A faster horse

“If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse’.”

- Henry Ford

For me there are two lessons to take away from this famous quotation.

First, of course customers have a hard time articulating precisely what they want. Few customers are inventors.

But if you listen carefully you can hear the source of their dissatisfaction, the compromises they are forced to make. And you can attack those. You can glean that they want a hole, not a drill. Or a place to shop that doesn’t require them to drive twenty minutes, navigate a vast mall or store and settle for what one particular merchant happens to have in stock that day.

The second lesson is that a truly remarkable and powerful new business model rarely is an incremental iteration of a current one. Zappo’s doesn’t look much like your local shoe store.

So if you are hoping your consumer research is going to design the next great thing for you, you might want to change your expectations.

If you are working on a cheaper, smaller, faster, sturdier, lower calorie, better tasting, or whatever version of the particular horse you are riding, you might want to think again.

And if you think opening on Thanksgiving is the cure to what ails you, prepare to be disappointed.

Let’s get digital…digital

The first wave of digital retail was either about brands with a history in catalog merchandising putting up a basic e-commerce site (Williams-Sonoma, Lands’ End) or pure-plays picking off products categories that early adopters could readily embrace (Amazon). The market dealt harshly with models that could not execute a basic direct-to-consumer formula, targeted a product category that wasn’t ready for digital prime time (RIP pets.com) or a combination of both.

As consumers became more comfortable with buying on-line–and retailers got better at deploying new technologies–other categories made sense for pure-plays (Blue Nile, Zappos) and traditional retailers ramped up their multiple channel strategies. For most, this second wave was largely a silo-ed approach with the e-commerce and the bricks and mortar divisions pursuing related, but mainly independent, strategies.

In the most recent third wave, a few retailers (I’m looking at you Nordstrom) understood that most of their customers were interacting with their brand across multiple channels and touch-points. They accepted that brand trumps channel, that digital was transforming their business forever. They declared that silos belong on farms and began investing in a more integrated, customer-centric experience, leading with digital more often than not.

In the next wave, the blended channel is the only channel. The distinctions between devices, channels, touch-points and media begin to blur. Differences with little distinction. Or differences that lead to extinction if your core value proposition can be delivered better, cheaper, faster digitally.

Clearly not every product category is going completely digital. Groceries looks pretty safe. Cars too.

But failure to understand how digital transforms the customer discovery, engagement, purchasing, retention and advocacy process is a prescription for your brand’s demise.

So let’s get digital. Let me hear your actions talk.

Reset! Engaging Customers in the New Normal

If you missed the webinar that Jon Giegengack and I conducted earlier this week entitled Engaging Consumers and Growing Market Share in the “New Normal,” the recording of the session and presentation deck are now both available.

Webinar recording:

https://cmbinfoevents.webex.com/cmbinfoevents/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=EC&rID=2764867&rKey=b264f15e93796eb1

Webinar deck:

http://www.cmbinfo.com/cmb-cms/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/The-New-Consumer-Report_2010.pdf

Expensive & Lousy Meets Free & Excellent

I just got back from Chicago where I spoke at the annual Shopper Insights in Action conference.  It was a great trip, but one of the things I will remember the most is a very disappointing experience I had at the host hotel.

At this hotel (which shall go nameless, but it rhymes with lariat), I was charged $14.95 for daily “high-speed” internet access.  Putting aside whether hotels should charge for web access–they shouldn’t–my primary complaint was that the service was far from high-speed.  In fact, it barely worked at all.

After a full day of trying to get my email account to even load properly, I finally relented and called the toll-free help line.   After half an hour on the phone with the support person listening to them spew indecipherable technical jargon and trying various things to increase my connection speed–most of which involved limiting service for other folks in the hotel–we concluded that this was a long-term problem at this location, likely caused by their not having upgraded their infra-structure.

Expensive & Lousy.

Ironically, the next day as part of my conference presentation, I shared the Zappos success story to reinforce the importance of using remarkable customer experiences to win in an intensely competitive market.  As you may know, part of Zappos growing reputation for legendary customer service is that delivery of their product is free–both for the original shipment and for any returns.  Moreover, Zappos will often upgrade the customer to overnight shipping at no charge.

Free & Excellent.

Of course, we cannot just randomly give away high value products and services.  But as brand stewards, minimally, we don’t have to call attention to the things that represent an obviously bad value, nor do we have to reinforce the notion that we are using every opportunity to nickel and dime our clients (I’m looking at you credit card and airline industries!).

Remarkable is a choice, and we get to decide which elements of our business model and brand promise create the wow, the buzz, the purple cow.  It’s not always easy or practical to deliver the Free & Excellent.  But you can certainly stop the Expensive & Lousy.