I don’t think I get it.
My purpose in writing this post is to get further clarification on some ideas that were flying around on #IMCchat. I would like to admit right now that it may very well be that I do not understand the concepts completely. And there is also the issue of the challenges of the 140 character limit on a Twitter chat.
Customer-Centric and the music business: If the notion of Customer-centric is that the customer drives the product or service delivered is that always a good thing? Perhaps for delivery of the product it is, but for the creation? For example, if The Beatles were customer-centric, would there have been Rubber Soul or Sgt. Pepper? Or would there have been multiple iterations of Hard Day’s Night?
Customer-Centric and Social Media: Is there a danger of “listening” too closely to social media if those participating are only a tiny percentage of your total customer base? I’m not talking about customer service in this case, but rather product/service creation and collaboration. An unanswered question that I had for the participants of the chat was whether customers made up more than 20% of their followers. Perhaps on Facebook the following of customers is higher. And maybe it is higher for B2C than B2B?
Hopefully, someone from #IMCchat will indulge me, click on the link and give me more information. I am sincere in my desire to understand better.
Hi Dawn,
These are great questions! And yes, the IMC (integrated marketing communications) chat goes fast.
First, I’d like to clarify customer-focused vs. customer-centric.
Like Anna Barcelos (IMC chat co-moderator) mentioned, in a ‘customer-focused’ organization, they provide products and/or services that customers want but do not drive ALL operations around the customer. For example, Apple. They build products that customers love, but the customers don’t get a say in the functionality of those products.
A customer-centric organization puts the customer at the center of the organization (think of a circle with the customer in the middle, then the next circle surrounding the customer circle is the company. It’s not the top-down management chart we are used to). From that perspective, all operations are focused on the customer. An example here would be Fiskars. Through their community, the Fisk-a-teers, Fiskars taps into the community for new product ideas and allows key members of the community to test products before they are manufactured (or even are considered for the market).
Regarding the music industry, customer-centric would be more around the music producers and less around the musicians. For example, if I were a customer-centric music producer I would make sure (based on data) that I was producing artists my customers wanted to buy (vs. pushing a product), but more importantly, making that music available the way customers want to buy it (convenience vs. distribution) and at a cost (versus price) they are willing to pay. I love Putumayo (a producer of world music) and I used to buy a ton of their CDs. But all of these years later they still only sell offline at shops and boutiques or via their site. Because neither are convenient for me these days (I buy via iTunes), I am no longer a customer.
As for listening via social media, you are correct…it’s too limiting. Especially if an organization (B2B or B2C) isn’t engaged. However, you only mention Twitter and Facebook. We can’t forget about communities (private or public), like Fiskars. Also, it’s important to understand that social media allows for the collection of data organizations were never privy to in the past. And I don’t mean collecting Twitter handles and putting them into the CRM system. I mean analyzing the collected social data for trends, connections, preferences, etc. When organizations use that “social” data (whether it’s on Twitter via a blog post or a conversation with customer service) to “hear” the same complaints over and over about how a product or service works, it’s an opportunity to tap into those customers, get their feedback and fix the problem. That’s being customer-centric.
I hope this helps!
Beth Harte
Serengeti Communications
@bethharte
#IMCchat Co-Moderator
Wow! Thank you so much for the thoughtful in-depth reply.
My thinking on the social media was indeed too narrow. (I was thinking about how SXSW utilizes voting, and panelists are pushing their sessions out via Facebook, Twitter, etc. and people, most of who are not even attending SXSW, get to vote on the content – which seems absolutely bizarre to me.) But I now get where you’re coming from.
Again, thank you. It was kind of you and your response wa above and beyond my expectations.
[...] Which Are You? September 16th, 2010 by Beth Harte Share A post by Dawn Westerberg, “Social Media, Customer-Centric, and #IMCchat”, prompted a long response from me, so I thought I’d share my thoughts with our Endless Plain [...]
[...] of the incredible generosity of the good people on Twitter, @bethharte took the time to answer my questions on customer-centric organization and social media. She went above and beyond and I am blown away [...]
Great post! Something that’s crossed my mind from time to time as well.
First, a few quotes…
“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new. ” – Steve Jobs
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” – Henry Ford
And from this season’s Mad Men…(episode 4)
“How do you know that’s the truth? A new idea is something they don’t know yet so of course it’s not going to come up as an option. Put my campaign on TV for a year, then hold your group again – maybe it will show up?” – Don Draper
—-
The point of these quotes being that your own actions can influence and change public opinion just as much as the public can influence you. This is especially true when we’re talking about innovative shifts like the car, the iPod/iPad, and Sgt Pepper’s.
But at their heart, these are still customer centric ideas. People weren’t asking out loud, but it was obvious (to the right people) that they needed them. Just like in any conversation, there is push and pull. You can’t do all the talking just as you can’t sit their just listening. You need to use your mind to try to dig deeper and get to the root of what people are saying.
Somebody saying “I want a faster horse” is really saying “I have a transportation problem.”
Somebody saying “it all sounds the same” is really saying “Give me music that’s radically different, with new instruments and new recording techniques.”
And something like the iPod or iPad? Well you just had to look closely at how people were using existing products and design something to fit that need perfectly.
Of course it sounds easy in text but it’s not even close. Sometimes all you really need is a faster horse so are you going to spend your time developing and testing a car or breeding horses?
One more, bonus, quote: “If you look long enough into the void the void begins to look back through you.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Andrew, thank you for your comments. I was stuck on the notion of literally giving customer what they ask for versus finding out what the customer wants – you’ve done a great job of illustrating the difference.