Jeweller - May 2024

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BUSINESS Marketing & PR Deepen your understanding of your target market How well do you know your customers? DAVE WAKEMAN reveals effective strategies for learning more about your target market. I try to make two major points in every customer engagement: You must be able to define success and remember that you are not the customer. This second idea tends to confuse people. We all feel that we know what our customers want and what they should consider when they buy from us. However, this is a bad idea because people don’t act how we want them to, and our assumptions are probably costing us sales. This makes the ability to ‘hear’ your customers necessary. There are four ways to get to know our customers better. For me, doing surveys is a last-ditch effort. They take time because you need to work out the right questions. You also need to spend time targeting and figuring out the right tools. Surveys can also be expensive. Although the prices have come down over the years, you will still need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a good survey done. Finally, getting people to respond to surveys takes work. This has a few knock-on effects on the research you will do. Can you get the right people to respond? Can you get enough responses to make the survey valid? The ‘Quick Question’ is a way to get oneto-one feedback from your market. The beauty of this is that you can use this question anywhere: in the store with a customer or prospect, around town when you shop, or in any setting where curiosity spurs an idea. The key to success isn’t to think of these small asks as the solution to all your customer knowledge but as a step toward insight. I describe this approach as the foundation of a hypothesis about customer wants, market needs, and products that you are developing. The ‘Social Butterfly’ is my take on focus groups. Focus groups are familiar, and they are also contrived. You must work hard to ensure you get the maximum benefit from focus groups because you find that people will tell you what they think you want to hear. They’ll be performative because they know they are being observed or may not be forthcoming. It is tough to know, and that’s where the idea of the Social Butterfly came from. It’s a recognition that you can learn a great deal from groups and the realisation that a group setting can make it hard to find the truth. I set these Social Butterfly situations up at networking events or mixers where I can float in and out of conversations, dropping in ideas or bringing up ideas I want to learn more about. Typically, these revolve around the hypothesis I’ve developed from my earlier conversations. The big thing is to spur the conversation and really listen; don’t judge. ‘The Work of Others’ is my cheeky way of borrowing research from businesses, foundations, and organisations investigating my questions. How does it work? It’s simple: you plug your question into your favourite search engine and play with a few variations of the idea. Read and review until you’ve learned what you need to know or reached the time you set for research. Using ‘The Work of Others’ has some great benefits: It is quick, cheap, or free, and it can help you validate an angle or hypothesis. The downside is that it is outside your control, and you might not get the information you want. There can be dead ends; however, you can learn solid information with an hour and a search engine. I’ve isolated billion-dollar market segments using this technique combined with the Quick Question and the Social Butterfly; however, it takes effort. This is the point in the research where I figure out if I must do things myself. The key to success isn’t to think of these small asks as the solution to all your customer knowledge but as a step toward insight. Can you trust that you put together the survey in a way that ensures you learn what you need to learn? You may answer ‘yes’ to all three questions; however, you must also consider whether this best uses your time, money, and focus. I’ve done it both ways. I’ve researched on my own, and I’ve done the job using research conducted by others. They can both work The big secret is to consistently use the Quick Question and the Social Butterfly to gain insights. With these insights, you can go deeper with your own research. Why do this? Knowing the customer isn’t a one-time thing. Retailers are always talking to their markets because they know that their audience is always changing their wants, needs, and desires. They also know that guessing or predicting what people will want can be a difficult challenge. So, letting people help you give them what they want is best. DAVE WAKEMAN is a consultant, writer, and teacher who believes in profits in business and not promises. Learn more: www.davewakeman.com 46 | May 2024
BUSINESS Logged On Artificial Intelligence: One step at a time Embracing emerging technology is exciting; however, we must proceed with caution. BARRY URQUHART encourages you to think before you consider implementing AI programs into your business. It’s easy to get caught in the rush, and it comes with consequences and costs. The latter may be financial, social, political, cultural, and operational. Take a pause; the business landscape is littered with the fallout of past rushes centred on mass production, just-in-time, cloud computing and online sales. Contemporary examples feature production zero-emissions, green energy, algorithms, renewable fuels and autonomous operations. And now, there is AI – artificial intelligence. There are lessons to be learned. Value is difficult to measure, monitor, and control. It can be, and often is, a weighty issue. Few want to be left behind — the question is, behind what? Sentiments evolve into truisms founded on emotions, intentions, and idealisms, which typically lack objective, substantive, and reasoning. Generative AI represents the subject matter, and the term is explicit and implicit. Generational, strategic and quantum change, if not progress, advancement and competitive advantage, is significant in scale. It doesn’t come easy Enhanced efficiency, effectiveness and productivity of innovations, technologies and disruptive processes may not result in better outcomes, advantages, benefits and rewards for clients, customers, business managers and stakeholders. Indeed, they can profoundly impact morale, cohesion, job security, employee attrition rates, customer service, and service delivery. Skill gaps become evident rapidly, and internal and external satisfaction levels can decline. Therefore, installing innovations and change is only an initial phase. Ensuring and optimising ‘fit’ may require attention, time, and resources to facilitate, install and support changes in structures, systems, processes and skill sets. Australian businesses benefit from mining resources, and this country is foremost in operations, profitability, and adaptability. Autonomous trucks and trains are examples. Admittedly, the sector is populated with risk-takers. A commonly applied philosophy is founded on three pillars: mine, refine, and define. Each is relevant and applicable to commerce at large, particularly when addressing artificial intelligence. The key preceding phase is ‘explore’. Artificial Intelligence has many dimensions; some are customised, while others have been commoditised. None can be secured, installed, and left to its own devices. Inevitably, deficiencies, shortfalls and errors become apparent – with potentially significant implications, complications, and consequences. Therefore, mining the marketplace for the ‘right’ or most appropriate AI is imperative. One size does not fit all. Mining, scoping, and documenting the potential will identify the need for complementary, contributing, and supportive infrastructure. That will enable pre-emptive refinement of the intended introduced artificial intelligence and the existing operations. Gaps must be filled; only then can outcomes, intended and unintended, advantages and disadvantages, enhancements and improvements, be identified, analysed, documented, implemented, monitored, measured, improved, and provided with optimal infrastructural support. ChatGPT and other programs are case studies. Pre-existing phones, computers and online systems may be incompatible. Human overview checking, verification and approval are advisable, if not mandatory. Artificial Intelligence should be secured and implemented for specific purposes or intended outcomes. Legal practitioners, medical specialists, engineering experts and psychology consultants will attest to that. Set and forget is fraught with potential or inevitable non-identifiable consequences. First things first Artificial Intelligence should be secured and implemented for specific purposes or intended outcomes. Accordingly, goals, outcomes and key performance indicators must be determined, with input from internal and external stakeholders. Variances and refinements may be necessary. They should be tolerated, recognised, respected, and actioned. Delegated responsibilities need to be agreed upon, and enforced. Transparency and accountability are important. The process is called ‘rhyme and ‘reason’. Beware AI snake-oil-salespeople! Creative misses Artificial Intelligence works best from a broad and extensive existing database. Original and unprecedented thoughts, texts, expressions, responses, and actions have severely restrained scopes. AI is fundamentally a tool that complements existing human, systemic, and structural resources. It does not and should not be employed to replace them. Operating in or from a void is hollow. However, it comes with inherent costs, strengths, weaknesses, limitations and needs. Each phase, step if you will, needs to be explored, mined, refined and defined before acquisition, introduction, implementation and operation. I have seen first-hand how customer service will be affected, can be affected and improved because of AI. The benefits are immense when perceived through customer perspectives, particularly personalised customer service. Think about it - that is intelligent but not artificial. BARRY URQUHART is managing director of Marketing Focus. He has been a consultant to the retail industry since 1980. Visit: marketingfocus.net.au May 2024 | 47
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Page 3: Twelve single Argyle Pink Diamonds
Page 7 and 8: Become a stockist today 02 9290 219
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