The Customer: A battered Child
“Get closer to your customer – or else”; “If we don’t take care of our customers, somebody else will”; “With us you’re number one”. Phrases, phrases, and more phrases. Not a single word in the marketing world has been more abused than the term ‘customer satisfaction’. It’s hip to deliver satisfaction; it fills conference rooms, goes down darn well at cocktail parties, and is the favourite topic in any marketing magazine.
It’s been on the international scene for quite a while – and with good reason. Locally, however, it lagged far behind. Every now and then it came up again, but never gaining momentum.
Don’t we all remember the horror stories of foreign companies flooding the country in a never-ending wave – the tsunami for local business? Fact is that the tsunami was a mere trickle, compared to the changes in other countries like India, Malaysia and even Chile. The South African business landscape was left unchanged, and therefore the need to deliver customer satisfaction out of necessity simply didn’t exist. Can you recall that anyone ever has mentioned that it’s “now or never”? The answer is “No”, and the reason for this is simple: no one had to do it – no one was forced to do it – it’s still business as usual.
Unfortunately, the cosy situation South African businesses found themselves in bred lethargy and didn’t require a change of attitude and mindset. These two factors, however, are prerequisite for a customer-oriented business approach, and the basis for long-term customer satisfaction.
This is changing fast. But what most customer satisfaction gurus forget is that the basis lies in information – timeous, relevant and in the correct format. Needless to say that the marketing database is the ideal place to breed and nurture a customer-focused business approach. In fact, marketing without a database can no longer justify its name.
But how many companies, even those who boast shining CS awards on the boardroom shelf or in the lobby, have a marketing operation that is database-centered? How many are able not only to call up the complete transaction history of a customer, but are also able to merge personal lifestyle information and contact details into the same screen display? How many of them use the database not only as a modern way to send out thousands of scarcely personalised letters – using it as Direct Mail in disguise-, but are basing all their marketing activities on database findings? Last but not least, how many of them can truly say that they have established a one-to-one relationship with their customers, based on mutual trust and respect? You do the maths.
It is so easy to provide mere lipservice, but to deliver the goods is an entirely different story. Interestingly, the dramatic changes in technology play an important part in a database-centered business environment. Personal media like the telephone – especially voice mail and bulletin board systems -, as well as fax, inter-active television, and video will become “status quo” in any modern business within no time. The Internet alone opens so many opportunities to foster a culture of dialogue and feedback, that it must be any marketer’s dream.
But is that really the case? If new technologies make it easier to provide superior customer service, why is the local marketing community in such turmoil over what is currently happening on the scene? The reason for this can be found in the fact that it is mass marketing thinking and practice that reigns South Africa. Hardly anyone was or is interested in serving individual customers. It is still far easier to target masses than individuals; it is far easier to flight TV or radio commercials than putting together a relevant and tailor-made message to a few individuals – and a few aren’t ten thousands!
Stan Rapp, co-author of ‘Beyond MaxiMarketing’, is one of the many new-age marketers who declare traditional mass marketing dead and instead stress that the database comes first. “Prospect or customer database-driven strategy drives the other marketing components. This strategy shapes the advertising message, sales promotion and direct marketing, leading to a goal that is both short-term and long-term maximised sales results.” True database marketing will have a far-reaching impact on traditional communications media. Database-driven marketing means that all external communication, be it with suppliers or customers, stem from information residing on the database – not really the thing for local mass-marketers.
Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, in their book ‘The One-to-One Future’, focus on just this 1:1 relationship with the customer, once more stressing the importance of the customer’s lifetime value: “The central proposition, the defining goal, for any business in a 1:1 world, is share of customer.” And: “Today’s mass-marketing paradigm has no need for interactive media and computers that track individual customer transactions linked over time. Tracking customers and conversing with them individually are not tasks that fit into a market-share approach to competition.” How to get it right? Peppers and Rogers believe that “The most indispensable element of your relationship with each of your customers in the 1:1 future will be dialogue and feedback. What do customers really want? What does *this* customer really want?”
Stating the example of Kellogg with an annual adspend of around $620m but without any meaningful way to communicate with the individual customer, Peppers and Rogers reveal the dilemma that, in this instance, packed goods manufacturers face: “Until very recently, what individual customers did, individually, was of no interest to the mass marketer because they couldn’t use this kind of data, except within the limited realm of consumer research. …They have no way of tracking you personally. You are a demographic or psychographic statistic, averaged in with others who are your age or income level.”
According to John Fraser-Robinson, leading UK direct marketing consultant and author of “Total Quality Marketing”, a new breed of managers is necessary to cater for the needs of individual customer communications. These ‘hybrids’, as he calls them, understand both the world of marketing and information technology, as well as the implications the 1:1 paradigm has on the organisation’s communication and corporate strategy. It will be the hybrids who will ultimately shape the organisation; who fuse data processing and marketing departments into one profit-making entity and create a condusive environment for long-term relationship management. Eventually, they will turn out to be the organisation’s most valuable human asset, because it is them who will link short-term results with long-term vision, technology with people and employees with customers.
In an age of increasing product parity and the advent of the information superhighway, organisations can also gain extra benefit from satisfying customer needs in addition to their traditional line of business. Again, knowledge of what is needed can be gained from database analyses – home-made satisfaction so to say.
Database marketing is not a piece of hard and software with campaigns to generate information. It is not an isolated part, but will rather form the core of any business operation as it affects and is being affected by other areas. If planned and implemented properly, it will save money, increase profits, reduce stress and interdepartmental conflict. Obviously, it will also increase the amount of happy and loyal customers. But without a sound foundation it will become just another fashionable expense item in the marketer’s budget.
The marketing database, in conjunction with an intelligent use of modern communication media, will become the center-piece of any business operation. If management fails to recognise this, entire businesses can be wiped out from the map. The time is right, the markets open, and the technologies available to cause havoc second to none.
If you want to serve your customers, and if you want to profit from it, you better get your act together soon. Marketing is everything, and everything will be technology-based. May the personal contact be increase in a relationship-based business arena, behind it is always a database.
Customer satisfaction will remain a hollow word unless the marketer adapts and uses the technologies at his disposal – not to score, but to serve. Scoring will then come as a natural result of serving.