Two recent experiences have made me question conventional wisdom.
- A co-owner of a small business, which is a seasonal activity destination popular with families, replied this to my question about what her customers want: “I don’t care what our customers want. They’ll come anyway and take whatever we give them.” (I’m paraphrasing, but only slightly.)
- The receptionist at a specialty healthcare business, which has no website, said this to my phone request for a co-owner’s email address: “Mr. X doesn’t do email, and we don’t have a general email for the office. Can you fax it?” (I had to admit I don’t do fax.)
From all available information, both corporations are financially sustainable, and doing well, if not thriving, despite these puzzling facts. What’s going on?
Who cares about customers?
Marketing requires discovering your target group’s needs and then satisfying them. Asking customers what they want can be counterproductive, however. Any customer response is likely to be a rationalization and hence inaccurate. It can also be the wrong way to innovate: just ask Facebook or Twitter, or consider some of the crowdsourcing disasters out there. All businesses know that the customer isn’t always right and doesn’t always know best. But never asking customers for feedback or not caring about their views?
The first business in question can afford to ignore its customers’ opinions because:
- It offers a time-sensitive service that dominates the market for similar services in a specific and unique geographic location.
- It has outstanding brand name recognition; for some, a trip to the location is synonymous with a trip to the business.
- It’s been around for decades, in the course of which it had plenty of opportunities to figure out what sells and what doesn’t – it knows what its customers want without having to ask them, just by looking at the sales figures.
You can disregard your customers for a number of these and other reasons, though the most common one will relate to your market monopoly or near-monopoly.
You can also find out what your customers want indirectly. Or you can create the need for your product. But sooner or later, inattention to your customers’ needs will catch up with you. Now that I know this company’s attitude, I’ll adjust my trip to their region accordingly.
Email is so 1993
The second example offers a more puzzling challenge. Commercial email has been around since before the World Wide Web. Email remains the dominant means of electronic communication and an effective marketing tool. Can a business nowadays operate without email?
It can if it doesn’t consider itself a business. The email-less corporation is a small medical specialty, and most healthcare professionals will tell you they aren’t business people, they are physicians or healers or whatever.
A company can also operate without email if its business comes primarily through other means. A small, specialty medical practice may not feel the need to market itself: its customers (patients) come through referrals. The specialty in question gets all their business from the nearby hospital. Once again, a (near)monopoly situation.
Finally, if the healthcare business dominates the local market for its highly specialized services, marketing will appear unnecessary, and phone, fax, and mail will suffice as communication means.
These are just my rationalizations – I still don’t get how a business can function without email in 2009. Plus the non-use of a standard e-communication tool hardly inspires trust in the highly specialized service that requires the use of intricate machines.
I guess that’s what defying conventional wisdom means.
What do you think? Have you dealt with businesses that don’t care what their customers think or that have no email? Are the above examples potential inspiration for sustainable businesses or is sustainability in their case a non-issue? Please share in Comments.
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Image credit: jimmywayne
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Comment from Facebook:
Shannon Latimer Marchat said, “To the above: Welcome to France! Don’t get me wrong – I love this country, but I have never seen so little information about businesses available online and/or an absolute lack of response when you do try to use their email. Even bigger companies have emails like frenchcompany@ yahoo.fr (ex). It’s maddening! It seems like nobody has or uses the internet!
And good god almighty to the owner of the first business “I don’t care what my customers think…”
Wow! Even though company #1 (I don’t care what my customers think”) has what sounds like a dominant position, I would be surprised if this isn’t costing them financially.
Sure, they may be the only game in town, but if they treat their customers with such disdain, I doubt that they are maximizing their “Customer Lifetime Value”. Not only will customers spend more money (per transaction) when they feel appreciated, but they are more likely to be repeat customers and also refer others to this business.
Based on this, they probably would increase revenue by caring more about their customers.
@Shannon: Thanks for making me feel better about business practices in the U.S.
@Anne: I don’t think the company treats its customers with disdain. After all, they sell what sells, so in a way the feedback loop works.
You are right to assert that people will spend more, return more times, and refer more when they feel appreciated. The problem is, because this company doesn’t care to learn what would make its customers feel appreciated, they’ll never find out.
By the way, if you’ve been here in Portland for a few years, I’m pretty sure you’ve spent some money at this company…