Customer Focus Audit + Ideas

Classic Cases

Classic Cases of costly Customer Focus mistakes that our Process would have spotted	We have a veritable library of Case Studies … where organisations of all sizes and types have lost their Customer Focus and made costly errors in strategy, plans, projects, products, operations … especially communications. Here are just a few to demonstrate how easy it is to lose focus. All the examples of ‘focus errors’ in our library could have been avoided by examining the situation rigorously, methodically, and objectively from the Customers’ Perspective using a series of Customer Questions, Tests, and Prompts … in the first case below by a simple 10 minute Test.
TWO WORDS cost £millions	One of the world’s biggest companies with top agency support and pre-testing, launched a new two-word slogan, costing several £million. But they got a rude shock at their next AGM. Shareholders loudly expressed disapproval, maintaining that the slogan implied that the company was moving away from its core business. Despite strenuous efforts by the chairman to explain what the slogan meant the shareholders refused to listen. The company was forced to drop the slogan until they could explain their intentions more carefully and clearly.
Three important lessons here:	your target audience will decide the *meaning* of your words and pictures, depending on their own experiences and level of message pre-awareness you need to check in advance your target’s awareness of, and readiness to accept, new concepts, ideas, and plans focus groups can make BIG mistakes, even in testing just two words
… and some ONE WORD boobs	The Royal Mail, a strong well-known brand, tried to change it to the innocuous and unmemorable ‘Consignia’. Our instant reaction was “Consigned to the bin, like junk mail” – which is precisely what happened to it after unanimous disapproval. Then there was ‘Monday’ – a brilliant idea for company name (the rebranding of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ consulting arm). Everybody loves Monday, don’t they? Well, IBM quickly ditched it when they bought the business.
Poor campaign Planning and Integration	And the word BIG, used by a High-Street bank in a massive advertising campaign – until it was lambasted in the media after announcing plans to shut small branches. The campaign translated virtually overnight into: *“We’re BIG, you’re small”.*
Strategy error, or just poor implementation?	Ebay bought Skype, the internet telecoms company, on the assumption that it would help its customers to communicate more easily. It didn’t, for various reasons. But there was no real synergy between these two businesses and one comment on a customer blog summed up the problem: “Is Skype even somehow integrated into Ebay? Last time I checked, I didn’t see anything that connects the two.”
Even the cleverest people can make a ‘stupid’ product … that C5 Tricycle	Sir Clive Sinclair, President of MENSA high-IQ club, spent £millions developing and marketing a ridiculous product. It was obvious to everybody – except Sir Clive and his team – that nobody but the brave and foolish would ride that cart with their bums 10 inches above a busy highway whilst negotiating a bus. He clearly failed to imagine the customer using his product. And did he do any market research?
And even the Marketing experts can get it wrong – without being aware	A speaker from a Marketing education body gave a presentation to over 100 HR and training professionals on his ‘product’ entitled: “Marketing Training”. Trouble is, this phrase has at least four possible meanings, eg ‘training in marketing’, and several applications of ‘the marketing of training’. The audience never knew which interpretation the speaker meant at any one time. At the end there was total silence. He left; completely unaware of the confusion. No business resulted (we asked, later). The campaign brochure suffered the same multiple-interpretation problem. The designers had obviously noticed the problem and tried to cope by using different font styles for each of the two words, but this failed. Nobody pointed out the mistake, even in pre-tests.
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