Missing the Marketing Opportunity

Looking at the BBC web site business pages today, my attention was drawn to an article on Compass Group and the fact that their annual profits have been boosted by cost cuts. It seemed like an excellent financial performance and I was curious to see if there was a more detailed press release on the Compass Web Site to explain their cost cutting strategy - in particular, I wanted to know how their cost cutting had been managed to ensure longer term profit growth. As we all know, it is very easy to cut costs in the short term to deliver an instant fix in the form of a profit boost. It is much harder to develop and implement a long term cost reduction strategy that is part of a wider plan to grow profitability in future years.

I was disappointed. The most recent press release on that I could find on the Compass Group UK web site was dated 22nd September and was an announcement that from October all their fresh beef will be sourced from Britain (I assume their frozen and processed beef will continue to be sourced from multiple countries - especially as the notes to editors includes a reference to the ration of fresh to frozen beef).

In marketing and brand building terms, and especially in an industry which is targeting strategic outsourcing deals, they have missed a trick. It is imperative that marketing messages are consistent and consistently applied throughout an organisation. And that includes publishing links to important financial announcements on local operating company web-sites. The group web-site has all the financials - but I had to go back to Google to find it.

In your own business, it would pay you to create a simple check list. That way, when you publish something opportunistic, you can double check for consistency across all media forms.
Now, before I hit "Publish", I had better check www.results-zone.com for consistency with this Blog posting!

Customer Delight and Differentiation

We are all constantly looking for new ways to differentiate our offering. Where most of us struggle is in trying to work out where to look for sources of differentiation that matter to our customers. And here's the thing - if your customer does not care about your new three part, chromium plated reverse flange widget and its benefits, you have wasted loads of time, effort and money.

So what now? Try asking some customers about things you care about in your products and services. Ask your customers two simple questions for each of the benefits you are investigating:

1. Rate your satisfaction if the product/ service has this feature to deliver that benefit?; and
2. Rate your satisfaction if the product did not have this feature to deliver that benefit?

Ask them to answer in one of four ways:

A) Happy;
B) Neutral (This is normal);
C) Unhappy;
D) Don’t care.

Answers - my thoughts:

• Neutral to 1 & Unhappy to 2 is a basic, taken for granted feature. Omit this to your cost.
• Don't care to 1 & to 2 - not worth the investment
• Neutral to 2 and Happy to 1 - these have the potential to create differentiation - partly because your customer did not know these were needed until they were seen.
• Happy to 1 and Unhappy to 2 - these are good things to include but are unlikely to be sources of differentiation.

For a lot more cogent information on this topic, try researching the Kano Model - there is a lot on the web and it will help you to make a difference to your offer.

Good luck!

Dig For Detail - Summarise for Action

Smart businesses regularly canvass information from their customers. Some do this as part of the account management process; others conduct a formal customer survey. You need to decide which option, or combination of options, works best for your business.

Going Formal? – Then Construct a Questionnaire

• Keep your questions simple.
• Aim to keep the questions constant – so that you can compare results over time.
• Make sure that you capture numeric information – but keep the scale to an even number so that people have to decide.
• Make sure you allow space for verbatim comments. This gives two benefits:
  - People get a chance to give you the details behind their scoring so that you get a chance to fix problems.
  - When people give you compliments, the testimonial is written already – all you need is permission to publish.
• Select a technology that is appropriate to your customers – paper or email based forms still work well. Online surveys are great for some customer groups.

Conduct the survey

• Give your customers time to respond and, if you are running a semi-annual or annual survey, issue gentle reminders.
• Consider a prize draw as an incentive to respond – you know your customers best.
• Remember, the response rate is in itself a customer comment!

Summarise the Results

• Tabulate the findings. Plot graphs of the numbers.
• Look for similarities and differences between customer types

Dig-For-Detail

• Review the results and try to understand what lies underneath the feedback you are getting.
• A team meeting could make great sense at this point.
• Go back to customers and ask for more details if required:
• If they are unhappy, it shows that you care.
• If they are happy, you can thank them for their feedback and ask permission to use it in a testimonial.

Summarise the Review

• Identify the root causes of any deficiencies.
• Create an action plan to rectify failings.
• If everything is really positive – go for the PR.

Repeat the Survey – when appropriate

• Look for trends.
• Confirm that your actions have been effective.