In a LinkedIn article today entitled, “Best Advice: Stop Researching Your Customers — and Do Something“, the age-old issue of companies wanting more customers but being unwilling to invest in them is brought to task in the unusual and candid outburst of a research company’s presenter to their client. Why is Big Company spending money year after year on research that tells them the exact same thing year after year and doing nothing with it? Is it because big companies are expected to do research? Probably.
What I liked about this article is how the presenter’s body language screamed, “I don’t want to be here!” and “This is a waste of time!” and someone picked up on that and it led to an answer the writer could not ignore for the sake of her company’s future.
Companies don’t want to hear that a change for the good starts with spending money. After some failed attempts at trying to get their company to act of the research company’s advice, it was clear a process of evolution was needed in delivery of the message. It demonstrates that it really is not in what you say, but how you say it that gets the results.
But it also made me think of something else the writer had not even intended as a message. It is not only detrimental to the customer and their view of the offending company when change for the better is halted by dollar signs, but it is demoralizing to that company’s employees who have to put up with the unhappy customers. And it works both ways. I see this with the company my husband works for. They used to have little perks like birthdays cakes for each employee’s birthday, then it went down to one cake a month and finally there were none. All for sake of saving money. The low morale this engenders in them is picked up by everyone outside the company they get near – the vendors, the customers and the potential customers. No one wins in a scenario like this. Putting money ahead of your clients OR employees needs in every single thing hurts everyone in the end.
