Poor Service As a Source of Inspiration
How to turn your mind outside out and find new ideas
Before you begin reading the article, please note that at the end of it, you’ll find some additional links to exciting publications and a link to my FREE presentation, “Types of customer needs and values.” It contains some useful tips on how to use the Needs and Values concept for your business.
Have you ever faced poor service? Have you ever bought products that turned out to be of low quality? Have you ever tried to use websites that seemed to be created to torture users?
Chances are it happened because of profit. But there is good news – we can use it to turn our business thinking inside out and create some new things.
Profit, only profit, and nothing but profit
Some businesses, such as Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and many others, used to enjoy the early golden days when generous investors backed them. And the shareholders didn't ask them to earn a profit – all they had to do was to grow as fast as possible.
Some companies, for instance, Uber, haven't still found a way to stop being loss-making.
But in 2022 and at the beginning of 2023, even those generous investors became impatient and started asking CEOs hard questions about net profit. As a result, many large and small tech companies laid off thousands of staffers.
It might have become a shock for some leaders in the tech world, but millions of other businesses have to struggle for net profit every day.
And if they are still around, they manage to win this battle. And it is good news for them, but not for us.
Whenever I go to a local supermarket, I must stay in line. The company can't afford to hire more cashiers because its top executives must think of net income.
I can't solve some issues with my bank without visiting their office. There are few offices in the city, and none is in the neighborhood. Moreover, their working hours are very inconvenient for me. But they can't afford more offices or longer working hours – they need to take care of net profit.
Every time I call a company and have to hold on listening to music and to the robot's voice telling me that my call is "very important" for them, I know that somebody is worried about money.
Getting high net profit and providing exceptional customer service look like contradictory tasks. Or they seem ones.
The world without net profit. Reframing the task
Close your eyes and envision a world where all enterprises may forget about net profit for good. A world in which their only KPI would be customer satisfaction. I know that it looks unrealistically, but give your imagination a chance.
It would be a world where consumers would be happy. No more lines, answering machines, and stupid chatbots that can't understand our requests. No more hours lost in the attempts to resolve the simplest problems. It would be a paradise.
But this is not only a foolish dream.
I have conducted dozens of strategic workshops. We always begin with customers, their needs, and the values a company could create for them. And too often, I hear from the team members: "We could make our customers happier, but this product (or service) will never become profitable." And they reject many ideas point blank on the sole ground that they can't bring income.
But I am a stubborn guy. My university major was mathematics, so I know what "inverse mathematical problem" means.
If you have to solve a direct mathematical problem, it implies you have some input data, you know the method, and you have to find a result (which is unknown in the beginning).
An inverse mathematical problem looks the other way around. You know the result, and you need to find a method and collect relevant data.
So, I make workshop participants describe an ideal product or service – as though we can not worry about profitability. And I want them to envision it in detail.
And then, I ask them to find a way to make it profitable without sacrificing the quality, usability, delivery speed, etc. In other words, and push them to make the ideal product profitable. And I don't accept any objections such as "it is impossible."
I know that this resistance is natural for our brains. The evolution tuned them to save energy, so we always look for a way to cut corners. Daniel Kahneman became a Nobel prize winner for his findings about heuristics. But if we make our brains work hard, they can surprise us.
It is not a silver bullet, and I can't guarantee you'll find a great solution. But I know from experience that it at least is worth trying.
Additional links:
Download the Types of Needs and Values presentation here.
Fast Service As A Business Model
Leverage this psychological feature to boost your business. Read more.
Give Your Workers The Reason to Work Hard
And it is not about money. Read more.