Reorganising for Profit = Customer Orientation

Seth Godin’s blog (a good read if you are interested in marketing) recently featured an item  striking at a real pet-peeve of mine: the design of consumer experiences based on sellers’ convenience, rather than customers’ convenience.

“all the boxer shorts at the Gap are on a wall, organized by style first (checks over here, stripes over there,) then by size…

“This is dumb, and the web makes it obvious why it’s dumb. It’s dumb because it makes it easier for the clerk, not for the customer. And dumb because it plays to the label’s ego, not to ours.

“Does anyone say, “okay, even though my son wears size large boxers, these striped ones are really nice, I’ll buy the small instead.” Of course not.”

Seth received dissenting replies on this subject that were worthy of a further post .  Apparently, and amazingly, there are armies of retailers out there who refuse to even consider the possibility of organising their business to serve the experience of customers - and they are willing to argue about it. 

This topic is a nice, simple example of a bigger subject; customer orientation. It is a theme in service industry management, in sales, in advertising and in online marketing. In the fields of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), customer orientation is the main idea, the necessary precondition, and the top critical success factor.

I don’t think there is any doubt that designing businesses based on the needs and wants of customers is moving beyond being “a good idea” to being an imperative.  If only there were a way to  speed-up the culling of businesses that expect to dictate  customers’ preferences rather than serve them. 

I’ll be writing more on this topic. Universities; look out! The arcane and bureaucratic information, requirements and systems faced by your prospective and enrolled students is at the top of my hit list. If anyone can think of a university that does not fail in this area, please post!