KETONENOKSI.COM

It was only a few days ago when I was thinking that “Gosh, when will we get forward from this overly user-centric view on business development and focus on the larger (big) picture instead”. Inspired by Wim Rampen´s blog on “Being Customer Oriented isn´t the Best Marketing Strategy”, I just felt like wanting to make a note of my own on this matter as well…

I mean, it is clear it´s important to take care of our customers and I totally agree on the importance of good customer service. But how I see the relationships between companies and their customers, it is somewhat very similar to how I see parenting these days. That is, I do not see a point that an authority (may it be the company or the parents) decides to focus on listening to its subordinates (may it be the customer s or the children).

It is, of course, good if we´d learn better to sympathise and to understand what is important to one another. BUT. As a parent (a company), it is extremely important to have robust strategic goals and visions and to not be drifting around according to the often short-sighted desires of our children (customers). What may have worked really well with our first-born children (regular customers) and still works pretty well with our children in the middle (current customers) may not work at all with the last-born child with a very different temperament and interests in life (see e.g. the digi-native customers).

As I see it, the only possible way to manage in the jungle of changing living (business) environments, emerging new needs (e.g. due to digitalisation) and with the often surprisingly different characteristics that may appear even withing children of a nuclear family (customers belonging to the same focus group), is to always try our best in explaining why we act as we do (brand promise) and to do our best in the circumstances of the time (i.e. providing customised quality service). In doing so, we do need to carefully listen to our children (customers) too, and if lucky, we will simultaneously gain new insight on how to better guide (serve) them to access the abilities (products or services) we consider as important for them.

The main reason why I have been so fond of digging deeper into the service-dominant logic (see e.g. Vargo & Lusch, 2004; 2011) – and I am quite sure this applies to many others too – is the fact that it does not position the company or the customer above one another. Instead, as I see it, service-dominant logic builds on an idea of seeing business ecosystems as continuously evolving platforms where independent, non-hierarchical and non-predefined variables keep on pushing the parents (companies) to re-evaluate their methods of upbringing (business models and strategies). Hence, the families (companies) represent institutions, grounded on the parental values and beliefs (strategic goal setting) and they are guided by their knowledge and experiences (the institutional arrangements).

However, in order to success in the demanding task of parenthood (management of business organisations), parents (companies) need to understand the influence of the various environmental and societal changes (customer needs). For the sake of strengthening their children (products and services), these changes should also be taken into account, thus meeting up with the future requirements of the adulthood (future demand of products and services).

Rather than being customer oriented, I´d wish to see more of companies with a strong passion and proudness on what they do (instead of doing whatever comes up to their mind as a good way to collect their customers´money!). Idealistic or not…

I am convinced that when companies are driven by the will of being the best at what they do, and yet understand the importance of continuous interaction with their customers, they´re much closer to a sustainable business success than companies with short-time business objectives.