Being British in the US, it always amazes me how slightly fancy restaurants are run here.
They are generally rather slick because they divide work along clear lines.
There is the person to greet you & seat you, the bartender who may offer you a drink while you wait, the person who fills your class with water, your waiter, the list goes on and on.
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But strange things happen if you don’t follow THEIR idealized workflows.
– 9 times out of ten, you have to pay the bar bill separately before dare leave to sit at your table, which feels a little odd.
– The Busser is always empowered to fill your glass with water, and clear tables, but can’t be asked for any other form of drink, or the bill, they can merely ask for your waiter to come.
The process all works reasonably well, this isn’t a first world problems thing, I’m not complaining, but it always seems like it’s about how they want to work, not what you need.
Pretty much all companies have org charts designed around themselves.
Pretty much all companies turn their back on their customers.
Pretty much all companies have a focal point in the past and in themselves.
The only department in ANY company tasked with those customer things, is the marketing department, but for some reason Marketing now normal doesn’t have the power to impact product or R&D or pricing or distribution or customer service or structure, or much beyond Comms.
Lots of industries talk incessantly about customer centricity, but almost every industry is structured around the factory not the end user.
If you email a car dealership to show interest in a vehicle, it’s not uncommon for nine different people to contact you, from all manner of different departments and business units, some of which are now AI.
If you ask your “personal banker”, for any other financial product information, it’s rather likely your inquiry will never be answered.
Customer service is always a cost, not an investment.
For some reasons we’ve become disconnected from customers and fallen in love with doing things only to ensure an ever smaller new group of people, who may be in the market now for something, can be made a purchaser immediately.
The big mistake being made in marketing is that we’ve gone from creating products & ads people like to create demand.
To finding people that may already want them, to channel demand.
And the latter, on a spreadsheet, looks impressively efficient despite being a road to nowhere.
I wonder how we can change this?
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by Tom Goodwin, Author of Digital Darwinism: Survival Of The Fittest In The Age of Business Disruption
At The Blake Project, we help clients worldwide, in all stages of development, define or redefine and articulate what makes them competitive at critical moments of change, including defining a vision that propels their businesses and brands forward. Please email us to learn how we can help you compete differently.
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