If you asked any 100 marketing managers about their long-term goals, I reckon 99 would mention engaging customers and building enduring relationships with them.
If you asked the same 100 marketers about the aim of a single campaign or project, most of them would probably talk about changing customers’ behaviour.
The notion of changing – or challenging – customers’ behaviour whilst trying to build a relationship is an interesting one.
In real life, most of us realise that successful relationships require give and take. You need to let someone in, take risks and make compromises to make it work. As you begin to trust each other, your confidence grows and the relationship flourishes. And each of you changes, to a greater or lesser degree, during the journey.
Why then, do so many marketers who profess they want better relationships, hold customers at arms’ length and try to change them? Perhaps it is the brands themselves who need to have their behaviour challenged and changed in the first instance.
Let’s consider one organisation who famously doesn’t keep customers at arm’s length: Starbucks. Love or hate the Starbucks brand, you have to admit that its crowdsourcing strategy, centred on www.mystarbucksidea.com is inspiring. This online sounding board elicits loads of comments and suggestions from customers. Then in-house Starbucks Idea Partners deal with the posts, some of which are taken to senior decision makers and potentially adopted as brand policy.
It’s risky, isn’t it? What if people were to post negative comments?
Well, some people do. But in the wider context of the ongoing conversations (with ongoing being the operative word, this is a long-term commitment from the brand) negative feedback just doesn’t seem that harmful. What you get is an overwhelming sense that Starbucks and its customers have an honest, healthy relationship.
This sort of approach is relatively straightforward in a retail context. But how can brands in other sectors make it work for them? What if you offer a service rather than a product?
It might not be as clear-cut, but with careful thought and planning you might just uncover a breakthrough idea. And with a little more thought and planning, that idea could enable your marketing to read like a novel where your customers play a lead role – rather than a series of disjointed short stories, some of which would have been better left unwritten.
So, how might this ethos be adopted in the most heavily regulated and risk-averse of sectors: the financial services industry?
NatWest has taken a step in the right direction with its customer charter. As part of its mission to become Britain’s Most Helpful Bank, it made 14 promises based on feedback from customers. People can post further comments and questions to an online ‘ideas bank’.
It is a nice idea. But, for me, it doesn’t quite go far enough.
For instance, instead of simply posting the customer charter update online, why not go one step further and set up a microsite where customers can comment on progress and make more suggestions.
Yes, there would probably be negative as well as positive feedback, but this could be dealt with and responded to in public on the forum. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see a bank listening to its customers and responding as if they are actually having a conversation, rather than simply posting staccato replies?
The rise of digital has given us the tools to enable customers to get closer, but we need to have the confidence to let them in. And as part of that we need to monitor social media – and use it appropriately for relevant, substance-rich conversations.
Let’s hope that more brands can challenge their own conventions and learn from the Starbucks example. Marketing should be about stimulating dynamic customer relationships, not static box-ticking exercises.
What are your thoughts on brands that have had the courage to let customers be part of their story? Or on those that have nearly got there, but not quite gone the distance?
