46 Listening to the Customer
b'Today I want to talk about one of the most important topics in business, but also in everything else. I often relate things to dating, but literally, if you\\u2019re going to meet somebody, in a sense, you can consider the woman or male you\\u2019re talking to like a customer. You\\u2019re trying to sell them on the fact\\u2026 I know it sounds funny, but you\\u2019re basically trying to make sure that they think well of you. It\\u2019s the same thing with customers. We hear about the voice of the customer, listening to customers \\u2013 sort of.\\n\\n\\n\\nUnderstanding the customer and looking through the eyes of the customer rather than telling the customer your idea.\\n\\nLet me explain. Listening absolutely gives you info. You want that information to define what you need to do to improve your product, to improve your service, to make your choice of products. You\\u2019ve heard also, though, that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. That means the person shouting the loudest is going to get attention paid to them. Is that the person you should be listening to? Who you\\u2019re listening to and who is speaking up. In other words, listen intelligently. I know that somebody is going to get ticked off at that, because that implies that some people don\\u2019t listen intelligently. Let\\u2019s say listen with an educated perspective. I don\\u2019t want people to feel badly if they don\\u2019t know good research methodology, but you really want to make sure that you\\u2019re following good form, good research methodology, and you\\u2019re carefully studying the customer.\\n\\nThere are important research principles when targeting or trying to understand things, such as customer satisfaction, customer demand, or customer preference. Make sure your survey or the group you\\u2019re talking to is well represented by all parts of your market. You want to be talking to the correct people, and the correct distribution of people. You\\u2019ve often heard, particularly now in politics, one survey group decides to overweight this survey by one group or another to show so-and-so their favorite person is in the lead. That\\u2019s not good research, and that should not be well represented or well respected.\\n\\nAre you taking a look at the proper proportion, the right number of women, the right number of rural versus urban, etc.? There\\u2019s a lot to it. Also, there\\u2019s other parts to it. The questions asked also can imply or slant your answer. Do you ever notice that a survey, at the beginning of the survey, they usually ask: \\u201cDo you work for any of the following: an advertising agency, market research firm, etc.?\\u201d Why do they ask that? You\\u2019ll find out if you check you do. Even if you don\\u2019t, just check you do just one time just to see what happens. You\\u2019re going to be thanked on the next page, and tell you that they\\u2019ve already fulfilled their obligation or something else to basically get rid of you. Why? Because you understand and have a perspective on what the research is trying to do, based on the questions, and you know enough to answer them a certain way to bias the results in the way that you would like to see the results come out.\\n\\nSome of the things that can happen: you may be listening to customer complaints, that can cost you money and you could be fixing the wrong things, you could also be putting your actual product in the wrong light. An example was Mercedes Benz came out in the late \\u201880s, early \\u201890s, someplace around there, with some odd-looking colors for Mercedes; the browns, the yellowish, certainly non-Mercedes looking colors. What do I mean by that? I went there, spoke to the person in charge of all their research and product choices, and asked him if he ever saw the book, Molloy\\u2019s book Dress for Success. He said to me: \\u201cCustomers are really asking for these colors.\\u201d I said: \\u201cYes, and I\\u2019ve seen them out there. Should you be producing them? You\\u2019re listening to people who are not normally your customers, but people who wanted to see that color, but that color represents your product out there. Do you want that to be the picture,'