Why do customers do what they do?

Recently, I was reminded of a passage from The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. The answer to the question of life and everything is: 42. That in itself is the source of a plethora of questions... but that is another story in itself. 

This got me thinking though about the golden question about customers... "Why do customers do what they do?". Like the age old question about "life and everything", this one also does not have a clear and finite answer. You can pick up a number or a reason from the air, so to speak, and try to explain customer situations to those numbers. I say "try", because they will not always be explainable... many times you will attribute them as "outliers" or "special conditions". 

Bottom line is that, the customer psychology is a very complex being and not something you can define in terms of mathematics or logic. There is a lot of emotion attached to any action that a customer takes. 

Traffic Jammed Customer Service

How many of us have endured endless wait times when calling customer service numbers? Or suffered through long lines at a POS counter? Or even waiting for a website to load and log you in for online self service. All of these are cases of "traffic jams" in the customer services of an organization.

Customers Are Like Children... Really?

My oldest turned 3 a few months ago. I was reflecting on how she has grown and her behavior changed over the years. Well, lets say that parenting has become challenging as years go by. As I pondered over the principles of parenting that are commonly known, I came across the notion of thinking of a customer in the same light as your "child".

Before I start, let me say I am not in any way talking about customers being children and thus being treated like them. What I am indicating is that there are stark similarities between parenting strategies and what we can apply to customer management.

First, lets look at the similarities in customer behavior and children (those of you who are parents should be nodding your heads as you read on. )

Value is in the Eyes of the Customer

The Subjective Theory of Value states that value of a product or service is based on the subjective importance of it to an individual. You can read more about the details and economic theory behind this on the link here.

Lets look at this theory in the light of customer relationships. There is evidence all around us that the value of certain relationships is different from customer to customer. Where one will value a social network presence of an organization more than visiting their physical office, others will have a different opinion.

Is your organization "human"?

Relationships are personal. Some more than others, but none-the-less quite personal. Similarly, buying decisions can be personal. It is not necessary that I will go out and purchase the cheapest and most positively reviewed product. I may spend a few more dollars to get the product from a local store, or a store where I like to visit, or an online store that accepts my PayPal account. The reasons are un-ending, the irrationality behind the reasons is constant though. But I digress, I will surely touch on this in more detail in a later post.

The Golden Rule and the Customer

Recently, I read a post from Don Peppers, talking about what it would take to make a genuinely trustable airline.  In his post he refers to the Golden Rule, "Do onto others as you would have them do onto you." That sparked a thought in my mind about how we treat our customers today.

Do we really follow this rule? A bigger question is, do we need to?

How Many of Your Customers Are Your "Friends"?

Lets start with the definition of "Friend" here. That shouldn't be a hard question, but if you ask someone what is the meaning of "Friend", you will find a lot of different answers.

A friend defined by an online dictionary is:
1. a person known well to another and regarded with liking, affection, and loyalty; an intimate
2. an acquaintance or associate
3. an ally in a fight or cause; supporter
4. a fellow member of a party, society, etc
5. a patron or supporter: a friend of the opera

Customers Response to Change - A Behavioral View

How does a customer react to change? What is the impact on the customer when a change in product or service confronts him/her? These are a couple of the questions which spawned the thoughts around Customer Change Management (as I started to call it). There are various studies ranging from behavioral to business best practices which tell us about how people react to change. The one I found suited a typical response to a change in products/services by a customer is based on “The Stages of Change Model”. This model was originally developed by James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente at the University of Rhode Island back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

Can Organization Silos Be Beneficial?

A while back, I had written about the disadvantages of organization silos and the detrimental impact that they can have on an organization's ability to understand the customer and build a single view of their products and services. Recently, I challenged my idea about silos.

Preempting Services… Is this the next step?

Traditionally, we wait for our customers to reach out to us for services. Customers go to our self service websites, contact us on social networks, call our call centres or even walk into our service centres to get their queries answered. This is as I term it “Reactive” services. We wait for the customers to come to us. While this works great in a lot of cases, organisations need differentiators.

Business Vs. IT : Who owns the CRM Strategy?

It always amazes me how often this question comes up in discussions with customers. In fact, there are times I discuss this topic even with my fellow consultants. My position has always been the same: “Business Owns the CRM Strategy”, but the debate almost always gets interesting.