. There is a fundamental transition that is taking place - from a firm-centric society to a consumer-centric society." (3) – C. K. Prahalad

Moving toward ‘co-creation’ with customers involves a complete rethink of your strategy and operation. At its simplest, you move your thinking and structures from supplier ‘push’ (controlled from the top) to customer ‘pull’ processes (control moves to the edge), putting more initiative and decision-making power in the hands of the people who interact with customers. Think ‘demand chain’ instead of ‘supply chain’ and see how different the world looks from that perspective.

That’s enough choice, thanks

On the other hand…Be aware that it’s a myth that consumers always want more choice. The emergence of ‘hyper-choice’, and how suppliers unwittingly make customers unhappy by overwhelming them with choice, has been powerfully documented by Barry Schwarz. He counted 175 salad dressings and 75 iced teas on his local supermarket shelves and was prompted to write a book explaining how too much choice can actually decrease the chance of a consumer buying, as it induces consumer paralysis. Faced with a choice of six jams, a customer is more likely to buy one than faced with a choice of thirty. (4)

USEFUL CONCEPT

The NEW Golden Rule: “We’re always told to treat customers as we would want to be treated. That’s not right. Treat customers as THEY want to be treated. Find out. Don’t assume. The golden rule isn’t ‘Do as you would be done by.’ It’s ‘Do unto others as they would like to be done unto’. ”
SOURCE: I heard this from Ken Pasternak, President, Inter Associates Ltd And, finally…The Customer is NOT King

Yes, over-supply means the balance of power has swung from supplier to customer. But don’t believe the old cliché that every customer is king. Some are more trouble than they are worth. At Southwest Airlines a complaining customer had refused to be placated by every layer of management that her letters were escalated to and was threatening never to fly with the airline again. She was asking for things that Southwest purposely did not offer as part of their low-cost, fast turnaround business model – in-flight meals, for example. In desperation, the file was bumped up to the only layer left, CEO Herb Kelleher. In five minutes Herb wrote a nine-word letter back to the customer, solving the problem. It said “Dear Mrs.Crabapple. We will miss you. Love Herb.” (5)