Creating true customer connection

In my last article, I wrote about the myth of customer feedback, and how this deluge of customer opinions into organisations convinces leaders they’re close to what matters to customers, whereas they’re only really close to customers’ opinions of their business.

There’s a second issue with customer information being presented in this way, too: it lacks the conviction to get leaders into action.

Usually, customer research is presented via beautifully prepared PowerPoint slides, summarising the thoughts and feelings of ‘target customers’ or aggregating an experience that no customer is actually having.

If an inconvenient truth is shared – something that goes against the existing beliefs of what really matters to customers and what the business should be doing in response – then it’s more common for that meeting to descend into debate, with leaders preferring to question the methodology than to accept the inconvenient truth and focus instead on what to do about it.

While it may still be informative, the data often lacks the kind of ‘affective’ empathy needed to inspire action. Knowing what a customer says they want and need is very different to feeling genuinely compelled to find new ways of doing things on their behalf – especially when those things are likely to be inconvenient and costly to the organisation in the short term.

Instead, what’s needed is real-world customer immersion, spending real time with real customers, experiencing all the contradictions, hypocrisies and oddities that only become apparent when observing people in the real world. Leaders still might find what they hear inconvenient, but by experiencing it first hand, they can’t deny that it’s true and how it’s making their customers feel.

I experienced this myself when researching eating and shopping habits for a new project. I went to spent time with a woman whose house was a foodie heaven – recipe books from floor to ceiling, cupboards over-spilling with spices from around the world, pots, pans and plates everywhere you looked. She told me that she practised yoga, cooked everything from scratch and would never consider using any kind of pre-prepared food. It was far too unhealthy for her lifestyle.

Yet later that day, when I went shopping with her, something strange happened. Far from spending her whole time in the organic produce section, she happily filled her trolley with ready-chopped onions and ready-mashed mashed potato:

“I thought you said you cook everything from scratch, that you wouldn’t use prepared food?”

“I don’t, but this is different. I don’t have time to peel potatoes or chop my own onions.”

Then as we got to the confectionery aisle, an armful of full-fat chocolate and every colour of wine was delicately balanced on top of the overflowing trolley:

“I know, I know, I said I’m healthy, but this is for girls’ night on a Friday night. It doesn’t count.”

It’s insight like this that makes Chiltern Railways ask their leadership team to live somewhere on the Chiltern Railways route, meaning they use their own trains, wearing their names badges and talking to passengers every day. Alan Riley, their former customer director, even said the more formal the forum, the less he learnt.

It’s why Guy Singh-Watson at Riverford once invited himself into about 40 customers’ homes to cook with them, getting to speak to them directly but also understand how they actually prepared and cooked food.

And it’s why CityMapper created its Travelling Circus. Whenever the company is planning to move into a new city, it takes a cross-section of the team to live in the city for a month, changing apartment every few days to understand the reality of travelling in the area, not just the picture the maps might paint.

It’s also where their ideas for ‘fast’, ‘cold safe’ and ‘main road’ walking routes came from, as their head of brand Gil Wedam described:  “Our walking routes [fast and main road] come from understanding what the real world is like, not just the science and maths that the data produces. What are the real-world problems that are out there that our product can help with? It’s never ‘what’s the best route?’, it’s always ‘I need to be there, I have time to hang out on the bus, it’s the third time I was late this week, I can’t be late again’. There’s always a reason.”

It’s only by fully immersing in people’s real lives – experiencing first-hand, at a human level, what really matters to them – that people can reconnect with what’s important to customers and have the visceral belief needed to push the organisation into a new direction.

Despite this, more often than not the excuse given by those in senior positions and big organisations is ‘we simply don’t have time’.  But if your job is to create products and services your customers will love, or to share what you offer in a creative and compelling way, then really, what else could possibly be more important?

John Sills is managing partner at The Foundation and author of The Human Experience

To read the first article in this two-part series, please click here.