The Old Paradigm Rules

In today’s world, customer centricity is well emphasized. This is what one used to see in the world’s oldest profession from time immemorial. Nothing new. They allowed customers to decide what they want. When they want and where they want. They were symbols of true marketing. They offered the best platform for networking and sharing. Allowed customers to drive policies, drive pricing, drive product and of course, experiences. They allowed customers to give, take and share. An ultimate flexibility that was just a norm of doing business. Frankly, it was really all about personalized interactions. And technology did not enable it. Yes, am still talking of the oldest profession.

Today corporate marketers try to use the same principles in varied degrees of success. They use the latest widgets in Web 2.0 to increase interaction with customers. Interestingly, Web 2.0 rules on the same premise as the oldest known business. As a consumer/customer, it allows you to share your opinions, beliefs, feedback, dreams, needs, apprehensions, joys, emotions, fears, anger …the list can go on. Believe me, there is someone at the other end who is listening. Web 2.0 actually allows you a path to customer centricity.

What happens to that listening is critical. Often, corporate houses have annual initiatives and customer interaction becomes one of them. This resides with a person or a group who take the command from management and drive it to the best possible way – within their limitations and vision. They provide reports to management on a monthly basis talking of how many people registered, how many participated and how many were good remarks and how many were bad. How many have given a positive recommendation and how many were neutral. These are numbers – and we are so comfortable with numbers. After the novelty goes, two quarters down the line (or for a larger company a year down the line), this becomes a liability that enters the expense side of the balance sheet. The management is no longer interested, as they have proudly tried a new initiative and the finance department asks for a cost cutting there. Most unfortunate are the companies where these initiatives continue for years and years to come – what results from these are web statistics that frankly has little meaning here.

These are not stray cases. Think about Web 2.0 initiatives in your organization, you will possibly have to justify it or argue for it. And if you have envisioned it or implemented it, take a harder look. One of the large IT companies started to show their supremacy in Web 2.0 and hence build a customer experience site that was supposed to be monitored by the account executives of the firm. There was a fancy opening. It was launched online through a webcast. The webcast participation was only by invitation. Key senior management was on board. All program managers and project managers from the client side were on board. So were the IT company’s staff – delivery heads, sales & marketing and talent heads, and other support staff. Friends of employees and clients. And this was an ‘only by invitation’ webcast.

Three months after this fanfare, a client called the COO of the company and inquired about the action taken on a certain dissatisfaction that he had posted on the site a couple of months back. Any guesses as to where the message was lost? The initiative team did not understand the issue and hence did not know who to send it to. And teh account manager did not bother checking her client responses, nor did the COO. This happens more often that you would like it to be.

Good tools, technologies and ideas. Bad implementation – a function of commitment to customers was the issue. What was missing was customer centricity – it was certainly better done by the oldest profession without these tools and technologies. They were simple – customer centric.

Hence, next time you decide to tread upon one of the new buzzes in the industry, remember the old paradigm. Customer Centricity. You would do any of these only if you are committed to your customers and to serving them better.

I will try to pen down my thoughts on how to use Web 2.0 in certain industries and what can be realistically achieved in my next articles. In the mean time, do send me your comments, views and perceptions on this article.