Letting the train take the strain

Last week I had to visit London and it was in the unlikely setting of the train station that I found inspiration for this week’s words of wit and wisdom.

For it was at the train station that I met a truly inspiring man and for those of us involved in the business of marketing and the marketing of business the example he sets should one we should all aspire to follow.

This is his story.

While waiting to travel  I came across the Marketing Director for the line – there he was meeting, greeting and talking with the passengers, his customers. As someone in the same line of business, I was curious why he was out and about at this ungodly hour. His reply interested me.

‘We have just introduced a few changes and I was interested in hearing what my customers thought about it. And I wanted to support the staff’.

Now compare this attitude with my recent experience with the call centre of a major and very well known business, an experience far from smooth and efficient. And getting nowhere with the customer service team I asked to speak to their Head of Customer Service to be told ‘I am sorry but he does not speak to customers’.

Are you as amazed and as dumfounded at that statement as I was? This is an organisation where I was assured that ‘your call is very important to us’ and ‘customer service is our number one priority’. Yeah, right. But it is also an organisation where its senior management do not think customers a species important enough to speak with.

Too often marketing teams and senior executives learn their customer feedback through the prism of a market research report or a presentation of customer complaints. Rarely do they meet customers and get feedback raw and emotional, nor experience what customers are experiencing.

I recently read an interview with the American general who led the US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan who said that ‘you cannot build understanding or engagement through a bullet proof windscreen’.

And what applies on the battlefield can also be applied by marketers who too often seek to build understanding through their own bullet proof windscreen. Only we call it market research.

One major financial services company I know regularly asks its executive team to walk in the footsteps of its customers through a series of real transactions and also record and log their observations, feelings and emotions. In this way those who are mandating the process to be followed come face to face with the reality of their decisions and their instructions at the moment of truth for their customers. This business is learning a lot from my American general.

All of us in the business of marketing can learn from this and get out from behind our bullet proof windscreens to talk with customers and to regularly shop the customer shop.

And this will send a very powerful signal to your customers and to your front line staff, the kind of an organisation you want to be. And you will be amazed at what you will learn and uncover.

In the meantime I will continue to let my favourite train take the strain.