Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

The pre-twentieth grocer was, what we now call a Word of Mouth Marketer. He cared and nurtured his customers as individuals. He had a customer satisfaction program in place and was committed to his own retention system. He relied on a form on his own knowledge about that particular customer.

There is no shortage of cheap advice for today's business executive. Go to your local bookstore and for thirty bucks or less, you can learn to go in 'Search of Excellence' or how to 'Reinvent the Corporation'. Time a problem? You can become a 'One Minute Manager' for ten bucks or read about 'The Habits of Highly Successful People'. You can spend your day keeping abreast of the latest fads and fashions of business in the nineties. If you only had the time!

The one common thread that runs through all the books and articles is communication and keeping close to your customer, an idea as old as commerce itself.

How to do this in these times? There just is not the personal contact with your customers that we enjoyed a few short years ago. Companies have down sized to the point that executives are doing double time.

The new communication technologies; voice mail, Internet, cellular phones have, to a large degree, eliminated the human touch in the interests of efficiency. A smart business executive will recognize that old chatty communications channels have dried up and they are looking for ways to create a climate where new channels exist where the customer is being served.

The world of advertising is a favorite method of communicating, unfortunately this is one sided. It is usually directed at producing new clients and is very one sided. The world of mass advertising is very expensive and is the domain of the larger corporations who are interested in increasing market share. Smart advertisers are focusing their advertising messages to specific objectives. Companies are realizing that it costs in excess of 6 times as much to gain a new customer than regenerating an existing one. It is well known that the best customers come from referrals.

He carried his database in his head, but now technology is making it possible for the modern marketer to assume the role of the small proprietor, doing business again with individuals, One-Customer-at-a-Time. Now, technology and advance in marketing and making it possible to assume the role of the grocer, and out maneuver your competitor and large corporations.

But is this important to your customer? A recent report by The Conference Board of Canada stated. "They explained customer satisfaction as consistently meeting customers' needs and needs is defined by customers, not the supplier. In other words requirements should not be assumed: rather customers should be consulted and their requirements should drive the organization."

Talking to you sales and customer service staff has traditionally done gathering accurate information on how you are performing. This information is very biased. "A sure way to get misleading, useless result is to call a staff meeting, brainstorm a list of service attributes, make them into a questionnaire to hundreds of customers and precisely tabulate the answers." warns William Davidlow inTotal Customer Service. "Your staff usually tells you only what is in their best interest and customers rarely tell you what is on their minds."

To throw in another quotation, this one from Benjamin Disraelli "there are three kinds of lies, damned lies and statistics" so be careful out there. www.opinionnaire.ca