If a customer leaves negative feedback, files a complaint, gets mad for something, writes a bad review, speaks ill of your product or service, stops paying you, one of two things is true.
Trying to explain they are wrong, and behaving as if 1 or 2 (or both) are not possible is simply a worthless, damaging exercise.
If even Google forgets this, it’s probably a good idea to keep it in mind in our daily marketing practices.
Some problems would greatly benefit from a more customer centric approach.
One of them is cybersecurity. We all laugh at how silly it is to use “1234” or “p4ssw0rd” as credentials to access any type of service, and we all know we should not use the same password on different websites, or stick the password on our computers. And yet, most people do just that. Because keeping in mind more than a bunch of easy-to-remember passwords is taxing, because not all are aware of password managers softwares (they don’t come preinstalled in your devices), and because even when you install one you realize that the experience is not exactly easy – between syncing across devices, two-factors authentication, master password recovery, and whatnot.
If change in the world is what we seek to achieve, we need to be brutally focused on how the people we want to change go about their routines, what they care about, why they should even bother, and what we can do to actually enhance their lives while change makes it course. Resistance and indifference is the other side of the coin, and in some cases it might mean a whole lot worse consequences than the failure of a business.
When adding complexity to a customer experience, we should ask if we do so to deliver more value or to put a patch on some insecurity of our organization.
Having customers queueing on the phone just means we are not sure we will be able to handle their questions.
Sneaking an hidden price in the service just means we are not sure people would pay for it.
Asking a question that does not change the transaction in any way when the customer is at the counter and ready to buy just means we are not sure we have enough information.
Pushing ads when the customer is seeking content just means we are not sure the customer would pay for the content alone.
Needs and wants are often fairly simple and straightforward, and it is worth the effort to attempt to meet them on the same field. On the other hand, fears and doubts are often quite layered and complex, and it is delusional to believe we can push them to the customers by keeping their experiences worth living.
Why would people rent a car and not drive it?
Even a service as straightforward as car rentals can have things to figure out. So chances are your product, your service, your software might not be used for the application it was originally designed for.
Two points to make here.
If that’s the case, and most likely it is, the best way to find out what is happening is asking your customers. No need to sit in a meeting room with product, marketing, sales, customer success to second guess the needs of your audience. Ask them. Actually, get them involved and listen to them even if everything is going as planned. That’s almost always a signal that you are missing something.
Then, how do you react to finding out? You might be instictively led to force the original use on the customers. Teach them, penalize them, leverage price and place to guide the wrong users away. Or you could make an opportunity out of it, understand that your plans are irrelevant, leverage product and promotion to adapt to what you have found.
Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes (or in anybody else’s, for that matter) is not a great advice.
It might be a good introduction to the context and the surroundings of the customers, but eventually you will most likely end up taking with you a lot of your thoughts, ideas, assumptions, models, preferences, plans. What you will see is what you want to see, not necessarily what the customers see.
A better alternative is to talk with your customers (or anybody else you want to understand). Talk as in sit down with them, with no distractions, listen deeply, ask open questions, listen more, pay special attention to their language, their thought process, their ideas, and what they don’t say. There you can find information worth processing and turning into actions.
You've got this 