Business success, like any serious relationship, cannot be based on a single stroke of genius. Rather, it depends on a delicate formula that includes relationship and belonging, through a value proposition customized to the client’s unique needs.
“A faithful man who can find?” (Proverbs, 20:6)
My entire relationship with the bank goes through my relationship with the teller, Sima. I buy my organic vegetables from the Yagur farm. My pickles and spices come from Ruby’s stand in the open-air market. I get my stuffed vegetables and grape leaves from Amira (“The Princess”) in Fureydis.
It is Amos, the chef of the “Helena” restaurant in the Caesarea port, who has made it my home restaurant: I sit at Amos’s on the water, order “Boaz’s table,” and accept the offer of a chilled dessert wine. That is where I celebrate with my family, meet friends, host visitors from abroad, or even just sit by myself. Amos doesn’t need to ask, he can tell from my face what I want to eat and how to provide me and my guests with a gastronomic, social, and personal experience.
Many people associate innovation with disruptive technology, but I have learned that there is no application that can disrupt the basic human needs – love, belonging, connection, security, recognition – that are the anchor for the development of technological applications, and are irreplaceable. User experience (UX) methodology by itself provides only a partial response to the emotional and social needs at the pinnacle of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. People crave contact, and the trust that can grow only between human beings, not between people and brands and companies.
In the future market, dictated by the customer’s needs, a product or service will be “pulled” as a counter-mesure to a problem, which also provides a social and emotional solution. The transition from selling products and services to building a supplier-customer relationship will succeed only on the condition that it contains three basic features:
1) a relationship of acquaintance, respect and trust;
2) building meaning and value for the client (purpose) and maintaining their interest;
3) creating a sense of belonging (to a place, group, community).
People are the anchor upon which customer-loyalty relationships are built. Clients will eventually come to view technological innovation that does not win their trust as alienated and therefore ineffective. Marketing and business development managers learn the hard way that artificial intelligence (AI), information systems, applications and manipulative campaigns, may serve as tools to bring the product to market, but will not attain stable supplier-customer relationships over time.
For members of the X and Z generations, “customer loyalty” may be an oxymoron, but the ground rules are changing: the use of online digital technology expands not only freedom of choice but also consumer awareness, a trend that may yet turn consumer fetishism into a marginal phenomenon.
The success of Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos (the richest man in the world), was not achieved by developing an application that replaced retail commerce systems, but by a service design that integrates the customer journey – an experience that includes freedom of choice, fair price, precise supply, and respectful level of service. The clients of the online store Zappos (owned by Amazon) feel as if they are members of a community committed to the purpose of delivering happiness, and enjoy a patient personal relationship with store employees who view customer needs not as whims but as the purpose of their work.
Amazon views me as a client and seeks to design a comprehensive customer experience for me – a value package including convenient access, freedom of choice, fair price, rapid delivery, and exceptional service. Facebook, on the other hand, uses me as a product sold to its real customers: the advertisers. I have been leasing Amazon’s services for many years. I use Facebook out of necessity, in spite of my suspicion and aversion from the company’s manipulations, but they will not have my loyalty over time.
Marketing as a profession has disrupted itself. At Amos’s, I learn what marketing is at its best, when it benefits the customer. Every successful business, one can assume, has an Amos of its own, who shows its clients they have someone to trust, someone to talk to, and someone to love.
Boaz Tamir, ILE.
Leave a Reply