How to think like a customer: step #1
Step #1: Stop assuming that your perspective is an effective surrogate for the perspectives of real customers.
That’s right. The first step toward customer centricity is to admit you’re not a customer.
This is still true if you : (1) used to be a customer, (2) sell every day to customers, (3) take customer service/tech support calls all day from your customers, (4) stand in front of customers every day handling service delivery.
Why is your view tainted?
1. Economic incentives. Your current employer pays your salary, determines your bonus plan, sets day-to-day priorities. Very few companies pay you to put your customers’ interests ahead of the company’s interests. Seeking a win-win with your customers is not the same.
2. Recency. To function in your current company, you can’t think like a customer. You have to think like an employee. You can remember how it used to be, but to survive now you must act within the jargon and organization structure and management goals and financial incentives of the company that’s paying your mortgage. Your former perspective when at other companies is blurred by the recency effect: what I need to care about now.
Even the most highly skilled, Method-trained actor is only guessing. A real hit man, alcoholic, abused wife, terrorist, or executive decision maker isn’t going to act like anyone else thinks. Economic incentives and day to day realities shape their thinking like nothing else.
This means I must speak with my customers in order to gauge how a product design or new pricing strategy or anything else customer-facing is really going to fly.
Related posts:
- How to think like a customer: step #2
- If you can give it away, what have you proven?
- Buying is irrational…even B2B buying
- How to think like a customer: step #3
- The one big problem that kills lead scoring programs
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