NB: This is a guest post by Murray Harold, a homeworking business travel agent from Buckinghamshire, UK.
As technology evolves, we have seen some excellent innovation, some brilliant ideas and heralded the arrival of many, many startups.
That said, one person in all this seems to be getting missed out: the customer. You may remember "the customer" – that is the person that, at the end of the day, who pays your bills.
The customer is not really the main target of a startup, though, is it? The main target is the venture capitalist – and the exit strategy.
The idea is not to produce something that customers will find useful, but to produce something which can be made to look useful and thence sold to someone for a (usually inappropriate) sum of money that will make somebody filthy rich.
We manage to forget the customer at both ends of our venture. Do we really start something because there is a real demand for a product or service – or does what we wish to do simply fall into the "be reasonable, do it my way" category?
You can usually spot these. Anyone watching the BBC's Dragon’s Den (or similar pitch-type show) would find it easy to categorise such ideas. There are few who seem to spend a lot of time on customer research, evaluating how things are done now and then going through the lengthy process of working out how to do things better.
Those that go through this process, we have seen, are, on balance, a lot more successful.
Lament the loss of customer service
We manage to forget the customer, again, at the tail end of our process – where the product or service meets the end user. The last thing any firm seems to want, these days, is to have to actually communicate with our customers.
If we do have to communicate with these nasty, smelly things, then best at arms length – or at least at email form's length.
We hide our telephone numbers, we use a PO Box for an address, we make customers go through endless pages of FAQ’s (which is odd, given how difficult it is to communicate with many firms, how those questions became "frequently asked" in the first place) and finally, we provide a premium rate number which only operates at certain times, has many options and the invariable 20-minute wait.
It does not matter how wonderful our product or service is. The most critical part of any operation is where the service touches the end user. Yet at this point, it is usually the lowest paid, least motivated person who has that task.
Further, the point of contact person is increasingly not someone who can take possession of – and more importantly - fix a problem. Time was, when you could, at an airport, grab any passing uniformed person who would listen and, nine times out of ten, be able to say "come with me" and fix the given issue.
Most first contact people now can offer but platitudes and that soul-destroying indication that he or she will have to find someone... who will have to find someone... who will have to find someone!!
In a society where jobs are at a premium and so wages are at a minimum, it is easy to use the fear of loss of job as a means of motivation. Yet if this situation changes (and sooner or later, it will), what will be the result?
Bad precedent
Our interface with the end user is at risk. We have the best technology, the best website, we have put millions into our project - but if one day, when jobs are a little more plentiful, our "fear of loss of job"-driven customer-facing employee simply says "go away, I can’t be bothered" and walks off to a better paid job, then we have a big problem.
Any firm that spends a bit more time engaging with customers and is SEEN to be engaging with customers, with well trained motivated staff (ie properly paid), who will be the winner?
The objective is, at present, not to take possession of and resolve a problem. The objective is to pass it on, to hope the problem resolves itself or that it will simply go away or that it can be passed into a giant mill which will not produce a resolution unless it appears, say, in a column of the press.
Although technology makes great strides, our treatment and marginalisation of the end user is a major issue as is, indeed, the blinkered view of many startups who cannot differentiate between "customer need" and "personal bee-in-the-bonnet".
Don’t get me wrong, there have been many instances when these two factors meet, but they are rare – and getting rarer.
Another question to ponder whuch is very relevant - and indicative - of the above: who decided that everything has to be so cheap? Perhaps the time has come to forget "the cheapest" and pursue a new line: "best value" – the two are very, very different.
NB: This is a guest post by Murray Harold, a homeworking business travel agent from Buckinghamshire, UK.
NB2:Love customers image via Shutterstock.