Customer Experience Design

Spending on the right things

“I wish that more money and time was spent on designing an exceptional product, and less on trying to psychologically manipulate perceptions through expensive advertising.” – Phil Kotler.

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Now ain’t that the truth.

0.758% of potential customers can be wrong

Ask most companies what the response rate to the mailings they send out is and they’ll generally be able to give you a very accurate figure. Probably down to several decimal points. So out of 100,000 mailings to potential customers they’ll know that say 0.758% took them up on the offer. And they’ll know that they beat their target of say 0.7%. So in this example they’ve gained an extra 758 customers. Time to break out the champagne!

They’ll also have a very accurate picture of how much it cost to send the mailings out. They’ll know what the anticipated revenue from those customers who decided to buy will be. They’ll therefore be able to calculate the profit they’re going to make as a result.

And from what they’ve learned from this they’ll be able to fine tune and adapt the next mail-shot.

This is a business with its finger on the pulse. Right?

Wrong.

This is a business in trouble.

This is a business that knows nothing about the 99,242 potential customers who failed to respond to the mailing.

This is a business that has no idea how many of those potential customers it’s just pissed off with its (probably) impersonal and irrelevant mailing.

This is a business that has no idea how many of those pissed off potential customers have vowed never to buy from the business because of how naff its advertising is.

This is a business that’s probably losing customers as fast as it gains them.

This is a business that's probably competing almost entirely on price.

This is a business that’s become trapped in the way it does things.

This is a business that can’t see past the end of its short-term nose.

Is your business like this?.

Interested enough to pay for it

Back when the world was flat (well almost) the postal system in the UK used to work very differently to how it works now.

For a start, you had to pay to receive a letter. So if the postman arrived at your door with a letter you had the option of either paying him sixpence so that you could open and read it, or refusing the letter and paying nothing in which case it would be returned to the sender.

Now of course it costs nothing to receive a letter.  Apart from your time in wading through all the spam,  your irritation at getting it in the first instance, and your frustration at the rubbish that so many companies throw at you in the hope that you'll buy something from them.

This makes me wonder if the original way of doing things might have some value after all? You wouldn't pay to receive rubbish and spam would you. So maybe that would make advertisers and marketers do things a bit differently. Maybe they'd have to work on developing ways you trust in them so that you'd be interested enough to pay for anything they sent you.  So you'd give them your explicit permission to market to you.  Yes of course it requires a different approach. A different attitude. A different intent.

Most things that are hugely successful have these too.