The dynamics of customer management – 2

If the feelers and the various photographs coming from London are to be believed, then it would be safe to assume that President Buhari should be on his way back to Nigeria in the shortest possible time. This is a highly gratifying development and all Nigerians who wish the President well should look forward to his safe return to the country. This should put paid to any and every speculation about the actual state of his health. We pray for his quick and full recovery. Back to our discourse.

Last week, I stated that effective customer management begins with the ability to discern the various types of connections in the market. I want to identify two more levels of connections today.

A sale happens when you are able to make a customer pay commensurate value or price for the service or product that you offer him. It does not happen when he takes the decision to buy. There are several products in the market that we decide we need to buy but never actually buy! Success in the market is therefore about decisions connecting with pockets. A promise to buy is not the same as actually buying. The promise must translate to a decision and the decision must birth an action. One qualitative action is of greater value than one million intentions. Intentions may generate ideas but only decisions create events. What you require therefore is an event – read purchase – that makes the customer willingly put his money in your pocket and your value in his hands!

The final type of connection is perhaps the most important because the only guarantee that any brand has of succeeding in the marketplace has to do with experience matching perception. Every promise that a brand makes will generate certain expectations from prospective customers. These expectations make the difference in setting the customer’s preference for certain products. It is the difference between a phone that has a Random Access Memory of 512 megabytes and 4 gigabytes of internal or external storage with 4 mega pixels of photo quality and another that promises 3G of RAM and an internal memory of 16 or 32G with a provision for an external card of 32G with 16 mega pixels of photo quality. Anyone who buys the former would definitely not expect to do much of video and heavy graphics. It should not be surprising if the photos are blurry. But if someone shells out money for the latter, expecting to have extended video, photo and graphics with an astounding quality of resolution, only to discover that the gadget cannot deliver half of what it promises, there is already a disconnect and that brand might as well begin to compose its own Nunc Dimitis in preparation for exiting the market!

Every buying decision is first and foremost at the level of the emotions. Anyone who is selling anything and who fails to realize this will be an astounding disaster in the marketplace. No customer exists to satisfy you. Every customer wants to satisfy himself. So whatever he buys must be contributing something significant to his quest for happiness. So he desires to bond with the promise of the brand through a positive experience, even if his only reason for buying the product is to aid an unbraided ego trip. This is the only reason why people would show off their latest acquisition that helps to massage that ego, notwithstanding the fact that they may not even have mastered or cared to master the product’s functionalities. Many people who ride luxury range cars have stated too long in the owner’s corner to know about the various distinguishing functions of the car! So you would still find many owners of heavy four-wheel drives stuck in muddy waters like any other person who drives a regular two-wheel drive!

When the appropriate connection is made between the brand promise and customer experience, very little advertising is needed because the customer transforms himself into the unsolicited spokesman for you and the product.

For the identified connections to happen successfully therefore, you must learn how to manage your customer well because he is the link between you and those connections. In managing a customer, it is vital to note that you are not managing a figure of statistics or a random, nondescript individual. You are managing the customer’s make up.

The first thing you must manage well in a customer is perception. Our paradigms shape our perceptions. As I have stated above, perception is what sells or destroys a brand. It is more expensive to change a bad perception than it is to build a good one ab initio. Expensive adverts and huge billboards may get you noticed but you had better have something that justifies them in the customer’s perception or your brand will be grounded! Brands don’t succeed because of what the customer SEES. They succeed because of what the customer FEELS!

Secondly, you are in the business of managing preferences. Unless you have a monopoly of your value proposition – trust me, if it is of any good, the monopoly will be short-lived – it is vital to note that every product or value in the market is simply another way of offering alternatives to the customer. Alternatives simply activate the power of choice that reflects where the preference index of the customer is. More often than not, people do not just buy a product. They buy how it makes them feel. This is why you must concentrate on projecting your distinction before the customer rather than concentrating on your competitor. Create a “waoh!” effect for the customer in a way that makes him have no qualms about choosing the value you are projecting! The distinction of your value proposition simplifies the customer’s decision-making process. Benchmark yourself by your customer’s needs – for quality products or service, for affirmation, for happiness, for power – rather than by what your competitor is doing! In every business that wants sustainability, the leaders in the organization must constantly ask themselves, “What is our coat of many colours?” That was what made Joseph in the Bible stand out from his brothers. Another way of putting it is “What is the sycamore tree that we, like Zaccheus, can climb that gets us noticed over and above everyone else competing for attention in our market?” Or, simply put “What is it that we are wired to do differently?”

So, to manage your customers’ preferences, pay close attention to your distinction. It is not just enough to identify it. Project it! An unprotected distinction is an invitation to an unrewarded proposition!… continued

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!