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Even if you're serving the same group of customers, their needs may have changed. This may mean having to change some deep-rooted beliefs.
Ireland is my home. However, there are certain things about Ireland that drive me crazy. For the sake of my mental health, I avoid buying a newspaper. Whenever I come across a news program, I reach for the remote.
It's not that I don't care about the affairs of the nation. I just feel that the Irish media is married to misery. I got out
of a taxi five minutes ago where I was forced to listen to the latest instalment. It was all about "spiralling crime rates" and how things are going "out of control."
Here is a recent heading from The Irish Times: "Unicef says Irish child poverty among worst." Six paragraphs of lambasting Ireland follow, and in the seventh, it states that Ireland ranks
ninth out of the 21 countries measured.
For a long time, Ireland's biggest export was people and our biggest industry misery. We did misery better than anyone. We made millions off miserable childhoods (Angela's Ashes). Only an Irishman (Samuel Beckett) could say: "I can't go on. I won't go on. I'll go on."
Then in the '90ss, all changed, changed utterly, a tiger economy was born. Like a March hare, Ireland bolted from being one of the poorest countries in Europe to being one of the richest.
Unbelievable things began to happen. People actually started coming to Ireland looking for work (instead of their ancestors). Irish people were still leaving but this time on winter skiing holidays or to buy a summer home in France.
Most Irish people I know have adapted well to the shock of prosperity. However, there are still some sulking in the corner. There are a few who are bitter about not having much to be bitter about anymore. Many of these must work in the Irish media.
The Irish media longs for the stereotype of the drunken Irishman mired in poverty. It yearns for the good old 1980s when factory closures were soaring and emigration was roaring.
Those were the good old misery days, when the cynic was seen as sensible, and to be bleak and negative was to be utterly realistic. People lapped up the bad news because what else was there to do? The Irish customer has changed but I don't think the Irish media has.
"Our primary customer is a male businessman in his 40s," a Web manager from a large organization stated. The audience of about 40 employees nodded vigorously in agreement.
A hand rose from the back. "Actually, we have done extensive annual studies over the last eight years, and in fact our primary customer is a woman in her 20s." Shock and silence; disbelief. Times had changed but the stereotype hadn't.
Knowing your customer is the first thing any Web professional must do. The best way to know your customer is to regularly interact with them, while keeping an open mind. But before you can do that... you need to know who exactly it is you need to interact with.
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Comments
Gerry,
Know what your customers look like: It's the first brick in the foundation of business.
I have an April presentation coming up in Dallas called "Add Some Profit to Your Next Latte: Learnings from Starbucks and Life
Getting the Attention of Small Businesses. My second story unfolds like this:
If you walked into any Starbucks store or into the Starbucks Support Center in Seattle and picked any employee at random, then asked: What does a Starbucks customer look like? They might respond with something like this:
“Our typical customer is a woman, usually professionally trained, often with children, between the ages of 30 and 50 years old, either still working or possibly staying at home temporarily to raise her children, who wants a place to get away from the office or home, and to be around other women like herself.”
While that would have been pretty accurate a decade ago when I was at Starbucks, it may be somewhat different today. The point is that it’s no accident that Starbucks employees know who their customers are. It has been and remains a key to Starbucks success that they focus on the who not the what. In short, Starbucks sells a customer experience, not a cup of coffee.
By knowing who their customers are, Starbucks creates an experience that suits their customers wants and needs.
Like Starbucks, we need to understand who our customers are and cater to their wants and needs. Because small businesses, like all businesses, and like all customers don’t buy widgets, they buy an experience.
Posted by: Lewis Green | 02.20.07
Have you heard of thin slicing yet?
Mike Wagner at http://www.ownyourbrand.com/ started a thin slicing meme
Check out my first thin slice at my blog.
Lewis, I am sorry but Starbucks in Tucson is so lame. I never have a great experience.
Posted by: Tammy Strnatka | 02.20.07
This is why I feel why focusing on problem/solution is more important than on specific client demographics. As long as people are having the problems you can help them with, you'll have business.
Posted by: Dawud Miracle | 02.20.07
The danger in profiling a "typical customer" is that the reality may well be that there are eight different typical customers, each representing a separate segment of your customers. Three may be female, five male, six may prefer bricks and mortar, three may prefer online or catalog,etc.
For many businesses there may be no "typical" customer, any more than there is a typical American or a typical South African.
Posted by: Glenn (Customer Service Experience) Ross | 02.20.07