Marketers, Face the Facts
Sometimes, I’ve been afraid to face the real results of a product, service or campaign.
What do the consumers really think of it?
What is the satisfaction rate of the users?
Are they getting the intended result?
Sometimes, the truth hurts. Sometimes, you’ll find out that things aren’t going as well as you’d hoped.
Let me share a personal example.
We have three children in our family. Now, we spend quite some time as parents attempting to teach valuable principles. We’re trying to teach our kids to focus on what’s really important in life.
Today we got a wake-up call when we read through Luke’s school journal we came upon this entry:
So, we’ll need to take a look at how we can set his sights a little higher…
In business, it’s critical that you take the time to find out if your internal perception of “how you’re doing” is in line with the perception of real users in the marketplace.
Because what you Think is happening out there isn’t what matters. What’s Actually happening out there is what matters.
And you can only find out by seeking straight-forward feedback.
DELL recently did that. They found out that their customers thought their customer service reeked. They accepted the feedback, made several important adjustments, and realized a huge change in consumer perception.
It’s worth doing, if you’re willing to face the truth. If you’re willing to do that, you can make important adjustments and realize huge improvements.
Check out these great posts for more information about this topic:
Perception versus Reality is Killing Your Referrals
Customer Engagement: The Agency/Client Perception Gap
Tags: Business, Market Research, Marketing, results
May 25th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for calling us out for listening to customers. In addition to your current citation about us listening to customers and making changes, thought I would pass along a couple of other related links.
For example, you might be interested in Michael Dell’s interview with Fortune magazine where he talks about how we dropped the ball on technical support and service and our new focus on resolving the customer issue the first time, every time. It is here: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/09/18/8386121/index.htm
In addition, Dick Hunter our VP for customer support recently interviewed about the changes we are making and mistakes we made along the way, as well as ideas we are contemplating for the future. That transcript is here, as well as the bloggers perspectives of us over the last few months
http://www.serviceuntitled.com/dick-hunter-vp-of-customer-experience-at-dell/2007/05/17/
Finally, this week at http://www.direct2dell.com and on Dell’s Ideastorm we have asked customers for feedback on several ideas related to customer service that we are currently considering.
Again, thanks for the reminder and noting our positive actions.
June 20th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Richard-Thanks for your detailed comment. Clearly the entire DELL team is dedicated to communicating a renewed message and to staying connected with users. Best, Jeff