Gurus On Marketing

tices. The patient generally gets well, the car or zipper usually works,
and the bank account is services. And enterprises do reach out,
sporadically, to customers – holding focus groups, providing tollfree
numbers to enhance customer dialogue, offering ‘customer
care’ training to staff. But how many build the entire logic of the
firm around the flow of the customer through the A to Z process
of experiencing the organisation? Answer: darn few!’
‘Such ‘outside-in’ imagery clashes with the current ‘customer
focus’ craze. Customer focus still clutches the tired imagery of ‘us’
designing to attend to ‘them’; ‘us’ as active (the actors); ‘they’ as
passive (audience); ‘us’ as the sun around which ‘they’ the customers
revolve. In an illusory world, semantics by definition are everything
– and ‘outside-in’, ‘script-and-direction-by-customer,’ or ‘customerexperience
created’ are more appropriate phrases. ‘We’(producers)
are mere derivative, the bit players in ‘their’(customers) show, not
the reverse!
I have come to call all this ‘customer zing’. It’s an ugly word. And
in general I heartily dislike such concoctions. Yet it seems to taste
about right. One reason for choosing it is to point up the difference
from customizing. Customizing, a good idea, is still pre-Copernican
in slant. ‘We’ are still the centre of the universe, presenting ‘them
with a carefully crafted menu of offerings. It misses that huge Disneyleap
into their creating us. Customer-as-initiator is the point.’
He presents the following traits of the totally customerised company:
• Personalisation.
• Customisation.
• Responsiveness.
• Friendliness.
• The perception of choice.
• Insiderism.
SIX TOM PETERS 101