Should your customers trust you?
Many organisations promise a lot but then deliver less. It is tempting when income streams dry up to cut a few corners, downgrade on the specification, buy cheaper parts, and hope the end user does not notice. They notice and they leave!
If your product doesn't do what it says on the tin. If you promise one thing and deliver another, then you are probably going to get found out, and your customers will go. But it gets worse.. they will go and tell ten friends, they will discuss it in the boardroom and at the water cooler..
You are basically stuffed.
The hard work you put in building your brand can be ruined far quicker than it took to make it in the 1st place.
How to ruin your brand in four easy steps.
Purple Sheep's step by step guide to commercial suicide.
Step 1. - Create a great product.
You do this by listening to the market. Truely understanding consumer needs and desires and delivering a solution before anyone else. Do not confuse this step with 'create a product' You have to be 1st and original, otherwise you are an alternative product! You could only compete on price so you will never be a great brand if you compromise during the design phase.
Step 2. - Build Sales and Brand Reputaion.
This will be easy if you followed step 1.
Great products sell by word of mouth. People enjoy using them and enjoy telling their friends. This is an important point as it will aid in our mission to destroy our business.
Step 3. - Cheapen the blend.
Now you know what your customer needs and wants you are safe right?
You have the distribution and the reputation. A wee tweak to the blend of parts and services won't hurt.
Maybe you have built sufficient volume that you can deliver more efficient products via an integrated pipeline. You pay less and deliver the same value.
That won't help us on our mission.We need to substitute those well performing elements for lesser and cheaper bits and bobs. In the long-term we want the consumer experience to be just a little less.
Step 4. - Ignore the competition
While we have been focussing on ripping off our suppliers and our customers some bright spark has copied our business model, but improved the features and the delivery time. They took our offering to the next level and are effectively stealing our market share. Don't worry about this.. It's going to help. For goodness sake do not speak to your customers and ask how you can improve your own offering.
Step 4 (b). - Sit back and wait.
That is all you have to do. More quickly than you built your brand you have destroyed it. Your products are breaking down, when they finally get delivered that is.
Your customers are blogging againts you and spreading the word of what a remarkably pathetic company you have become.
Case Study: The Death of Retail
Please don't buy our products!
Here is a short story about an everyday experience. If you want your company to vainsh be like these guys... It is bizarre how many companies out there are blaming the economic downturn for their downfall.
Companies can grow now if they get smart!
Customers are good for business
So why do you ingnore them?Recently I decided I needed a USB memory stick / flash drive thingy. Buying on-line threw up too many options and I didn't know who to trust. So I drove to a local retail park.
I was on a short lunch break, suit and tie, looking like I had money but not much time. The 1st store was empty of customers as I was just ahead of the lunch time crowd. It was a large national electonics retailer with an enormous choice of products. I counted seven staff in uniform, none of whom asked to help me.. I waved down one eventually and asked where the memory sticks are.. I was pointed in the general direction.
After many minutes of confusion I made my selection and headed for a counter. Where I stood.. I watched staff gossip, play, one even acknowldeged me and said someone would help, but when?
Eventually I left the product on the counter and went next door.
The next shop, another large retail chain, was busy.. just as many staff.. but none that seemed willing to help. The products were more exensive but I was willing to pay a premuim to get service. Ten minutes later I left for my business meeting without my product and with all my cash..
I told all the people in the meeting and now I am telling you.. Some of the business leaders in my meeting where reatailers. The general consensus was that retail is failing not because people now buy on-line, not because people dont have money.
Retail is dying becuase it is a frustrating and awful experience for the consumer.
The staff at these stores will face redundancy, the boss will miss that bonus, and they will all blame politicians and the internet.. It is up to you to give the customer the experience she deserves.
You have no right to customers, earn it!
To learn more go follow these links...
Design Thinking
Market Led innovation
The Big Picture
How to Destroy Your Busisness
The Ten Rules of Innovation
Return to Sensibility
Fuzzy innovation
Innovation Workplace
Business as Unusual
The Death of Retail
Brand Integrity
Hope is not a Strategy
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