Here’s an interesting post from a marketing executive who started his career as an engineer. The advice below applies to all, whether you have technical background or not. It is very easy for executives to lose touch with customers who have important things to tell you. If the executives in mobile, broadband and other telecom services in Pakistan started reading the blogs and the commentary about their service, they will immediately gain a better feel for the situation on the ground.
As a Vice President for US Cellular, I regularly listened to customer service center calls and participated actively in “mystery shopping.” All this helped me, as a marketing executive, improve the brand experience. Did the front line support the brand as we showed in our TV ads and heard on radio? Were the representations correct? After mystery shopping, I took the time to meet the front line and their managers to share what I learned and correct problems. We also took to time to share these leanings with others in the company because marketing must be the voice of the customer.
Today the world is very different with social networks, blogs, and Twitter providing customer reactions in real time. And the marketer must be able to listen and synthesize this information coming from different sources at lightning speed. This type of customer listening will not replace other market research or customer satisfaction studies. Those are needed as well. Just remember, different customer groups respond to products differently. The younger generation might just tweet their satisfaction (creating a nice positive viral buzz) or dissatisfaction which has other dire consequences. Others may post their ratings on YELP or Amazon’s product reviews- a little slower perhaps but just as permanent.
The lesson learned is that we must synchronize to our customers’ time cycle, not our own.
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