In the article I wrote to kick off this series called ‘The Seven Deadly Sins of Customer Motivation’ I review several major pitfalls that often plague companies with their data management capabilities. This typically results in hindering the ability to understand and ultimately motivate their customers, which can deteriorate loyalty and hurt the bottom line. This piece looks in-depth at the sin of assumption.
Perhaps the ‘holy grail’ for most brands is achieving the marketing buzzword ‘evangelism.’ Evangelism, in the business sense, is evolving the casual customer into a loyal fanatic of a product or brand so they preach its benefits and entice others to try it. The conversion of an evangelist is largely accomplished by delivering exceptional experiences and fantastic engagements which increasingly elevates customer loyalty. However, very few brands achieve this level of customer motivation consistently. This is largely because many brands commit some level of one of the following Seven Deadly Sins of Customer Motivation.
1. Intimidation – Allowing the sheer complexity of data to hinder the organization
2. Ignorance – The lack of visibility of all the internal and external datasets
3. Fragmentation – A failure to bring these dispersed datasets together
4. Assumption – Ignoring the precise insight of the data in lieu of assumptions
5. Improvisation – Developing ‘wing it’ strategies that boil down to ‘one-size-fits-all’
6. Impersonalisation – The failure to deliver tailored experiences and engagements
7. Procrastination – Delaying these steps to fully understand and motivate the customer
These ‘sins’ are further exacerbated by the ‘Age of COVID.’ This has increased the complexity of customer decisions, behaviours, engagements and preferences. Therefore, avoiding these ‘sins’ is more critical to gaining holistic customer understanding to engage and motivate them, while focusing on evolving their loyalty into evangelism. With a sound plan, strong partner and proven platform, businesses can incorporate intelligence solutions that help them connect with customers and increase revenue.
Let’s take a closer look at the sin of assumption and how it hinders championing customers.
The sin of assumption
Some organisations ignore the precise insight of data-driven intelligence and assume they know how customers behave and interact with the brand based on gut instinct or past experiences. In doing so, these brands assume that individual customers’ decisions are static and their behavioural paths to purchase stay the same.
This is often due to an assumed simplicity in place of a perceived complexity of data-driven intelligence. In other words, assuming is the path of least resistance. Conversely, data-driven based decisions require an investment of time and resources.
Today, particularly in the ‘Age of COVID,’ customers’ attitudes, behaviours, interactions and preferences are evolving regularly. Therefore, assumptions no longer work and should be ejected in order to focus on evidence-based data that reveals the actual shifting activity of the customer. This evolving customer complexity needs data-driven intelligence to guide the understanding and actions a business needs to develop strong customer connections to effectively motivate them.
As Shirlry Ng, Research Principal for General Motors China explains:
“There are times where we’ll hear feedback on data findings of ‘we knew this,’ or ‘there’s nothing surprising here.’ While discovering new insights is important, it can be just as critical to confirm and validate assumptions, so they become evidence based rather than instinctual.”
In other words, there’s powerful insight from validation and confirmation of expectations. This ensures that the expectations evolve into evidence to advise decisions and guide strategies.
“The old adage of ‘trust your gut’ can be a dangerous strategy given the complexity of today’s customer landscape at the intersection of the ‘Digital Age’ and ‘Era of COVID,’ according to Mark Lummas, Vice President of Customer Success for mTab. “There are tremendous amounts of dimensions shifting around customers that are both controlled by them, but also unpredictable. So, trusting the evolving dimensions of decision making to instincts alone in place of data intelligence can be treacherous to the business.”
Claire Rainey, Head of Insight for Telefonica UK Limited agrees, explaining:
“Making assumptions on your business based on past trends and history can be quite dangerous. This is particularly concerning given the complexity of customers and the shifting landscape of markets. As interactions and feelings change and evolve with the user base, maintaining strategy and delivering experiences aligned with your customers has never been more critical.”
Absolving the sin of assumption
The key to absolving the sin of assumption is to make an organisation-wide commitment to evidence-based decisions for strategy and innovation. This ensures that your understanding of the customers and their evolving behaviours, attitudes, experiences and preferences are rooted in facts not guesses.
This customer understanding extends to having an insightful perspective on what is driving the success or shortcomings of a product or business. Again, avoiding assumptions in the process.
As Alexander Edwards, President of Strategic Vision, explains:
“We have seen many organizations notice that in some aspects their product is “behind” their competitors. This can be in any aspect from the smell of shampoo to cleaning power of kitchen supplies to comfort in living room furniture. Essentially, the organization sees that they are behind in one aspect more than another so they try to fix that aspect – even if the aspect has nothing to do with customer motivation on that attribute.”
The bottom line is that the mindset of your business drives its success first and foremost. Taking an approach that relies on stale insight and assumptions which ignores the dynamic conditions of the market and customers is essentially adopting a ‘we’ve always done it this way’ approach. Those companies that understand the rapid pace of change across a spectrum of market dimensions and factors and commit to understanding it through intelligent evidence are the ones that elevate the success given the alignment of strategies, innovation and decisions with the state of the customer.
For other articles in this series please click here (ed.)
