Unreasonable hospitality - parte I

Como escrevi aqui há dias, comecei a ler "Unreasonable hospitality: the remarkable power of giving people more than they expect" de Will Guidara.

Um livro sobre a vida que levou o autor até ao sucesso do seu restaurante. Está a ser uma leitura cheia de surpresas. Aqui e ali pequenas pérolas aplicáveis a qualquer negócio.

Por exemplo:

""Service is black and white; hospitality is color."

"Black and white" means you're doing your job with competence and efficiency; "color" means you make people feel great about the job you're doing for them. Getting the right plate to the right person at the right table is service. But genuinely engaging with the person you're serving, so you can make an authentic connection - that's hospitality.

...

We had a radical idea of the guest experience, and our vision was unlike any other. "You're not being realistic," someone would invariably tell us every time we contemplated one of our reinventions. "You're being unreasonable."

... 

no one who ever changed the game did so by being reasonable. ... you need to be unreasonable to see a world that doesn't yet exist."

Ao reler estes trechos recordo algo que comentei aqui há uns anos, sobre o lado negativo de ser razoável, de ser competente e eficiente: Every visit customers have to make ...

Por exemplo:

""People will forget what you do; they'll forget what you said. But they'll never forget how you made them feel."

...

When you work in hospitality - and I believe that whatever you do for a living, you can choose to be in the hospitality business—you have the privilege of joining people as they celebrate the most joyful moments in their lives and the chance to offer them a brief moment of consolation and relief in the midst of their most difficult ones.

Most important, we have an opportunity - a responsibility - to make magic in a world that desperately needs more of it."

Ao reler estes trechos recordo uma metáfora que já usei aqui no blogue, a dos Muggles: Temer o pior sempre que os Muggles se metem.

Agora um trecho sobre estratégia e clientes-alvo:

"Don't Try to Be All Things to All People

Speaking of reviews and criticism - I read it. All of it. Every word (with the exception of most comment sections).

I'm always interested in what others, and not just the esteemed critic from The New York Times, think about what we're doing. If your business involves making people happy, then you can't be good at it if you don't care what people think. The day you stop reading your criticism is the day you grow complacent, and irrelevance won't be far behind.

But I don't change something every time one or two people say they don't like something - maybe not even if a lot of them don't like it! If you try to be all things to all people, it's proof that you don't have a point of view - and if you want to make an impact, you need to have a point of view.

Restaurants are creative pursuits. [Moi ici: Igualzinho para as PMEs industriais] As with most creative endeavors, there's no clear right or wrong. The choices you make are always going to be subjective, a matter of opinion.

What criticism offers you, then, is an invitation to have your perspective challenged — or at least to grow by truly considering it. You might stick with a choice you've been criticized for or end up somewhere completely different. The endgame isn't the point as much as the process: you grow when you engage with another perspective and decide to decide again."

Por exemplo, esta semana dei mais um webinar. No final cerca de um terço dos assistentes teve a generosidade de deixar uma avaliação. A larga maioria deu uma avaliação muito positiva. Um dos participantes numa escala de 1 a 10 avaliou o webinar com um ... 2 e acrescentou o seguinte comentário: "The webinar was for juniors, and the points mentioned were logical comment scenes". OK, o comentário era de alguém que não se enquadrava na audiência-alvo. Faz sentido fazer alguma alteração por causa disso? Nope.

Sem saber quem são os clientes-alvo surge a esquizofrenia, a falta de espinha e o curto-prazismo.   

O foco certo (parte IV)

Esta semana li num jornal qualquer que uma delegação de viticultores tinha ido a Belém pedir medidas ao presidente da república, e que este terá pressionado o secretário de Estado da Agricultura (também presente) para serem adoptadas medidas.

O infantilizador-mor da praça pública portuguesa sempre a cavar.

Entretanto, durante uma viagem de Alfa li:

“If you want tomorrow to look like yesterday, methodology will get you there.” —Peter Block

A declaração de Peter Block, “Se queres que o amanhã seja igual a ontem, a metodologia levar-te-á lá,” reflecte uma crítica à dependência de métodos e sistemas estabelecidos para criar resultados previsíveis e repetitivos, em vez de promover a mudança e a inovação. Ou seja, as abordagens convencionais muitas vezes reforçam práticas passadas, conduzindo a uma adaptação limitada ou à não exploração de novas possibilidades. Depois, os intervenientes admiram-se por obterem resultados semelhantes.

Esta semana tive oportunidade de ler "Rationality, Foolishness, and Adaptive Intelligence" de James G. March.

March critica a crença absoluta nas abordagens racionais e nos seus limites na tomada de decisões estratégicas. March concorda que as "tecnologias da racionalidade", embora possam ser eficazes em contextos simples e bem compreendidos, muitas vezes falham em ambientes mais complexos e exploratórios. 

"As complexity is increased and temporal and spatial perspectives are extended, returns (both of alternatives that are adopted and of those that are rejected) are likely to be misestimated by huge amounts. [...] There are many instances in which the use of a technology of rationality in a relatively complex situation has been described as leading to extraordinary, even catastrophic, failures."

"The poor record of rational technologies in complex situations has been obscured by conventional gambits of argumentation and interpretation."

Ele enfatiza a tensão entre exploitation (utilizar o que já sabemos) e exploration (procurar novas possibilidades). Metodologias racionais — baseadas em processos de decisão orientados por modelos e dados — são frequentemente ferramentas de exploração que reforçam sucessos passados, mas desencorajam a experimentação e a inovação.

Assim, Block e March chamam a atenção para que metodologias estabelecidas podem limitar a possibilidade de novos resultados transformadores, mantendo assim o "amanhã" idêntico ao "ontem". Depois, não nos podemos queixar... claro que podemos, desde que haja uns trouxas que assumam o prejuízo. Externalizar prejuízos deve ser tão bom!

Que incentivos terão os viticultores para mudarem de vida?

Parte I, parte II e parte III

O foco certo (parte III)

"In his book The Icarus Paradox, Danny Miller, ... details how the greatest trigger for organizational failure is success. The most successful organizations start to oversimply processes; become proud, insular, and immune to feedback; and lack the motivation or resources to change. Once highly effective processes, organizations, and leaders start to fail when faced with new technologies and shifting market trends. Miller named this challenge the Icarus paradox, after the Greek god. Icarus became so enamored with the flight enabled by his wax wings that he flew too close to the sun, melting the wings and falling to his death.? Miller offers eye-opening examples of market leaders rising in the markets, becoming so enamored by their own success that they fail to take precautions and then falling swiftly down their S curves.

...

How do we know when we are at point A-the tipping point between success and failure, the point where we need to shift between what we've been doing for our past success and what we need to do for the future? When all is going well, there is no reason for us to believe that our upward trajectory will ever change. The trick, therefore, is to always believe that you are at point A, to constantly scan the horizon for the next curve, even while enjoying your current success."

O consumo de vinho a nível mundial está a cair.

A importação de vinho está a estes níveis.

E a CNA, e os produtores de vinho, com o locus de controlo no exterior, colocam no governo de turno a criação de uma solução (recordar a parte II).

Ontem estava a ver um vídeo no Youtube sobre como desentupir canetas Isograph, e num dos comentários alguém escreveu que já não usava essas canetas há muito tempo porque, entretanto, o desenho por computador passou a ser a norma.

Um velho tema neste blogue: resistir ou abraçar a mudança (versão de 2010).

Nem de propósito, este postal recente de Seth Godin, "Redefining a profession".

A importância do locus de controlo no interior, a adpatação proactiva à mudança, a associação da mudança a oportunidades. A alternativa é a estagnação e o empobrecimento.

E para terminar com a ideia de foco, outro postal recente de Seth Godin, "Write for someone" mas adpatado por mim:

It's so tempting to make wine for everyone.

But everyone isn't going to drink your wine, someone is.

Can you tell me who? Precisely?

What did they believe before they tasted your wine? What do they want, what do they fear? What has moved them to choose a wine in the past?

Name the people you're making wine for. Ignore everyone else.

Parte I e parte II.

Trecho retirado de "Both/and thinking : embracing creative tensions to solve your toughest problems" de Wendy K. Smith, Marianne W. Lewis.

Onde começa a inovação?

Recentemente recebi via e-mail da Strategyzer um artigo intitulado "Does innovation always start with customer needs?" de Tendayi Viki e com o seguinte começo:

"This is the age old push versus pull question. Should innovation be driven by advances in technology (e.g. AI) or by market insights (e.g. aging population)? A lot of innovation models tend to describe innovation as a linear process that starts with understanding customer needs. 

In the early days of my career, I was quite rigid in my thinking about this question. I used to get into endless debates with innovation teams as I tried to push them towards focusing on customer needs first.  

But over time, I learned that innovation is not a paint by numbers process. Inspiration does not come in a neat linear package. Sometimes, technological advancements that are not driven by a clear customer need can spur innovation. My experience has taught me that innovation can start anywhere."

Como Alexander Osterwalder, fundador da Strategyzer, é suíço lembrei-me logo de Feyrabend e o seu "anything goes", o que me levou a este postal de 2015 "Para reflexão, sobre a criação de mercados". 

Como explico nesse postal, para uma PME sem capital e em dificuldades o ponto de partida é o da effectuation, Começar de onde se está, começar com o que se tem à mão. Não perder a ligação à terra, como o mitológico Anteu.

Tendayi Viki escreve:

"If you have identified the problem, find the solution.

If you have a solution in mind, identify your customer's problem."

"If you have identified the problem, find the solution" - Eu PME, posso não ter capital para desenvolver a solução que nunca experimentei, posso estar a subestimar a complexidade da coisa. No entanto, estou a focar-me na inovação que interessa, estou a criar valor e diferenciação, posso atrair investidores(?).

"If you have a solution in mind, identify your customer's problem," - Eu PME fico desalinhado do mercado actual que conheço (pode passar por mudar de clientes, de mercados, de modelo de negócio), posso mesmo assim não conseguir taxas de adopção interessantes. No entanto, estou a diversificar e expandir o mercado, a aproveitar activos existentes e a tornar a empresa mais resiliente.

Acerca do valor para o cliente

O que é valor para um cliente? 

Quando eu era criança era tudo uma questão de racionalidade, de especificações. Depois, o choque ... é muito mais do que isso, e abandonei a doença anglo-saxónica:

"But that is just the economically rational side of the issue — where the proverbial curves cross. I guess I once naïvely thought that the price was set by how much purchasers wanted and valued the good for themselves. But the accelerator on that is the purchasers' recognition that to a segment of society important to them, it is meaningful that the good in question is ownable by them and not by somebody else. That is, ownership of the good positions the purchaser favorably with a segment of society that matters to the purchaser.

...

Understanding customer value has always been and will always be tricky. We used to be told it was all rational and functional. Then behavioral economics came along and demonstrated that there are many emotional elements involved that go well beyond the traditional functional definitions. And now it is clear that value is clearly socially constructed.


So, when you think about your customers, make sure to consider all the elements of value not just functional value and not just emotional value within the customers themselves. Over and above that, ask to what segment of society does possession of your good helps them to be a member. That final piece may be much more important than you may think at first blush."

Em que é que isto é importante para as PME? 

Elas devem:

• adoptar uma abordagem abrangente para compreender o que é valor para o cliente. Isto inclui considerar elementos funcionais, emocionais e sociais,
• considerar a que segmento da sociedade os seus produtos ou serviços ajudam os clientes a pertencer. Este aspecto social pode ser crucial na definição da proposta de valor global.

A compreensão final de qual o segmento social que o seu produto ajuda os clientes a aderir pode ser mais importante do que parece inicialmente. As PME devem considerar isso estrategicamente nos seus esforços de marketing e desenvolvimento de produtos. 

Roupas Sustentáveis:

• Funcional: Qualidade e durabilidade.
• Emocional: Sensação de estar a contribuir para um mundo melhor.
• Social: Pertencer a um segmento de consumidores conscientes e ambientalmente responsáveis.

Cervejas Artesanais:

• Funcional: Sabor diferenciado e produção local.
• Emocional: Prazer e satisfação ao experimentar algo único.
• Social: Integração numa comunidade de apreciadores de cervejas artesanais.

Produtos de Beleza Orgânicos:

• Funcional: Benefícios para a saúde da pele.
• Emocional: Sentimento de autocuidado e bem-estar.
• Social: Participação numa tendência crescente de cuidados naturais e orgânicos.

Móveis Artesanais:

• Funcional: Durabilidade e design personalizado.
• Emocional: Orgulho e satisfação em ter uma peça única.
• Social: Pertença a um grupo que valoriza a autenticidade e o artesanato.

Tecnologia de Apoio a Idosos:

• Funcional: Facilidade de uso e segurança.
• Emocional: Tranquilidade e independência.
• Social: Inclusão num segmento que preza pela qualidade de vida na terceira idade.

Alimentos Gourmet:

• Funcional: Ingredientes de alta qualidade e sabor superior.
• Emocional: Prazer e experiência gastronómica.
• Social: Pertença a uma comunidade de amantes da culinária gourmet.

Joias Personalizadas: (recordar o postal recente Marcas e customização será que a Rolex ainda não chegou lá?)

• Funcional: Qualidade e durabilidade.
• Emocional: Sentimento de exclusividade e identidade.
• Social: Integração num grupo que valoriza peças únicas e personalizadas.

Trechos retirados de "Positional Goods & Strategy"

Há clientes e clientes

"The trouble is that, in Japan as elsewhere in the world, the "customer is always right" mantra is having a bit of a wobble. Perhaps existentially so.

...

Japan's current experience deserves attention. After many decades at the extreme end of deifying the customer (Japanese companies across all industries routinely refer to clients as kamisama, or "god"), there is now an emerging vocabulary for expressing a healthy measure of atheism.

...

The Japanese government is now planning a landmark revision of labour law to require companies to protect their staff from customer rage.

The real breakthrough, though, lies in legislating the idea that customers can be wrong - a concept that could prove more broadly liberating.

...

Perhaps the biggest dent left by Japan's superior standards of service, though, has been the chronic misallocation of resources. [Moi ici: Por que tenho cuidado ao usar a palavra excelente] The fabulous but labour intensive service that nobody here wants to see evaporating has come at a steadily rising cost to other industries in terms of hogging precious workers.

...

Worldwide, though, the sternest challenge to the customer is always right mantra arises from its implication of imbalance. Even if the phrase is not used literally, it creates a subservience that seems ever more anachronistic. In a research paper published last month, Melissa Baker and Kawon Kim linked a general rise in customer incivility and workplace mental health issues to the customer is right mindset. "This phrase leads to inequity between employees and customers as employees must simply deal with misbehaving customers who feel they can do anything, even if it is rude, uncivil and causes increased vulnerability," they wrote."

O cliente tem a última palavra, mas o fornecedor tem a primeira, recordar o que escrevi em 2012.

Recordar "the most important orders are the ones to which a company says 'no'" em The Most Important Orders are...

Recordar Jonathan Byrnes e Justin Bieber.

Trechos retirados de "When the customer is not always right"

Para reflexão

"In business, the prevailing view is that doing more things is a clear sign of confidence. The notion is that it is really bold to say that not only can we do what we are currently doing; we are so confident that we can do other things too. Only if we lacked confidence would we stick to the thing we are currently doing! While I wouldn’t go far as to argue that this is never a valid sentiment, in my experience, doing more things is almost always a sign of lack of confidence.

...

What does a confident company look like? It is one that does less because it has confidence in what it is doing.

...

Or take Apple. It sells high-end smartphones featuring the closed iOS operating system. That isn’t much. It is pretty narrow. Depending on the quarter, it means Apple only sells 15% of the world’s smartphones. Android phones make up almost all the remaining 85%. Wouldn’t it make sense for Apple to produce phones at the price point at which the majority of smartphones are sold, or even Android phones too to give it a bigger share of the market and better growth prospects? No, not really. With the one thing that it does, Apple earns about an 80% share of the industry’s gross profit. It has the confidence to do a little and prosper a lot."

Trechos retirados de mais uma boa reflexão de Roger Martin em "Confident Companies Do Less" 

Num cenário polarizado ...

Há muitos anos que aqui no blogue, praticamente desde a primeira hora, escrevo sobre a importância de seleccionar os clientes-alvo e trabalhar para eles. Por exemplo, em 2006 escrevia sobre o perigo de ser uma Arca de Noé:

• Deixar de ser uma Arca de Noé
• Porque não podemos ser uma Arca de Noé!

A reforçar esta mensagem de focalização nos clientes-alvo, tenho desenvolvido aqui também a metáfora de Mongo, um mundo pleno de variedade e de tribos numa paisagem enrugada:

• 1 Origem de uma metáfora
• Criatividade e Mongo
• Covid, empresas, estratégias e paisagens enrugadas

Às vezes criticam-me porque supostamente no mundo actual as empresas tanto podem servir em simultâneo gregos como troianos. No entanto, continuo na minha, ainda na semana passada li, "Why Mushroom Leather (and Other New Materials) Are Struggling to Scale":

"Compare the number of venture capital firms funding software to the number of venture firms specialising in material innovation or fashion. There are far fewer.

The reasons for the chasm are structural. Once a software solution is invented, the marginal cost to distribute the second, third and one millionth sale are close to zero. By contrast, once a new material is invented, the marginal costs for subsequent units are nearly the same. It is only with learning and scale that costs begin to decrease.

At the same time, building the capacity to produce new materials often requires considerable capital expenditure to build out infrastructure."

Entretanto, ontem li "The Myth of the Mainstream":

"Chasing the mass market is a losing proposition for marketers in a polarized culture. Allying with the subculture that loves you is the best way to drive brand success.

...

For years, McDonald's seemed to embody everything that was wrong with the American diet. The brand had become a symbol of food choices that were driving escalating rates of obesity and hypertension.

The company spent more than a decade trying to fight this perception among American consumers by targeting them with messaging about its updated menu, which offered healthier alternatives more in line with contemporary diet trends - but to no avail. Year over year, McDonald's sales declined, and its brand perception continued to spiral downward.

...

Finally, the company decided to go on the offensive. Instead of combating the opposition's hate and attempting to win over those in the middle, McDonald's decided to focus on its fans - the people who self-identify as McDonald's devotees despite the vitriol directed at the brand. 

...

In doing so, it tapped into what these devotees love about McDonald's and not only activated their collective consumption but also inspired them to spread the word on behalf of the brand. The result of this strategy was a 10.4% increase in global revenue for McDonald's from 2018 to 2021 and the return of dormant customers: more than a quarter of those who came in to buy the Travis Scott meal, for example, hadn't visited the chain in over a year. Seemingly overnight, McDonald's went from being a cautionary tale to the darling of brand marketing and a case study for advertising effectiveness.

If you want to get people to move, you must choose a side. The notion that you can win by playing to the middle is a misleading myth.

What's going on here? Conventional wisdom would tell us that in a world of increasingly polarized opinions, our best bet is to appease the middle, if only because that's where the majority of the market is. That also seems like a safe bet to many companies, as a middle-of-the-road position is less likely to alienate potential customers.

...

The middle doesn't adopt new products with any urgency. They are not the first to respond to marketing communications, nor are they likely to weigh in on a debate between advocates and detractors. They mitigate their own risk of moving out of step with what might be considered generally acceptable by stepping back and observing other people's responses first.

The red herring is that we perceive this indifference as an opportunity to persuade them to one side or the other. But the truth is, they are not typically convinced by any marketing communications. Instead, they, too, take cues from other people - sometimes those who are for you, and at other times those who are against you.

Our chances of successfully influencing behavior increases when we choose to address the people who are most likely to take action.

With this in mind, it becomes abundantly clear that in a polarized scenario, the chances of marketers getting people to move are far greater when we activate the collective of the willing as opposed to trying to convince detractors or even persuade the indifferent."

Sobre a polarização do mercado, recordo Polarização do mercado ou como David e Golias podem co-existir. 

Investir para entrar na mente dos clientes-alvo

"Each area within the circles is strategically important, but A, B, and C are critical to building competitive advantage. The team should ask questions about each. For A: How big and sustainable are our advantages? Are they based on distinctive capabilities? For B: Are we delivering effectively in the area of parity? For C: How can we counter our competitors’ advantages?

The team should form hypotheses about the company’s competitive advantages and test them by asking customers. The process can yield surprising insights, such as how much opportunity for growth exists in the white space (E). Another insight might be what value the company or its competitors create that customers don’t need (D, F, or G).

...

But the biggest surprise is often that area A, envisioned as huge by the company, turns out to be minuscule in the eyes of the customer."

Acredito que muitas empresas apostam em propostas de valor que caem sobretudo na área B porque se focam nos outputs e não nos inputs. Assim, não investem tempo para entrar na mente dos clientes-alvo e perceber como é que o output é usado como input no processo de criação de valor do cliente.

Trechos retirados de "Strategic Insight in Three Circles".  

Trabalhar a relação

Um artigo com ideias interessantes e que ajuda a trabalhar o tema do desenvolvimento da relação com os clientes. 

"Many companies have embraced the importance of creating closer, more valuable relationships with customers.

But most do little to actively manage their portfolios of weaker and stronger relationships, other than keeping them diversified. They're missing significant opportunities.

...

• How central is developing customer relationship strength to our strategy and competitive advantage? More specifically, when and how much should we invest in converting weaker relationships to stronger relationships?
• How do we leverage these investments once relationships are created?
• How do we protect the relationships we have created to minimize customer churn?

...

we have identified three explicit goals for an effective CPM [customer portfolio management] growth strategy: relationship conversion, relationship leverage, and relationship defense.

Relationship Conversion 

Customer relationship conversion is the process of turning strangers into acquaintances, acquaintances into friends, and friends into partners. It accomplishes two important goals. First, customer loyalty and profit per customer improve, thanks to an increase in strong relationships. And second, the addition of weaker relationships to a portfolio provides both a source of future loyal customers and economies of scale."

Trechos retirados de "Manage Your Customer Portfolio for Maximum Lifetime Value"

Os extremistas

No último livro de Seth Godin, "The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams" encontrei um texto sobre um tema que me é muito caro: 

"49. Focusing on the Extreme User

Every organization has extremists: the employees, customers, or investors who demand more, pay more, use more, talk more, and share more. These extreme users have great needs and offer greater benefits. They are the heavy users, people with disabilities, the sneezers, and the professionals. They're the committed. The Stanford d.school has argued that focusing on these users teaches the organization lessons that will work for all users. This is contrary to the typical industrial organization, which is happy to lose the extremists if it helps them serve the masses more easily. Find the nerds, the motivated, and the overlooked, and figure out what they need to thrive. That exploration will reveal what others have needed as well but didn't care enough to speak up about."

Isto alinha bem com um texto que encontrei na net recentemente:

Mudar o cliente

"Upgrade your user, not your product. Don’t build better cameras - build better photographers." — Kathy Sierra

— Tor Grønsund (@tor) February 8, 2023

Esta frase fixou a minha atenção.

O valor não é gerado pelo produtor, ponto.

O valor é criado pelo cliente ao usar o produto na sua vida e ao experimentar um conjunto de consequências. 

Isto está relacionado com a frase "We might know what we are seling, but do we know what the cstomer is buying?"

O produtor pode escolher outro tipo de clientes, ou pode co-criar valor com os clientes actuais ajudando-os a perceber, a apreciar, a aspirar a algo mais. Que clientes têm potencial para fazer esta transição? Que parceiros podem ajudar a desenvolver esta jornada? Que mudanças organizacionais têm de ser feitas para trabalhar este aspecto?

Para reflexão

Acerca de "Don't know, don't care":

"Clients and customers can be frustrating.

Perhaps they don’t know what you know.

Perhaps they don’t care.

It’s possible to educate and inspire.

It might be more productive to find the few that want to go where you do."

Julgo que falta acrescentar algo como "Perhaps you don't care. Perhaps you are too focused in your output, and less focused in the outcome"

Sempre o foco nos clientes-alvo. Ou, como li recentemente, "We might know what we are selling, but do we know what the customer is buying?": 

"Another related issue is the manner in which the offering is supposed to create value for the customer. The traditional perspective is simply to consider the offering so as to contain the value that it brings to the customer. The service literature has however suggested that sellers need to consider that the customer's actual use of the offering is a deciding factor in what comes out of the offering [Moi ici: O outcome]. This perspective suggests that the offering should be seen as co-created by the seller and the customer, implying that value cannot be predetermined by the seller but also depends on the customer. This makes it much more difficult for the seller to design and control value creation. One way of doing this is to involve the customer in the seller's processes of designing and providing the offering, whether it is a component or a solution."

 

Quão diferentes são os seus clientes?

O meu interesse no livro começou há dias, Quem são os melhores e os piores clientes?, literalmente.

"Specifically, the Lens 1 views encourage us to "celebrate heterogeneity," in other words, to see and acknowledge the existence of the small but powerful set of customers who buy more frequently, at greater average order values, and at (slightly) higher margins than the vast majority of the customer base. Companies that ignore these differences across their customers do so at great risk. Alternatively, those that are able to recognize and act on these differences are sowing the seeds for an effective and sustainable growth strategy.

We have mentioned it several times now, but we cannot say it enough: There is no average customer.  ...  These sources of variation can be anticipated and leveraged effectively, rather than naively treating every customer the same, or by overcomplicating the customer relationship management task by going too far with well-intended but hard to implement "1:1 marketing" tactics.

...

• We are used to seeing averages, but they can be misleading. It is important that we understand the true nature of the variation in customer behavior, and this comes from looking at distributions.
• We are used to seeing totals, but we gain insight by decomposing these totals into their constituent parts, be it an additive or multiplicative decomposition.
• We are used to making statements about the nature of behavior across our entire customer base, that is, making the implicit assumption that the "drivers" of behavior are the same for everyone. But the decile analyses (whether doing so on the basis of equal-sized groups of customers or equal-sized portions of customer profitability) show that this is not at all true. It is vitally important to understand how and why the top-decile customers are different from the lower ones."

A Lente #1 pergunta "Quão diferentes são os seus clientes?":

• como se distribui a facturação por cada cliente?
• como se distribui o número de transacções por cliente?
• transformar facturação em número de transacções vezes a facturação média por transacção
• como se distribui a facturação média por transacção?
• como se distribui o lucro por cliente?
• como se distribui a margem média por cliente?

É interessante e olhar para uma empresa e perceber que o top 1% dos clientes pode ser tão lucrativo quanto os 41% do outro extremo. É interessante perceber que metade dos lucros de uma empresa podem vir de apenas 15% dos seus clientes.

E na sua empresa, quão diferentes são os seus clientes?

Trechos retirados de "The Customer-Base Audit" de Peter Fader, Bruce Hardie e Michael Ross. 

Outra vez a diferença entre evento e jornada (processo)

"Anybody can open a beauty salon. Any company can sell groceries. Any entrepreneur can invent a cool new technology. And any firm can purchase a fancy CRM system to collect mountains of data about their customers. But that’s not enough.

...

CRM alone does not make a company customer centric. It is not the solution to every customer-centric challenge. It is merely the first step-albeit a massively important step-toward customer-centric success. Companies that do CRM correctly don’t just collect data about their customers. ... they also know how to use that data to serve those customers better. They align their marketing and sales strategies based on that data. They strive to reinforce relationships with their customers based on that data."

Isto acontece tanto, compra-se a tecnologia, mas não se a usa, não se investe na formação de quem a terá de usar. Acredita-se que o acto de a comprar é que merece a atenção. Outra vez a diferença entre evento e jornada (processo). O mesmo se pode dizer da certificação, sem a trabalhar no dia a dia, apenas algo que se subcontrata a um consultor, se ele puder fazer tudo, então é que é bom!

Trechos de "Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage" de Peter Fader

Trabalhar com os clientes que não são os clientes-alvo

Uma reflexão interessante de Peter Fader que vai ao encontro do que me sinto obrigado a fazer na prática, apesar do que escrevo aqui ao longo dos anos:

"the basics of customer centricity are to identify, research, serve, and profit from the most valuable customers your company has-what we call the "right" customers. It is a simple idea that, admittedly, is not so simple to implement. And that's because the adoption of customer centricity demands nothing less than a complete restructuring of your organization that will position it to serve precisely the right customers at the expense of pretty much everything else.

...

When I teach customer centricity, it doesn’t take long for my students to begin asking that very question or some version of it. “If we are to concern ourselves only with the right customers,” they ask, “what exactly are we supposed to do with the rest of the customers? Should be ignore them? Push them away? Fire them?

The answer to all of those questions, of course, is no. Because even though I’ve spent nearly 10,000 words telling you all of the reasons why the product-centric model is old and dangerously vulnerable to a changing global marketplace, I will now admit that even if you create the most thoroughly customer-centric company that has ever existed, you will still need to be product-centric in a significant way.

...

Yes, you want those other customers to stick around. You want them to buy your products and services. You want them to provide the steady influx of cash that will allow you to continue your work toward capitalizing on the right customers. You want these other customers to keep right on being your customers; you just don’t want to burn any calories worrying about them. What I’m suggesting here is that you should view these other customers as low-hanging fruit. They are easy money. They are, in essence, the ballast that will allow you to continue on your path to long-term customer-centric success. In that sense, they remain every bit as important to your company as the right customers.And while those right customers get your best efforts, the others don’t. And no, there’s nothing wrong with that. From a strictly business perspective, in fact, it’s the right way to do things. I always stress to my students that the decision to become a customer-centric company is most certainly not a decision to become a boutique company. We in the customer-centric world are not downsizers. We don’t want to shrink our customer pool or limit profits. Rather, we are simply interested in allocating our resources in the most efficient way possible. Again, let us remember the point on which we began this chapter: the goal of a customer-centric firm is precisely the same goal of a product-centric firm. The goal is to make money-lots of money-for the long term. To generate enormous profits. To grow. To create shareholder value.

...

We want those other customers to keep coming back, so long as they don't cause any trouble, don't waste our time, and don't cost us a single cent more than it takes for us to keep them coming back. We customer-centric types acknowledge that we are better off spending our time worrying about the right customers, not whether one of the other customers stays or goes. That is why customer centricity is different than product centricity."

O problema é que muitas vezes as empresas gastam demasiados recursos com clientes que não são os clientes-alvo. [Moi ici: Ás vezes acontece-me isto, mais vezes do que gostava. Embora na prestação de serviço seja diferente. Por vezes, funciona como um investimento no desenvolvimento de algo que depois pode ser trabalhado e adaptado aos clientes-alvo] O problema é que muitas empresas, demasiadas, perdem dinheiro, literalmente, com clientes que não são os clientes-alvo. 

Trechos retirados de "Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage (Wharton Executive Essentials)" de Peter Fader. 

Recordar que os clientes não são todos iguais.

Via @AMISCZ no twitter:

A Dutch supermarket chain introduced slow checkouts for people who enjoy chatting, helping many people, especially the elderly, deal with loneliness.
The move has proven so successful that they installed the slow checkouts in 200 stores. pic.twitter.com/MQUYuyPuFc

— Maarten VdA (@maartenvda) January 8, 2023

Recordar que os clientes não são todos iguais.

Recordar Cuidado com esta gente à frente de empresas e sobretudo o lado negativo de:

 Eu não frequentaria esta linha de caixa, ainda, mas a maioria da população consumidora com poder de compra está cada vez mais na faixa acima da idade da reforma. Por isso, faz sentido fazer este tipo de experiências se os clientes-alvo estiverem neste grupo.

"your right customers"

"The customer” does not exist because every customer is different. Customer-centric firms acknowledge the heterogeneity among our customers. More than that, we celebrate it because we understand that heterogeneity offers us opportunity. In a customer-centric company, we understand that some customers do matter more. We understand that some customers do deserve more-and by extension, some customers deserve less. We understand that it's okay to give them less. I really believe that. I believe it very deeply, in fact. But I also understand this idea is pretty far out there-and I understand the enormous challenge associated with its real-world implementation.

It's a challenge that organizations must tackle on both the organizational and financial fronts.

The idea that some customers matter more than others is a radical one. But so is the idea that your company should completely retool its research and development functions, rework its metrics, and generally rethink every aspect of its daily operations specifically to meet the demands of those right customers - and in the process acknowledge that your old way of doing things was, for lack of a better term, misguided. So many companies are so good at the product-centric basics-inventing a thing, producing a thing, delivering a thing, inventing a new thing, and so on-that they don’t stop to ask themselves, even for a moment, whether the customers they are selling to are the right ones.

...

Once you have identified your right customers the next steps are obvious. You mine those customers for information. You find out what they want, what they need, and what they will demand going forward. You find out how to acquire new customers who share some of the key characteristics that distinguish your best customers. And then you position your company, from the very top of the corporate structure right down to the on-the-ground sales force, to deliver on these ideas-because by identifying and serving those customers (and in some sense ignoring the rest), you will be doing precisely what is necessary to maximize their long-term value and your company’s profits."

Trechos retirados de "Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage (Wharton Executive Essentials)" de Peter Fader.

Tantas interrogações

"For now, let’s start with the basics-a definition of customer centricity:

Customer centricity is a strategy that aligns a company’s development and delivery of its products and services with the current and future needs of a select set of customers in order to maximize their long-term financial value to the firm.

...

We will be discussing the many nuances of this definition throughout the book, but that one sentence is basically customer centricity in a nutshell: a fundamental acknowledgment that not all customers are created equal; a commitment to identify those customers who matter most; and a willingness to dedicate disproportionate amounts of resources not only to understand what those customers want but to deliver what they want-and by extension, create a stable, lucrative, and evermore profitable future.

...

There is one overarching reason why customer centricity demands such sweeping organizational change, and that reason goes right back to the daring, radical idea that not all customers are created equal and therefore should not and cannot be treated as equals. It's an idea we will come back to again and again.

In my definition of customer centricity, the customer-centric way of doing business specifically calls on organizations to identify a select set of customers. These are the important ones, the lucrative ones, the ones you should be spending your time thinking about, planning around, producing and working for-the right customers. These are the customers who matter. Of course, in the product-centric world, there are no right customers. There is no dividing line between the important ones and the rest. They are all just customers-the nameless, faceless hordes who gobble up (or ignore) whatever it is Company X is attempting to sell."

O tema e a ideia não são novos neste blogue. Para mim são verdades básicas, mas leio isto e penso no que li no jornal Público no artigo, ""Mais 10 cêntimos a garrafa e a cooperativa ganhava mais 1,7 milhões"". 

A mensagem acima é para quem quer aumentar a produtividade a sério sem fazer braço de ferro com os clientes. A produtividade aumenta não porque se tem poder arbitrário sobre os clientes, mas porque se oferece em contrapartida mais valor a esses clientes-alvo.

Este artigo do Público deixa-me com várias interrogações:

• A quem se dirige Jaime Quendera nesta entrevista? Aos clientes? Aos consumidores? Aos concorrentes, procurando sinalizar mensagens de forma legal?

"São, mas o mercado é como é e não como eu gostaria que ele fosse. Alguém acha que eu não subo mais os preços porque não me apetece? Aliás, como vendemos milhões de garrafas, qualquer alteração teria um impacto enorme na facturação, certo? Se eu vendesse a minha produção para o canal off trade (17 milhões de garrafas da CASIP) a mais 1 cêntimo por garrafa, facturava mais 170 mil euros, mas se em vez de 1 cêntimo eu cobrasse mais 10 cêntimos por garrafa de Pegões – para muitos consumidores isso nem mexe no seu poder de compra — ganhava mais 1,7 milhões de euros. Já viu isso? É dinheiro, não é? Só que o mercado, como tem muito vinho, não permite aumentos destes. Ponto final. 

[Moi ici: Quando o foco é o produto, e não o cliente...]

 

...

E como vai evoluir o posicionamento de Portugal nos mercados externos?

Aí, acho que, naqueles países que não são preconceituosos, temos boas oportunidades, em termos de volume e de preço. No Canadá, nalguns países asiáticos ou do Leste, os consumidores começam a perceber que a qualidade de um vinho francês ou italiano a 7 euros é equivalente a um vinho português de 3 euros. Seja como for, sempre que há crises mais acentuadas a CASIP cresce porque o consumidor tende a fazer compras mais ponderadas e de menor custo — e é aqui que somos competitivos." [Moi ici: O clássico exemplo de não mexer no produto e procurar mercados alternativos para poder praticar melhores preços]

O trecho que se segue deixa-me muitas questões quanto ao real significado da mensagem. É literal? É preciso algum esforço de exegese para chegar a um outro significado que representa a verdadeira mensagem, a mensagem pretendida para uma das audiências referidas acima? 

"Eu nasci e cresci no mundo do vinho. O vinho faz parte da nossa cultura. Não é um produto de luxo. Sei que o mercado é estratificado, mas dá-me muito mais gozo permitir que um maior número de pessoas tenha acesso a bons vinhos a preços acessíveis, ... É a minha maneira de ver as coisas." [Moi ici: Um dos clientes da cooperativa são os sócios que precisam de escoar uvas, muitas uvas...]

Trechos iniciais retirados de "Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage" de Peter Fader.

Quem são os melhores e os piores clientes?

Há milhões de anos que neste blogue desafiamos as empresas a questionarem-se e a focarem-se nos seus clientes-alvo, em vez de tentarem ser tudo para todos e torrarem recursos (não esquecer a curva de Stobachoff) de forma ineficaz e ineficiente.

Um artigo publicado em Dezembro pela Harvard Business Review, "Do You Really Understand Your Best (and Worst) Customers?", fez-me recuar aos anos iniciais deste blogue onde focamos por muitas vezes a nossa atenção na necessidade de escolher os clientes-alvo:

"Companies often look at their business by focusing on geographic regions, specific brands or products, or by sales channel. This makes sense, because this data is always at hand, and organizations are often structured around geography or channels. But by looking at data and business problems from a frame of reference in which the customer is the atomic unit for analyzing revenue and profitability, these firms were able to gain a new perspective on the problem they were facing, either properly diagnosing the problem or stopping themselves from making a bad decision.

As you analyze your firm’s revenues and profits, or as you make plans for the future, what’s your unit of analysis?

...

This lack of focus on individual customer data is often a mistake. Revenues are generated by customers pulling out their wallets and paying for your products and services. Revenue is the sum of the value of all the customer transactions that occurred in a given time period.

Many firms recognize the need to think differently about using customer data, but they do not know where to start. They are often trapped in an old-fashioned view of their business, structured around products or channels. How do you approach the task of getting your people to shift their perspective and start thinking about your firm’s performance using the customer as the atomic unit of revenue and profitability?"

Um conjunto de perguntas que podem ajudar a perceber quem são os clientes-alvo. Primeiro, as que se encontram no âmbito de "Lens 1: Who are our Best and Worst Customers?". 

"How many customers did we have last year? How do these customers differ in terms of their value to the firm? For example, how many customers purchased from us just once last year? How many customers accounted for half of our revenue last year? Half of our profit? If we compare, say, the 10% most profitable customers to the 10% least profitable, what lies behind these differences? To what extent are they driven by differences in the number of transactions, the average value per transaction, and average margin per transaction? Digging deeper, what about differences in the types of products they purchased?

The set of simple analyses that explore how different our customers are from each other lead to a fundamental conclusion: customers are not equal. Most people underestimate just how unevenly revenue and profit are distributed across customers."

Segundo, as que se encontram no âmbito de "Lens 2: How is Customer Behavior Changing?".

Terceiro, as que se encontram no âmbito de "Lens 3: How Does a Cohort of Customers Change Over Time?".

"Much like Copernicus changed the way people thought about the earth’s place in the universe, we have observed that taking a view of the firm’s performance using the customer as the unit of analysis can have a similarly profound impact on the way the firm thinks about assessing performance and planning for growth. This results in a mindset shift for organizations to move from talking about “what makes us money” to “who makes us money.”"

Acredito que o uso destas perguntas pode ajudar a analisar os dados para os transformar em informação que pode ser avaliada e usada para a tomada de decisões estratégicas, como perceber que há clientes sérios e honestos, mas que não são clientes-alvo, são mais um prego no caixão.