MEMORANDUM
April 8, 2020
To: All Corporate Chief Marketing Officers
in the USA
From: Guy
Heston, Consumer
Subject: Market
Research
Hi all. I am writing to
inform you of my new policy regarding your market research efforts. This new
policy, effective immediately, is as follows:
If you want my opinion you have to pay me for it. I prefer cash but am
willing to accept a prepaid debit card or, providing your company has not filed
for bankruptcy or been bought by a private equity firm in the past three years,
a corporate check.
I know it can be hard to adjust to a new policy so I thought it
might be helpful to explain why I have implemented it.
Because you keep relentlessly bugging me for my opinion.
I go to the corporate-owned pharmacy to get my ibuprofen, and my
roughly three-feet long cash register receipt (I am considering implementation
of a new policy on the wasteful use of paper and will keep you posted on this),
offers me the opportunity to participate in a prize drawing if I will kindly go
on-line and rate my experience. The prize strikes me as cheap, and the odds of
me winning it seem long. Pass.
I take my car for servicing and, since I have to give up my
e-mail and phone number to schedule the appointment, the dealer staff hunts me
down to ensure that, if I am contacted by corporate market research, there
would be no reason to rate my experience anything less than exceptional.
The place where I used to get my morning coffee would always offer a
free cup of joe on my next visit if I participated in the on-line survey in
which I was randomly selected to participate. Not bad. Then corporate got
stingy and my last receipt said I would get that coffee only if I bought a food
item. Honestly!
I go to a department store for a clothing refresh and upon
check-out the sales associate flashes a four-star smile, writes her first name
on my receipt, and says she hopes I will give her an excellent rating in case I
am contacted by corporate (yes, they have my e-mail and receipt number, and
apparently can match it with the first name of the clerk).
I visit my doctor in my new clothes (see above) for the annual
physical, and sure enough here comes an e-mail survey from corporate health
care asking me to rate my doctor. I have been going to the same doctor for more
than 20 years, so I think corporate can safely assume I believe he’s a fine
guy. Even so, just to be nice to my doctor, I fill out the survey, rating him a
10. Two decades makes this a solid relationship, so this one’s
given for free.
You get the drift, and I think you are, on a scale of 1 to
10, making a 9.3 marketing mistake with
way too much emphasis on the metrics. I imagine you sitting in a conference
room reviewing said metrics, concerned and drinking strong black coffee when
the overall customer satisfaction rating dips from a 9.2 to a 9.1, or excited
and having donuts with coffee (maybe the fresh-ground Kona variety) and cream
when the rating goes from a 9.2 to a 9.3, based on customers who have been
offered a potential prize to part with a casual opinion and employees who know
how the system works.
Metrics are fine to a point, so to speak, but toss in a little
more qualitative data to brew up a better blend of customer reactions. I once
took great heat from the management team at the company I was working for when
I implemented a policy requiring all managers to spend one day either answering
the customer service phones or being in
the field mingling with customers. Some of the managers were not happy campers
with this policy, but I remain convinced they came out of the experience better
informed about customer opinions.
Hopefully, this explains my new policy of cash on the line if you
want to know what I think. Incidentally, I know you can pay cash to ask me and
other consumers for our opinions—I was once paid several hundred dollars to drive
new cars and pipe up with my opinions, and a few hundred dollars more to walk
around a make-believe showroom, observing and commenting on mock-ups of
prospective new car models. I think I used the proceeds to buy some more new
clothes.
If you have any comments regarding this new policy, please let me
know.
Hope everyone has a good day. Cheers!
Guy
No comments:
Post a Comment