Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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e-business

The New Regular: Prepare for Conflicts of Customer Expectations

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This is the 18th edition of my New Regular series that focuses on how the marketplace is changing in front of our eyes and what small businesses can do about it. Recently placed in the placebo group of a Covid-19 vaccine study, it’s not looking good for Normal.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, only wizards and fairies had magic wands and customer expectations were easy to anticipate. Now, come back to the rude reality of post-pandemic 2020 and things here are different. 

Let me tell you a story that plays out across Main Street markets every day. This one takes place in Peoria.

A couple is driving through town when John says, “I’m hungry for pizza.” Sue agrees, “As long as it’s pepperoni.” What happens in the next 60 seconds is a dramatic example of the difference between doing business today compared to not that long ago – especially this year. 

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The New Regular: Technology at the Speed of Your Humans

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This is the fifth installment of my New Regular series. No one’s seen “Normal” since COVID-19 took it out months ago.

Last week, we covered the concept of business fundamentals being neither Old School nor New School, but rather THE School.

To help restart your business in the New Regular of the post-pandemic economy, let’s continue that theme with two more THE School fundamentals. One is primal and one is, relatively speaking, a new kid on the fundamentals block. But both now as inextricably linked as they are completely different.

First, allow me to introduce two really smart dudes.

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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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All hail the Quantum Leap Generation!

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It’s been more than a half-century since the advent of three legendary Digital Age markers: the printed circuit board, the first IBM mainframe, and Moore’s Law. So, by now it would be reasonable to presume that we analog humans would have our digital adoption corn flakes together.
Alas, 21st-century reality doesn’t bear out that reasonable assumption, as the dynamism of digital leverage has matched almost every sweet opportunity with a distasteful disruption, creating a lot of anxiety in the process.

Indeed, when the Fraternal Twins of Innovation – Disruption and Opportunity – set up shop in the Digital Age, they imposed transformation on every market participant. And since Disruption is the Twin that typically shows up first, those adjustments were likely brutal until Opportunity arrived, often fashionably late. Of course, we all know stories where the rude cousin of the Twins, Irrelevance, wrote too many tragic, final chapters.

Thankfully, on the Opportunity side of the Twins’ balance sheet is a list of unprecedented sweetness: awesome communication options; digital leverage at lightspeed; amassed information about everything from local to global to galactic, and all literally at our fingertips. And entrepreneurs benefited further from lower barriers to entry and competitive advantage from the incrementalization of digital leverage at prices we can afford. But the Twins only convert to sugar on the bottom line when we transform them into something customers will pay for today and tomorrow. There’s still much consternation over yesterday’s analog model being tomorrow’s digital fish wrapper.

Today, when I talk with business audiences about their level of anxiety from the urgency created by 21st-century innovation – these are all technology high-adopters, mind you – most admit to still being anxious about the awesome implications of the Digital Twins. Even balanced against the amazing benefits, humans continue to be unsettled about the unabating digital disturbances coming at them from all quadrants.

But, it must now be revealed that what’s causing all this anxiety isn’t technology: The Internet is just a new way to harness fire, and a computer is merely a fancy wheel. In truth, change itself has been an abiding part of the human experience since Adam and Eve. What’s really causing all this unsettledness, intimidation and anxiety is what I call the Sudden Increased Velocity of Change. No previous generation has ever experienced this level of innovation compression, and it’s doubtful any future generation’s innovation ramp will be as steep as ours has been.

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