Powerful Customers [2004]
In their service relationships, research around the world is telling us increasingly that customers want what they want, when they want and how they want.
They have little patience for companies that don't understand that "It's all about me!". Sound familiar? Mmmhmm, it's your inner teenager.
Conventional wisdom has it that companies should try to meet or exceed customer expectations.
According to our most recent survey, around 50% of people experienced that superior level of service, the last time they asked a firm for help or advice.
Our research suggests that discerning customers are looking for intelligent anticipatory service that has thought through the issues and obstacles they might encounter in accessing a firm's products and services BEFORE they ask for them.
Sounds fair enough. But who do you become if you always get exactly what you want? What kind of society emerges?
Do we revert to childhood - the idealised one where Santa somehow knew what you wanted for Christmas and you never had to think about where food or clean clothes was going to come from?
Or could we be channelling the aristocracy who have had people running around after them for centuries while they did important things like holding house parties and exploiting the third world?
Probably both.
The cult of busy-ness is a major contributor to increasing service expectations. It's implicit in the structure of people's lives.
They commute rather than living close to workplaces; they rush kids around after school rather than letting them hang out at home; many of them do information work which is never done, so they work much longer hours, often for no extra pay.
They rely on a small army of paid workers - from cleaners to pastry chefs - to provide much of the minuitiae of their existence.
The ultimate irony is that our unprecedented levels of independence and high expectation are based on profound dependence on others to provide the fabric of our lives.
"Who do you become if you always get exactly what you want? What kind of society emerges?"
