The marketing philosophy of business holds that the value of the assets of a company rests on its customers. Oil reserves, for example, are carried on companies'books today as assets, but they were worthless for millennia until customers wanted oil and they will be worthless once again when customers no longer want oil. Without customers, a company's book value is mostly a fiction or historical artifact. This is why companies must view their business from the perspective of their customers: Theirs is the only perspective that matters. In marketing we know that good things happen to people who have good customers.
Human resources thinks differently. HR thinks people make a company. In other words, good things happen to people who hire good people. I once heard a senior manager (with an HR background) respond to a skeptical question about his company's market entry strategy by stating that he had plans to hire the best people, pay them well, build them into sharp and focused teams, and so forth. Marketing thinks that good people come to good things. If the company's marketing strategy is flawed, good people will be too smart to join or stay.
Finance thinks differently, too. Stock analysts, for example, try to maintain good relationships with top managers of the companies they follow so they maintain access to good information; they don't want to be "frozen out." Marketing would think stock analysts should maintain good relationships with key customers of the companies they follow, that a customer's perspective on a company is more revealing than the perspective offered by that company's managers.
Viewing your own business from the customer's perspective, however, is easier said than done. Companies talk a good game about being "customer driven." They mouth the slogans, hang up the banners, and make beautiful mission and vision statements that put the customer front and center. Then life continues as usual.
Banks open after you go to work and close before you get off work. This is inconvenient for almost anybody who works for a living - except the people who work for banks. Since the inconvenience never touches the people who work for banks, however, banks have only very reluctantly - and minimally - embraced the idea of opening for business at times that are convenient for the customers.
My bank in Holland listed various time-consuming transactions that would not be performed during lunch hours. I assumed the reason for this policy might be that lunch hour naturally is very busy. Always interested to test my assumptions, I asked the teller for an explanation. "Because some of our tellers are away on lunch," she informed me.
When I do consultation or teaching for a cellular phone company, I am always one of the few people present, if not the only one, who actually has shopped and paid for a phone or paid a phone bill. Everybody who is anybody in a cellular phone company gets a phone for free. The model depends on your level in the company, and the monthly bill is paid, too.
Car company CEOs do not shop or pay for cars, they do not keep a lemon, they do not drop off a car at the dealer. Bill Gates does not waste his time deciphering his own error messages. Running shoe company execs get all the running shoes they want - made by their own company - for free.
Many senior managers have zero true-to-life consumption experience with their product and service. The more important the decisions you make, the less likely it is that you encounter the uncooperative warehouse manager, the torturous phone system, the baffling computer information system, or the infuriating finance department. And the less likely it is that you shop for your product or pay for your product.
This helps explain why companies may make plans and pronouncements that to any outside observer are obviously ludicrous. For example, according to Ron Zarrella, GM's former North American president: "By 2002, Cadillac should be recognized in North America as the preeminent luxury brand." ( September 18, 2000 , Fortune) Only someone deep inside GM could utter such a bold impossibility in public with a straight face and without blushing. I am willing to offer a bet that Cadillac - despite its great design, great commercials, and excellent value for money - will not even be among the top three luxury brands in the discernible future. In fact, I'll take odds of 10 to 1, extend the deadline to 2010, and I won't lose five minutes of sleep, except to think how I will spend my winnings.
This inside perspective causes the "people love us" disease. So many people have bought our product X. They love us.
They surely can't wait to buy pro-duct Y from us, too. The disease infected three video game companies in a row. Atari was a hugely successful video game company during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Atari then decided to produce a personal computer and name it the Atari 800, or Atari 2000. I assume you didn't buy one. Not many people did.
Nintendo dreamed that it could build on its loyal customer base in the United States to upgrade its equipment and offer home banking services. There was even some concern in Congress about implications of Japanese control over the banking by America's households. It hasn't happened yet and you can stop holding your breath.
Sony now believes that the next stage in its Playstation success will be to offer home banking services or TV watching services and whatnot. Dream on, Sony. Perhaps Sony and GM could do a little trade here. Sony could explain the difference between Cadillacs and preeminent luxury cars to GM, and GM could explain the difference between Playstations and banking services to Sony.
The article is an excerpt from The Marketing You Never Knew, Chapter 2, ˇ°Marketing, What It Isˇ±.
