The Importance of Non-Customers

Michael Wu, Scientist of Analytics at Lithium, has posted a great article upon the different components defining the strength of a Relationship.

The notion of tie strength was first introduced in 1973 by Prof. Mark Granovetter in his seminal work: The Strength of Weak Ties. He identified four different components of tie strength.
  • Time: amount of time spent together
  • Intensity: emotional intensity and the sense of closeness
  • Trust: intimacy or mutual confiding
  • Reciprocity: amount of reciprocal services

In his post, he details how companies can leverage their relationships with customers through the analysis of these four components. Nevertheless, there is in my opinion another component, which underlies any relationship, which shouldn’t be ignored in this framework: its direction.  Like magnets attract or repel each other, relationships are either positive or negative, and this has a deep impact on other components as well.

This isn’t a matter of love and hate, since those both sentiments, when applied to an individual, share in fact a lot of similarities, and we can find more than a few case studies explaining how brands’ more virulent detractors might be turned into ambassadors. (Group hatred obeys to different mechanisms, but here too, these mechanisms are quite close to those driving empathy in groups). Both can be considered as “positive” relationships.

“Negative” relationships, on the other side, are driven by sentiments like disgust, fear, or conscious avoidance.  Typically, people maintaining this kind of relationships with brands are to be found among non-customers. Non-customers who might have been customers before, or who might never have been but have built a distorted image of brands, this for a lot of reasons.

I remember my father who, when wanting to choose and buy some household appliance, systematically dismissed products from one famous brands. Some of his justifications were, of course, highly irrational, but he also had some very good points. So good, in fact, that, if the brand had heard about, this could have lead to real products improvements.

Listening to your non-customers is not an easy task. They don’t speak about you, they don’t interact with you, but they don’t ignore you; they are just staying away from any of your attempts to meet their expectations. They don’t eventually gather into communities. They have low, if any, expectations for your brand. But these non-customers are the ones who might give you the more clues about how to serve them better.

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L’importance des non-clients

Michael Wu, Scientist of Analytics à Lithium, a publié un très intéressant billet (en anglais) sur les différents constituants de la force d’une relation.

La notion de force a été pour la première fois en 1973 introduite par le professeur Mark Granovetter dans son œuvre fondatrice: The Strength of Weak Tiers (la force des liens faibles). Il a identifié quatre composants différents de la force des liens.

  • Le temps: la quantité de temps passée ensemble
  • L’intensité: l’intensité émotionnelle et le sens de proximité
  • La confiance: l’intimité ou la confiance réciproque
  • La réciprocité: la quantité de services réciproques

Dans son article, il explique en détails de quelle manière les entreprises peuvent approfondir leurs relations avec leurs clients à travers l’analyse de ces quatre composants. Néanmoins, il existe pour moi un autre composant, présent dans toute relation, qui ne devrait pas être oublié dans ce cadre: la direction. De même que les aimants s’attirent ou se repoussent, les relations sont soit positives, soit négatives, ce qui a également des répercussions profondes sur les autres constituants.

Ce n’est pas une question d’amour et haine, puisque ces deux sentiments, lorsqu’ils s’appliquent à un individu, partagent en fait beaucoup d’attributs similaires, et il y a plus d’un exemple montrant comment les plus virulents détracteurs d’une marque peuvent être transformés en ambassadeurs. (La haine, lorsqu’elle émane d’un groupe, obéit à des mécanismes différents, mais, là encore, ces mécanismes s’apparentent à ceux qui génèrent l’empathie dans des groupes). Les deux peuvent donc être considérés comme des relations “positives”.

D’un autre côté, les relations “négatives” sont sous-tendues par des sentiments tells que le dégoût, la peur, ou l’évitement conscient et systématique. Typiquement, les individus entretenant ce type de relations avec des marques font partie de leurs non-clients. Des non-clients qui peuvent avoir été des clients auparavant, ou ne jamais l’avoir été mais avoir construit leur propre image déformée des marques, et ce pour de nombreuses raisons.

Je me rappelle mon père qui, lorsqu’il souhait choisir et acheter un quelconque appareil électroménager, écartait systématiquement les produits d’une marque célèbre. Certains de ses arguments étaient, bien sûr, complètement irrationnels, mais certains autres étaient parfaitement valides. Tellement valides, en fait, que si la marque en avait eu connaissance, elle aurait pu en tirer de réelles améliorations produit.

Etre à l’écoute de vos non-clients n’est pas chose facile. Il ne parlent pas de vous, ils n’interagissent pas avec vous, mais ils ne vous ignorant pas; ils se tiennent simplement à l’écart de toutes vos tentatives pour répondre à leurs attentes. Ils ne se rassemblent pas en communautés. Ils ont très peu, voire aucune, attente de la part de votre marque. Mais ces non-clients sont ceux qui sont susceptibles de vous donner les meilleures pistes pour mieux les servir.

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Forget about Enterprise 2.0, think brands

Fostering collaboration means blurring boundaries. Internally, it involves letting knowledge flow across organizational silos, capitalizing on informal knowledge to reshape work according to more efficient and human-centric patterns. Externally, it assumes nurturing new relationships with customers to better help them in their day-to-day lives, providing a better service and learning from their interactions.

I am of course over-simplifying here the scope and complexity of Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM fields, in order to make this simple and obvious statement: blurring internal (among stakeholders) and external (with customers) boundaries won’t be a sustainable evolution unless it is considered as a step toward a more radical change. The traditional (industrial) dyadic model of company-customers must also evolve to adapt to our new hyper-connected environment. But where do we go from here?

Avoiding decomposition

Sadly enough, most discussions around Enterprise 2.0 only scratch the surface of the consequences of evolving toward connected ecosystems on business. Socializing business processes merely keeps the fundamental nature and operational aspects of organizations unchanged. Internal collaborative problem solving, as well as social learning applied to in-work training, is often no more than a chase for efficiency, while staying stuck in present paradigm.

In large corporations, the main (if not only) reason of existence for many roles, and even departments, is to ‘keep things together’: insuring coherent vertical integration, bridging across silos, reducing internal friction… Diffusion of collaborative behaviors will at some point dismiss the necessity to maintain them. Nevertheless, effectiveness cannot be left to autopoiesis. On the other side, the more the companies have to reach out customers on multiple contact points, the more internal departments are involved in the walk, without necessarily speaking the same language. Retailers won’t take the same approach than wholesalers, who might be contradicted by customer service…

Enterprise 2.0 thinkers have put a strong emphasis on leadership, on the necessary role of leaders in employees’ empowerment. Leaders have indeed the necessary skills to fuel the collaborative engine. But how many leaders can a single, unified, organization afford? It takes some kind of personal vision to lead, and chances are good that coexistence of several leaders, or even some kind of distributed leadership, might induce more chaos than convergence. In our complex multi-relational world, maintaining a single, corporate, voice is no more an option. To blur internal boundaries while avoiding decomposition, companies need to experiment with new organizational models.

Brands as strange attractors

At the other side of the spectrum, do customers discuss together, gather into communities, they are wishful to improve their own personal life, they are ready to suggest improvements in products or services. But they don’t bother about an organization’s hierarchy, corporate culture, or… yikes, processes. They buy propositions made on behalf of brands. Whoever being at some point in contact with customers must meet the expectations raised by those brands, sharing a defined set of values, delivering a defined level, and nature, of service.

Brands are mainly considered as intermediaries between companies and customers. They convey factual, as well as emotional, information upon products, reinforcing both consumers’ confidence in their buying choices (through information accumulated in brand’s offering history) and their self-esteem (through symbolic exchanges channeled by brands values and personality). This linear approach (information against emotion) leads to companies hiding their internal structure and mechanism behind brands. This is perfectly on line with the traditional value-in-transaction model, but is clearly unsuitable with connected ecosystems, where companies and customers share an ever growing number of contact points.

Rather than transactional amplifiers, brands have another important role to play for connected organizations; they have to be considered as the strange attractors of the complex systems formed by companies, their stakeholders and customers.

A step toward a more sustainable model

A more and more important part of the value associated with a brand comes from interaction between the company and customers This either directly, both shaping the brand’s personality by transferring emotional values and sentiment generated (as in the case of brands communities), or indirectly, accumulated along cradle-to-grave customer’s journey with the brand.

All these interactions are the expression of forces at work between individuals during the whole brand’s lifecycle: companies’ internal mechanisms, customers’ relations circles and communities, customer service, empowerment and influence (which Michael Wu recently insightfully described ), open innovation, crowdsourcing… where the brand itself is no more an intermediary, but a representative symbol.

Customers and marketers have been accustomed to such transfer of value, value in expectation, for instance, being directly linked to the brand associated value. But organizations themselves should care much more about brands, as they offer a new model to maintain, and reinforce in a meaningful way, the collaborative enterprise. Let us envision networked specialized entities or departments, gathered around shared brands’ values and directly linked to customers. This model, as it works for Zappos and a few others, might prove itself an alternative, more sustainable, model for today’s rigid and bloated organizations.

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Oubliez l’Entreprise 2.0, pensez aux marques

Favoriser et faciliter la conversation signifie effacer les frontières. A l’interne, cela implique de laisser le savoir circuler librement à travers les silos organisationnels, repenser le travail en fonction de schémas plus efficaces, davantage centrés sur l’humain. A l’externe, il s’agit de construire de nouvelles relations avec les clients pour mieux les aider dans leur vie quotidienne, leur offrir un meilleur service et apprendre de ces interactions.

Bien sûr, je simplifie à outrance le périmètre et la complexité des domaines de l’Entreprise 2.0 et du Social CRM, afin de faire un constat simple et évident : dissoudre les barrières internes (y compris avec leurs partenaires) et externes (entre l’entreprise et ses clients) ne constituera pas une évolution durable à moins d’être considéré comme une étape vers des changements plus radicaux. Le modèle bipolaire traditionnel (industriel) entreprise-consommateurs doit également évoluer pour s’adapter à notre environnement hyper-connecté. Mais où cela nous mène-t-il ?

Eviter la décomposition

Malheureusement, la plupart des discussions autour de l’Enterprise 2.0 ne font qu’effleurer la surface des conséquences sur le business d’une évolution vers des écosystèmes connectés. Socialiser les processus business laisse en grande partie inchangés les aspects opérationnels et la nature fondamentale des organisations. La résolution collaborative de problèmes, tout comme le social learning appliqué à la formation-dans-le-travail, ne sont souvent rien de plus qu’une quête pour l’’efficacité au sein du paradigme actuel.

Dans les grandes entreprises, la principale (sinon unique) raison d’exister de nombreuses fonctions, voire de services entiers, est de “faire marcher le reste ensemble”, en assurant une intégration verticale cohérente, en reliant les silos entre eux, en minimisant les frictions internes. La généralisation de comportements véritablement collaboratifs rendra à un certain point inutile leur maintien. Cependant, l’efficacité ne relève pas de l’autopoïèse. D’un autre côté, plus les entreprises seront amenées à entrer en contact avec leurs clients en de multiples endroits, plus nombreux seront les services internes impliqués dans cette démarche, services qui ne parlent pour autant pas toujours le même langage. Ainsi, les détaillants n’auront pas la même approche que les grossistes, qui seront eux-mêmes contredits par le service clients…

Les penseurs de l’Entreprise 2.0 mettent un accent important sur le leadership, sur le rôle important des leaders dans l’implication des employés. Les leaders ont bien entendu les talents nécessaires pour fournir en énergie le moteur collaboratif. Mais combien de leaders une entreprise homogène peut-elle se permettre ? Mener les hommes requiert une quelconque vision, et il y a de grandes chances que la coexistence de plusieurs leaders, voire une certaine forme de leadership distribué, débouche sur plus de chaos que de convergence. Dans notre monde complexe et multi-relationnel, le maintien d’une voix corporate unique n’est plus envisageable. Pour dissoudre les silos internes en évitant de se décomposer, les entreprises devront expérimenter de nouveaux modèles organisationnels.

Les marques en tant qu’attracteurs étranges

A l’autre extrémité du spectre, les clients discutent ensemble, se rassemblent en communautés, ils sont désireux d’améliorer leurs conditions de vie, ils sont prêts à suggérer des améliorations aux produits et services qu’ils achètent.. Mais ils n’ont que faire de l’organisation hiérarchique d’une entreprise, de sa culture, ou de.. argh ses processus. Ils achètent des propositions faites au nom des marques. Quiconque est en contact quelconque avec un client doit se montrer à la hauteur des attentes générées par ces marques, partageant un ensemble défini de valeurs, apportant un niveau, et une nature, définis de service.

Les marques sont essentiellement considérées comme des intermédiaires entre les entreprises et leurs clients. Elles véhiculent de l’information, factuelle autant qu’émotionnelle, sur les produits, renforçant à la fois la confiance des consommateurs dans leurs choix d’achat (à travers l’information accumulée dans l’historique de la marque) et leur amour propre (à travers les échanges symboliques cristallisés autour des valeurs et de la personnalité de la marque). Cette approche linéaire (information contre émotion) nous a menés vers des entreprises masquant leurs mécanismes et leur structure interne derrière les marques. Ceci correspond tout à fait au modèle  traditionnel de valeur-dans-la-transaction, mais est incompatible avec la notion d’écosystème connecté, où entreprises et clients patagent un nombre de plus en plus grand de points de contact.

Plutôt que de jouer le rôle d’amplificateurs de transaction, à l’ère des organisations connectées, les marques doivent être considérées comme les attracteurs étranges des systèmes complexes formés par les entreprises, leurs partenaires et les consommateurs.

La clef d’un modèle plus durable

Une part de plus en plus importante de la valeur associée à une marque vient de l’interaction entre entreprise et clients. Soit directement, chacun forgeant la personnalité de la marque en y transférant des valeurs émotionnelles et un sentiment généré (dans le cas de communautés de marques), soit indirectement, accumulée tout au long du voyage d’usage des produits et services de cette marque.

Toutes ces interactions sont l’expression des forces à l’œuvre entre les individus durant l’ensemble du cycle de vie de la marque: mécanismes internes à l’entreprise, relations proches des clients, communautés, service client, influence, open innovation, crowdsourcing… où la marque elle-même n’existe plus en tant qu’intermédiaire, mais en tant que symbole représentatif.

Les clients et les marketeurs sont habitués à de tells transferts de valeur, la valeur d’attentes, par exemple, est directement liée à la valeur propre de la marque. Mais les entreprises elles-mêmes devraient se pencher davantage sur les marques et ce qu’elles représentent, car elles leur offrent un nouveau modèle pour assurer et renforcer la cohésion de l’entreprise collaborative. Imaginons un instant des entités ou des services spécialisés organisés en réseau, réunis autour des valeurs portées par les marques et directement reliés aux clients. Ce modèle, qui fonctionne déjà pour des entreprises telles que Zappos, pourrait bien constituer une un modèle alternatif, plus durable, à nos organisations actuelles, si rigides et figées.

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Redefining Brands, the Social Way

Let us start with a little quiz: What is the most crucial aspect of your business / organization? Which aspect of your business / organization is hardly predictable, fast forward moving, unreliable, hyper-connected? The answer to both questions is: your customer. Let face it, the way the social web is transforming the consumer’s world at warp speed will have deep impact on every aspect of the way we are doing business.

Adapting to this new world means that companies’ most important assets are no more the products or services they create, manufacture, produce, sell, but their customers, and the way they want, buy, use and herald their products. This might not be new, would you say, as almost a century of consumerism has accustomed businesses to consider sales as their most fundamental activity… Which has also accustomed them to ignore a whole world of actionable activities, involving loyalty, advocacy, recommendations, use scenarios and user experiences. The problem is that this world has become prevalent, and that there is no way back. Ignoring this change is paradoxically putting the customer in total control of brands, and might prove lethal for many businesses.

Albeit being a step in the right direction, internal use of the same tools which enable the social web will not save organizations from a radical change in the way they do business. Heading toward Enterprise 2.0 for the sake of efficiency is a lure, as long as collaboration is not designed toward, and with, the customer.

Brands Need to Be Social, Commodities Not

But, as I recently wrote, not every business is meant to become social. Involving your customers requires that… they want to. The mass consumption era leaded to an overwhelming number of brands whose mainspring relied on two main wills: capturing shares of ever-expanding markets, and creating new needs to fulfill. Entering any store presents us today with at least half a dozen products for each category, products whose only intrinsic differences often lie in price and marketing claims, competing with each other. Consumers do not want to discuss about everything they buy. They want to be part of products and services which help them getting a better experience in their conscious, voluntary and meaningful activities. This means that ‘the rest’, entire categories of products and services, are considered as commodities, unless they are able to bring enough innovation to level up customers’ experience to a really different and meaningful experience. In that logic, most brands are just reminders of who is the cheapest, whose wrapping are the easiest to tear off, etc. For those, being ‘social’ means nothing but leveraging customer service (which is often a giant step anyway). Commodities do not need to be ‘social’, they aren’t even intended to.

It is not innocent that travel and tourism businesses, which operate in a service-dominant logic, already began undergoing such a change more than a dozen years ago; customers demand helped segmenting the market in two opposite directions, custom-tailored high-end services and standardized mass products. The actual, and fundamental, difference in today’s ‘social’ evolution is that customers are pushing the envelope further. Not only do they want to be listened by your brands, but they want to share their insights, so you can co-create with them the best product or service ever (according to them, of course, but aren’t they the only ones who matter?).

Beyond Value in Use, Value in Expectation

Traditional branding focuses on brands’ perception and alignment with actual product or service, thus focalizing on the act of purchase, while service dominant logic focuses on value in use during the whole product or service lifecycle. Unfortunately, this leaves aside most of customer’s interaction before any transaction takes place. While customers’ expectations might be considered as part of the global user’s experience, it would be much more useful to isolate ‘value in expectation’ to try to better understand the fuzzy border between brand and commodity from a customer’s point of view.

Wim Rampen (@wimrampen) pointed me the other day to a really interesting research on Reference scales of service quality and satisfaction judgments in restaurants. One of the important findings of conducted studies is that the tolerance range in which customers consider the delivered service as acceptable / desirable is much narrower when the restaurant is branded, while uncommitted (neutral) customers are much more prone to react. Consider those marketing implications:

  • Customers expect a definite level of service, which I call Value in expectation. Although defined by brands promises and by peer recommendation, this value is set by potential customers, and branding’s new role and responsibility is to align their actual service delivery to customers’ expectation. Value in expectation is the new brand equity.
  • Customers don’t necessarily expect more from brands. But they expect brands to deliver more accordingly to their expectations. Truth matters more than claims.
  • Enhancing your service is useless if your customers don’t expect it, they will become uncommitted. Value in expectation will only be raised jointly by customers and brands. This also means that engagement through social media is useless unless actual customer experience expects it. Facts trump conversation.

Value in expectation is what brings together brands and customers. Value in use is what keeps them together.

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