Thanet's Business World has Changed
Written by Matt B · first published 17/03/2008
The business world has changed. The only thing keeping Thanet's present Jurassic form going is that it is yet to notice. "Marketing and Sales" are, like the beheaded chicken, dead yet still moving.
What I hope to outline in today's post very few of Thanet's businesses are ready to grasp. Some are already aware of this but for the large part these are businesses that are small enough to still be nimble. There is no reason why the small and alert business can not take over quite completely from the large entities that need such artificial things as WestWood Cross, full page adverts and sales scripts.
Are you ready to learn the secret of Thanet's new market place?
Your business and it's products are already being analysed, dissected and documented with a spirit gusto that would probably surprise you. Along with this your customer service, attitude, friendliness and image are being equally weighed in the balance.
On the whole large business has been found wanting.
Once upon a time to be seen as part of the great and the good it was enough to say "we are part of the great and the good". You needed only keep silent those things of which we were rightly embarrassed and shout those things that spoke well of us. It worked too.
Those days are long gone. If we do not admit our faults it is only a mater of time before our competitors or our customers admit them with far more venom and with great glee. There is not an industry, brand or company that is even slightly immune from a process of joined up thinking going on within the market itself.
There has risen in answer to these changes an intermediary service industry called "Reputation Management". This "Reputation Management" understands the tools of the new marketplace and attempts to apply the boasts of the old. It creates a false discussion in an attempt to subvert the joined up nature of inter-customer communications.
On the whole "Reputation Management" consists of saying your boasts loader and more often then anyone else. The aim is to push it through more media, more efficiently and sooner than anyone else to drown out the negative message that the customer themselves have been sharing. Dominating the topic can only last for so long
When that domination breaks it is so much the worse for the "managed" reputation. Customers are growing increasingly apt at recognising what they call "astroturf" (fake "grass roots" activity) and with the recognition comes anger. Customers are becoming smarter and to insult that intelligence is to risk the wrath of the market place.
It would be so much easier to engage with honestly with the customer to start with.
Your customers want to talk to the person that designed the product, they want to discuss your products features with those that decide what those features will be. The average customer has at least one idea of an ideal new tool that they would like to see from you. In short the customer needs to be in the place that the customer should have always have been - in the product development loop.
By the second customer service faux pas 57% of your customers will have left and by the third that increases to 85%. Three strikes and you are out!
Even with the best script in the world your un-empowered and frankly uninterested telephone operative is going to encounter an unending supply of customer complaints and questions for which there is no scripted answer. For outsourced phone centres this lack of a good answer is even higher. How many phone calls will it take to send the average customer to your competitor?
The worst news is that it is the best evangelists - the power users - that will go first. Nothing puts a power user off faster than failing to answer questions about your product. "I'm sorry, we don't support that" is not an answer it's an instruction to purchase in future from the competitor who does "support that".
The answer in Thanet is much like the answer for the rest of the world with the added factor that it will be all the more intense and personal. We as businesses need to learn to engage with customers. To pull down the artificial barriers between us and the market.
Literally put your board or directors on the shop floor, on the help desk and out at the front. Allow the people that design and create your products to interact with the people that buy those products. Be fearlessly honest.
One way to engage is to open the channels of communication via home-brew media methods such as blogging or pod casts but this alone will not save you. There needs to be a diametric shift of attitude at the highest levels. The customer does not need to be told what he or she needs but to be listened to and served.
Stale platitudes will not suffice. When the customer says things are broken the only action that shows you care is to attempt to fix what is wrong. This requires openness and transparency.
It is time to stop fearing the customer, to remove the layers that insulate you from the market and to show the real human face behind it all. In doing so in a place like Thanet you are going to become a character in the local landscape. A key figure, an authority, a person to whom people can turn.
Ask any writer and they will tell you that not even the most stupid reader will believe in a highly polished character that lacks flaws and opinions. What matters is not in being right or perfect all the time but in being real with people. The result will be a market presence that can not be purchased.
Things are moving too fast to allow you to analyse each corporate utterance, to polish every statement to perfection. Any attempt to do that will not only seem false and inhuman but drain your communication of all it's life, soul and effectiveness - you will have missed the moment. Do not fall for the trap of "analysis paralysis" but do what businesses do best and take a few calculated risks.
Recognise that the shield that "protects you" from the market also acts to keep you from ever understanding it or drawing on it's full potential. In Thanet we can not afford to let outsiders come in a rob us of what little market there is but that is where we are heading. Which of us are willing to grasp the nettle and engage human to human with the very people that hold the future of our businesses (the customers themselves)?
"We are immune to advertising. Just forget it."
Article 74, 95 Theses, Clue Train Manifesto
What I hope to outline in today's post very few of Thanet's businesses are ready to grasp. Some are already aware of this but for the large part these are businesses that are small enough to still be nimble. There is no reason why the small and alert business can not take over quite completely from the large entities that need such artificial things as WestWood Cross, full page adverts and sales scripts.
Are you ready to learn the secret of Thanet's new market place?
You and Your Business are Not Immune
Your business and it's products are already being analysed, dissected and documented with a spirit gusto that would probably surprise you. Along with this your customer service, attitude, friendliness and image are being equally weighed in the balance.
On the whole large business has been found wanting.
"1. Nothing and no one is immune from criticism.
"2. Everyone involved in a controversy has an intellectual responsibility to
inform himself of the available facts."
From Sidney Hook's, suggested rules for democratic discourse, (from "The Ethics of Controversy")
(More on Sidney Hook: Hook, pragmatism.org)
Once upon a time to be seen as part of the great and the good it was enough to say "we are part of the great and the good". You needed only keep silent those things of which we were rightly embarrassed and shout those things that spoke well of us. It worked too.
Those days are long gone. If we do not admit our faults it is only a mater of time before our competitors or our customers admit them with far more venom and with great glee. There is not an industry, brand or company that is even slightly immune from a process of joined up thinking going on within the market itself.
The half thing that is reputation management
There has risen in answer to these changes an intermediary service industry called "Reputation Management". This "Reputation Management" understands the tools of the new marketplace and attempts to apply the boasts of the old. It creates a false discussion in an attempt to subvert the joined up nature of inter-customer communications.
"Bombastic boasts—"We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ"—do not constitute a position.
Article 24, 95 Theses, Clue Train Manifesto
On the whole "Reputation Management" consists of saying your boasts loader and more often then anyone else. The aim is to push it through more media, more efficiently and sooner than anyone else to drown out the negative message that the customer themselves have been sharing. Dominating the topic can only last for so long
When that domination breaks it is so much the worse for the "managed" reputation. Customers are growing increasingly apt at recognising what they call "astroturf" (fake "grass roots" activity) and with the recognition comes anger. Customers are becoming smarter and to insult that intelligence is to risk the wrath of the market place.
It would be so much easier to engage with honestly with the customer to start with.
What do your customers actually want?
Your customers want to talk to the person that designed the product, they want to discuss your products features with those that decide what those features will be. The average customer has at least one idea of an ideal new tool that they would like to see from you. In short the customer needs to be in the place that the customer should have always have been - in the product development loop.
"We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance."
Article 64, 95 Theses, Clue Train Manifesto
By the second customer service faux pas 57% of your customers will have left and by the third that increases to 85%. Three strikes and you are out!
Even with the best script in the world your un-empowered and frankly uninterested telephone operative is going to encounter an unending supply of customer complaints and questions for which there is no scripted answer. For outsourced phone centres this lack of a good answer is even higher. How many phone calls will it take to send the average customer to your competitor?
The worst news is that it is the best evangelists - the power users - that will go first. Nothing puts a power user off faster than failing to answer questions about your product. "I'm sorry, we don't support that" is not an answer it's an instruction to purchase in future from the competitor who does "support that".
Further reading:
- Conversational marketing, wikipedia
- What Customers Want, Startup Nation
- Top 10 Customer Service Mistakes
What is the answer then?
The answer in Thanet is much like the answer for the rest of the world with the added factor that it will be all the more intense and personal. We as businesses need to learn to engage with customers. To pull down the artificial barriers between us and the market.
Literally put your board or directors on the shop floor, on the help desk and out at the front. Allow the people that design and create your products to interact with the people that buy those products. Be fearlessly honest.
One way to engage is to open the channels of communication via home-brew media methods such as blogging or pod casts but this alone will not save you. There needs to be a diametric shift of attitude at the highest levels. The customer does not need to be told what he or she needs but to be listened to and served.
Stale platitudes will not suffice. When the customer says things are broken the only action that shows you care is to attempt to fix what is wrong. This requires openness and transparency.
Don't fear the customer - love them
It is time to stop fearing the customer, to remove the layers that insulate you from the market and to show the real human face behind it all. In doing so in a place like Thanet you are going to become a character in the local landscape. A key figure, an authority, a person to whom people can turn.
Ask any writer and they will tell you that not even the most stupid reader will believe in a highly polished character that lacks flaws and opinions. What matters is not in being right or perfect all the time but in being real with people. The result will be a market presence that can not be purchased.
Things are moving too fast to allow you to analyse each corporate utterance, to polish every statement to perfection. Any attempt to do that will not only seem false and inhuman but drain your communication of all it's life, soul and effectiveness - you will have missed the moment. Do not fall for the trap of "analysis paralysis" but do what businesses do best and take a few calculated risks.
Recognise that the shield that "protects you" from the market also acts to keep you from ever understanding it or drawing on it's full potential. In Thanet we can not afford to let outsiders come in a rob us of what little market there is but that is where we are heading. Which of us are willing to grasp the nettle and engage human to human with the very people that hold the future of our businesses (the customers themselves)?
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