Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Customer Care

Five marketplace truths about human customers

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Spend time in the marketplace and you’ll have many close encounters of the third kind with the most interesting species in all of nature: the human customer. And as we’ve learned, the nature of this being isn’t much different from other animals: All need to breathe, eat, drink, procreate and survive.

But there is something that clearly sets human customers apart from other fauna: sentience. And one of the manifestations of this self-awareness is that beyond what customers need, they’re the only lifeform on planet Earth that also wants. Your customers want things.

Every human who owns an automobile will need to buy new tires. But what they want is to keep the family safe without spending an entire Saturday shopping for tires. So, if you’re in the tire business, should you advertise that you sell tires, which are commodities that the Big Boxes can sell cheaper than your cost? Or should you develop, market and execute a customer loyalty program that combines peace-of-mind for the customer’s family with pick-up and delivery? How about this tagline:

“Let us help you keep your family safe when it’s time for new tires, and we’ll give you your Saturday back.”

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Relevance – the Customer’s new prime expectation

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When describing what influences the behavior of individuals as they pursue their lives, you would likely include concepts associated with goals, plans, passion, desire, ego, personality, etc. In matters of human interaction as we meet, love, and work together, there is often an abiding struggle between my passion and your ego, for example, or your goals and my plans. Indeed, successful long-term personal relationships are heavily weighted on my tolerance of you today and your forbearance of me tomorrow. Give and take. And the world goes round.

But in the marketplace, affection and sentiment give way to contracts and performance, because tolerance and forbearance are always subjective, often inefficient, and sometimes unproductive. Consequently, a very powerful concept developed over the millennia that is the nucleus of how marketplace participants minimize conflict and find common ground. In classically efficient marketplace style, I’ve reduced this concept to one word: expectations.

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The Golden Triplets of small business success

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For most of the 20th century, Americans enjoyed what I call The Golden Age of Customer Service. Sadly, based on recent research, it appears we’re in the Plastic Age.

In a national customer satisfaction index, the average customer rating was less than 60%. Going six for 10 is pretty good – if you’re playing baseball. But any small business with that batting average is headed for the shower.

So how has such a level of unservice become a 21st-century norm? Because customers have become sensitized to what I call the Plastic Triplets: High volume/low price, impersonal e-business, and almost as impersonal face-to-face service.

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It’s the Age of the Customer – the rules have changed

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For 10,000 years, customers refined their search for products and services down to a couple of semi-finalist sellers based almost entirely on the classic competitive value proposition: price, product, availability, service, etc. I’ve termed this period the Age of the Seller.

That was a nice trip down memory lane, wasn’t it?

The new prime differentiator today is no longer the competitive model, but rather a customer’s appraisal of how relevant a seller is to them, often before they even know if a seller is competitive. So, does this mean that sellers no longer have to be competitive?

Not at all – no one will pay you more for less. But consider three new marketplace truths:

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“Customers from Hell” and the #1 business fundamental

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“This is for one of those customers from hell.”

That’s what a small business owner said to me during one of my road trips across the country to check on how things are going out on Main Street.

“Ann” was responding to my query about her business. Her full answer was closer to, “Business has been good. But now I’ve got to spend most of the day dealing with this customer from hell.”

Turns out, what caused this customer’s alleged domicile to be mentioned was because they required a lot of extra attention – they wanted things the way they wanted them. Like Ann, you might be surprised at my response, which is our next “Business Fundamental.”

“You should never have a customer from hell.”

Before you start yelling that you want to introduce me to some of your customers who surely are kin to Ann’s, let me tell you a story.

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“No problem”: The vuvuzela of customer service

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“No problem at all.”

That’s exactly what the young man on the phone at the bank said to me after I thanked him for not being able to answer my question.

He didn’t say, “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be of more assistance,” or “I’ll be happy to take a message.” Instead, he slouched into the verbal scourge of the 21st-century marketplace: when an employee serving a customer says, “No problem.”

In addition to the sound being harmonically dissonant to a customer’s ear, “No problem” is also cognitively dissonant to the Universe because of its misuse in the following two service scenarios, both of which are inappropriate and unprofessional:

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