The pitch: Stop wasting customers' time with irritating processes

By GEOFF HONEY*

A recent minor cellphone problem took more than an hour and four phone calls over two days to fix.

That solution was in the form of advice to "Try this, it might work".

Receiving this type of helpful but hopeless service is reason enough to feel irritated.

For instance, a new promotional message on my bank's log-in page adds an extra step to logging in, and the newsletters from my insurer are addressed to a 24-digit number, not me.

All of these examples raise a broad question about the importance of the little things.

The way that consumers react to marketing thoughtlessness - a lack of smart thinking about details or process steps - is likely to affect your business.

Many otherwise well-run businesses seem to have a blind spot for the detail.

These and other examples - mine and yours - are making customers disappointed, irritated, even angry because their time, attention and energy are being wasted.

Alan Mitchell, a British marketing observer and writer, spoke in Auckland in October about the strategy of acting for your customers, and maximising their return on investment to create a competitive edge.

More than the generic "delivering or adding value", he discussed specifics of maximising return on investment (ROI) for customers' operations, passion, time, information, money and attention (Optima).

Mitchell cited the work supermarket chain Tesco is doing in speeding up shopping in-store and online, stock-out maximisation, and acting as sourcing agents to maximise their customers' return.

Where else can this approach be applied?

Companies such as General Electric, the world's biggest business by market capitalisation, are saying that customers are not interested in just being sold products and services. They are buying to become more profitable and successful and sellers need to respond to that.

So the strategy of maximising their ROI can be applied, using a sound understanding of the customer's goals and objectives and how seller and customer can connect to achieve those aims and success faster, cheaper and better.

How can you take this forward? Is the maximising ROI strategy right for your business?

Some companies, such as Tesco, can see significant opportunities from investing in understanding, focusing and responding.

The growth of local franchise Green Acres into different aspects of home management is likely to have come from thinking, "How can we help customers better use (get a better return on) their time?"

It's like a structured approach to "moments of truth", but stretching from the first point of awareness over the duration of your relationship with the customer.

People judge businesses and brands by their treatment and experience - where the gaps are most likely to occur - as well as the performance of the product or service.

Time spent understanding customer expectations from the Optima perspective, then developing concepts, responses, processes and interactions, has the potential to seriously lift customer ROI.

We can all name a few businesses that make doing business with them easy and efficient, sometimes a real pleasure - ASB and National Bank come to mind.

They seem to have a good sense of what's needed throughout the span of the customer relationship and the many interactions, the details, mostly developed over time.

For others, the opportunity is in sweating the small stuff, getting the details and the experience right and improving mutual ROI.

How big is your opportunity with customers, suppliers and your business?

* Geoff Honey, of Charter Consulting, specialises in improving business operations and results, for the business and its customers.

* Email Charter Consulting

* The Pitch is a forum for those working in advertising, marketing, public relations and communications. We welcome lively and topical 500-word contributions.
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