Not Making the Change [1 of 2]

Abstract


This document is a consideration of the absence of customer centricity. It is general in its scope, and seeks to touch upon some of the larger patterns.



Introduction

Classically, even successful marketing operations, when large enough, disconnect from the managerial perspective experience in the trenches. In large measure, the rationale for this occurrence is that these are separate worlds.

The dilemma is that there is this phenomenon of degradation of communication and purpose across a wide spectrum of products and service providers. Much like making a copy from a copy from a copy from a copy, with each remove in the production of a facsimile image when can actually witness the graphic progression of deterioration. Unless there is a conscious effort to intervene and reinsert something close to, if not the original itself, the breakdown is something one can count on.

When one asks which companies are becoming more customer-centric, and which are not, the exercise here of defining terms shifts the perspective to include other constructs. While one company may generally express itself better than another may (and clearly this is managerial operations), a consumer experience "in the trenches" can vary akin to winning a lottery. This may have to do, in part, to the size of the organization, what it pays its base employees (including benefits are not), what it asks of its employees, its structure and a variety of other excuses.

This is where the rubber meets the road. This too is managerial operations, where assessments of marketing reengineering transcend business as usual.



Retail

Have you been in Wal-Mart? This icon of consumer capitalism is fraught with issues. You may find yourself in a department with the question and no one is around to answer it. You may be reviewing a kiosk of product, the top half of which is one price and the bottom half another … or maybe there's no price marked anywhere. The configurations are endless.

This writer, frustrated with customers in front of me in a 20 item or less line, engaged management (at the store level) about this. The response was a reluctance to accept a paying customer. My suggestion was to amend the signage with the disclaimer that every item over the 20 would invite an additional progressive charge based on a price percentage, and that this overage would in no way go to Wal-Mart itself, but to a rotating charity of the month. This would turn a frustrating situation into a win-win-win. Management still would not have to confront customers, customers would self regulate, and local charities would reap the benefits. The feedback given was that management's hands were tied (at the store level management was unable to have an effective voice, unable to bubble the idea up).

Caitlin Kelly, in her new book Malled, explodes the results of these kinds of disconnects as she chronicles her experiences working in a retail outlet in a typical American shopping mall (NPR, 2011). A few of the expressions include more theft occurs by employees than customers, employee disrespect by customers seems almost a given and what is asked of employees regularly inconveniences the individuals to the cost of their health, security, etc.