Focus on the user and all else will follow - Google
1: Company 2: Customer
3. Consumer/User at the centre of the universe
If there is only one thing that could create, sustain and
grow businesses, then that is the focus on the Customer and the Customers of
your customers (consumers).
The purpose of any
business is to serve its customers ‘profitably’ and its survival is dependent
on the amount of money its customers pay or will lead to others pay to the
business versus its investments.
Providing the best value to the customers with respect to
all the alternatives that the customer has for his money should be the single
most aim of any business.
The maximum size of any business is equal to the collective
wallet size / ability to pay off all the customers in the target market.
‘You can grow as far as the credit limit of all your potential
customers takes you..’
For example:
Potential Market opportunity could be calculated for
different companies could be as follows:
Real estate company-
Collective Credit limit of all the potential house buyers in its target
market
Personal Computers- Collective value of the IT hardware budgets
of all targeted entities.
Advertising Agency: Share
of the Collective value of the advertising budgets of all the Advertisers
Hotel- Collective
value of the amount spent on food of all the target customers
What is important to note is that, the Revenue potential of
any organization is directly proportional to:
Market share * Purchasing power of all the potential
customers * Share of wallet of the category
of products to the overall purchasing power * Proportion of the share of target
customers to overall size of the Potential
customers base .
Hence for any business to succeed, it should start from the
ability of the customers to pay and what it has to do to get the maximum share
of this capability. It is very important to mind the potential growth or de-growth
of the target customer base and the share of the wallet as the company
evaluates its areas of focus for investment. The companies which have the
ability to address global markets with relatively lower costs and ease are the
ones which can become the biggest organisations in the fastest way. For
example, Google, Apple, Facebook etc have reached
The secret behind the successes of today’s rapidly growing
organization is the ability to identify huge potential target customer base
that is rapidly growing and provide the best possible product or serve that
offers the most ‘Value for money’ and
thus address the ‘WIIFM’ questions best among the alternatives available and is
also communicated well to the target audience.
Its important to
understand the different types & levels of customers that an organization
caters to:
While Brands
and organizations are dependent on their customers for their revenue, these customers
are in-turn dependant on their customers who may be the ultimate consumers or
users of the company’s products and services.
In the above
picture, the moon could be represented by the company, while the earth could be
represented by the customers and the ultimate resource for money in return
for the product or service (consumer) could represent the sun.
Consumer Brand (RayBan) : While RayBan sunglasses are
manufactured by Luxottica Group, Italy, it reaches its target consumers through
a network of dealers and distributors. While the dealer of RayBan is the
customer of the organization, the user of the product is the consumer.
Hence Luxottica should ensure that both its customers are
happy to deal with the brand through better policies, margins etc and the
consumers are a growing clan of proud and satisfied users of the brand. Focus
on building a better proposition to its ultimate consumers will lead to better
business and profitability for its trade partners as well.
Google: Google believes
in offering the businesses the best tools on the web to succeed on and off the
web. Google derives its money from the organizations who advertise on the web
and from those who use its tolls for improving their productivity. These
customers are further dependent on their consumers for their success and want to promote their services to their consumers in the most attractive manner,
helping them in satisfying their needs and earn a share of their wallet. These consumers
are the users of Google’s services, which are mostly free.
Hence Google focuses on serving its users and making them
swear by its products and services thus becoming a bigger and bigger clan,
which in turn leads to higher and higher value for those who pay for its
services, the customers.
Brand Ambassador ( Sachin Tendulkar) : Sachin Tendulkar also known as the God of
Cricket, the most popular sport in India, derives his money from the fee paid
by the cricket boards for playing and also through various endorsements and
promotional activities as a Brand Ambassador. These activities are aimed at
helping his clients, media channels to get much bigger wallet of their consumers
that will lead to their success. As long as these consumers of his clients are
a growing and happy clan, these organisations will be happy to pay higher and
higher amounts to their Brand Ambassador. As long as the Brand Ambassador is delivering on his core activity that
attracts the consumer through success and excellent behaviour on and off the
field, the clients have a higher and better chance to succeed. This will result
in the Brand Ambassador obtaining more and more revenue.
Thus it is important to see that the ‘Customer Centricity’ has to
work hand in hand with ‘Consumer centricity’, underlying the need to serve the consumers of
the Customers better and better apart from making it easy for the
direct customers deal smoothly and easily with the organization. While most of
the organizations deal with Businesses or Individuals/ groups of individuals
leading to B2B or B2C type of businesses, within the organizations every
department has to deal with Internal Customers .
An internal
customer is "anyone you count on or rely upon to complete a task or a
function or to provide you with information so that you can get your job
done…and anyone who counts on you to complete a task or function or to provide
them with information so that they can get their job done".--Rosenberger, 1998
For example, HR
department provides manpower, training and motivational programs for the rest
of the organisation and the Marketing department provides internal communication program and forecast to
production department along with demand generation activities aimed at
increasing the business.
Customer-centric organizations value and respect internal
customers as much as external customers. Successful Organisations are not just
focussed on being External Customer and Consumer Centric, but also ensure that this is
internalised in all the areas at all levels of the operation within the
organization as well.
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