Know the customer: Face to Face

Knowing the customer is a long term process. Keeping your finger on the pulse of customer trends can ensure consistent profits. Here are some of the systems that could help build and understand lifetime relationships with the customer. Encourage the teams to go out and meet customers. Let them get a hands on experience of how customers really think. Let them organize in-house interviews and focus groups with customers. Interviews and focus groups can give a lot of information. They can help customer’s participate in reinventing processes and products. Management by walking about (MBWA) is the hands on way to find out what the customer feels day to day. Research and surveys give you information. But customer aspirations and fashions change. Those who are not in close touch with their customers may be too late to react to new trends. Barrack Obama became President of the United States by contacting 5 million people on the internet. He collected far more funding than powerful old timers like Senator Mc Cain and Hillary Clinton. Raw data needs to be interpreted in terms of customer needs. The way McDonald’s responded to change in the attitude to health and concerns about obesity by providing low fat and salad meals shows a proactive attitude to change in customer needs and tastes. This naturally leads to protecting profits. The concern for the environment is another issue where the auto industry has to take customer focused decisions. During an economic down turn does a big gas guzzling car become almost vulgar? Are people ready for electric cars? Is the Rs. 1 lakh Tata Nano poised to grab world markets? Study the needs hierarchy. Is it true that on the brink of the economic precipice, people are more concerned about surviving, than about impressing the neighbours? There is a whole new economics of recession. Study the emerging trends and get advice from experts. Reflect on your findings. Study broad demographic changes and question where a global major should invest? In India with its largest number of young people or China with its aging population? How should Indian companies change their strategies to deal with the explosive youth power? Will inexpensive luxuries become more popular?