Anticipating, Meeting and Exceeding customer needs

Hi all, it has been a week since my last post?

Well, here is another one.

Last Monday I went to "The Living Room", Westin, KL for light lunch alone. I am quite frequent over there as i am a Starwood Privilege member. The ambience is great, has free wifi and the price. There was buffet lunch served but i just ordered "murtabak" as i had late breakfast. And the story begins here :

"A win win strategy"
After i have placed my order, i logged into the internet to reply some of my emails. Then a waitress come by and asked "Have you placed your order?" "Are you able to log into the internet?" well, i answered Yes! After a one minute the waitress came again with a bowl of "crab meat+cucumber soup (looks n taste like sharkfin soup) and some bread and butter. "Your murtabak might take a while to cook, why don't you enjoy your soup and bread while waiting for it?" Well, since it is free food why not? Such proactive action does not only mitigate the risk of any customers having the long waiting face, they understood their client dining experience (do not want to wait long). What does Westin have to loose? Nothing! THe soup and bread are from one of the buffet counter. So less wastage, more satisfied customers - win win . We call this Anticipating and Meeting customer needs.

Be Proactive and Decisive
My murtabak came to me after 15 minutes. Taste good plus with my membership privilege, you won't believe how value for money it is. There were 2 big pieces. While i was finishing my 2nd piece, i have bitten something hard. Ohh! it is a small bone / stone. Not too sure. Well, I know that that is accident as from my many past dining experience here, everything is ok. So i leave it and continue with my food. Some how, one of the waiter noticed my weird face looking at my food. he approached and ask" Is everything ok , sir?". Well, since you asked, i will tell you. He apologised and immediately went into the kitchen and brought the TaiKo of the restaurant out - The Chef! The Chef asked again and i told them about the small stone. THe Chef ,immediately acknowledged their mistake and offered to change my meal and says he will look into the ingredients in the kitchen immediately. But i was nearly full and turn down their offer. The clever Chef then offer me a platter of fresh fruit. hmm1 dessert, why not. Am i mad with what i have in my food? Well, a little concern initially but after their explanation , action taken and offers to me, I believed that the case is just incidental. i am ok and enjoyed my fresh fruit platter (not from the buffet counter)

So what is the lesson learned?

May of us in business focuses our effort in meeting customer needs. Have we actually put more thoughts into anticipating customer needs or even exceeding it? Does our company has such brand culture? Have we use such high standard of customer service to differentiate us from competitors? We should constantly ask ourselves such questions. Branding is not just about, promotion, taglines or advertisement. It involves the whole operation of a company.

Points to note/lesson learned :
1) anticipate customer needs : just like the offer of the soup and be sensitive to customer experience by offering assistance and take quick and effective action.
2) meeting customer needs : having to do this is not good enough. meeting customer needs is already basic requirement for any services industry or even product focused companies. It is a MUST have attributes in all companies
3) Exceeding customer needs : If you want your brand to be differentiate from others, exceeding customer needs might be your key success factors. we should go beyond meeting needs, we should constantly talk to our customers, understand them and offer solutions to them sincerely. Stop the attitude of "We have done enough for customers!" Customers preference and needs changes by time and we should to.

Either we take good care of our customers or our customer will "take care" of you (also by viral marketing but in the negative way)

Resourceful to resources

Many says that consultants are "Con sultans". They only know how to talk and come out with nice words to convince management on next course of actions. Is it true? that easy? Well maybe for some.

I am now consulting a company on its brand strategies which is the key success factor in getting them awarded Brand Promotion Grant up to RM 2 mil. How could i consult a company without understanding its business, market and customers? Thus, most time is allocated to facts finding. I would just like to share where can we get cost effective resourceful info and statistics.

Access to Economic reports & statistics
For businesses which are exporting, i highly recommend for you to visit MATRADE library located at 2nd floor of Menara MATRADE, Jalan Duta. In the library, you can have access to market reports and country business profiles both printed and database. For example, you can get reports done by Euro Monitor International which cost you hundred or even thousands or USD to get a single report. Over here, define your search, get help from their friendly customer service and you are minutes away in getting critical information to support your business decisions. You can look for information by countries, by products, by industry and more. There are also many periodic agazine available. The best thing is that it is free. You just need to photocopy the selected pages with a nominal fee. So what are you waiting for?
Today i have managed to get some profiles on electrical appliances which could help me determine the demographic, market share and consumer behaviors.

Getting cost effective consumer feedback via forum and blog
Economic reports and statistics are secondary data. What about primary data or direct responses from the consumers? conduct a focus group? Interview? email or face to facce survey? Well, most of the above methods are in controlled environment. In addition, not every client has the budget especially SMEs. So what are we going to do? Thanks to advancement of technology . First there is online forum and now Blog. Tanks to web 2.0. Online users express their thoughts freely in the internet. The question is not about whther is it good or bad content. Most important MOSTLY are genuine content. By searching with some keywords, yesterday i found out so many interesting comments from online user pertaining their experience in using my client's product. These comments, compliments, complaints serves as important information for us to improve ourselves and to advance ourselves. Hehee! Well, it makes my job easier, more relevant and cost effective. so have you try to search on the net to see how others are perceiving your brand or product? If not yet, I think you better start now. Word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool but it can be the most powerful weapon to kill our business too.

Lesson learned / points to note

• Support your proposal with facts! no matter you are a consultant, marketing manager or just an executive
• Be resourceful in the mnost cost effective way. You do not always have to have high budget. Well, having low budget doesnt mean you can do any branding.

I am back!

It has been almost a year since the days of The Firm season 1. Kind of ashamed of myself for not updating my blog despite it was an eventful year. Caught up with too many things but yes, it is still only an excuse.

Why am i back again? Tonight, i digged out some DVDs and watched the movie "The Inconvenient Truth". It is such a great movie (which might be a boring one for some people)! The message conveyed in the movie inspired me to write again and to share my thoughts. Al Gore's presentation on global warming has really ignite me that the world is changing without waiting for us to act. Either we change the world or the world will change you.

I do not know why but i tend to always embrace the messages in a movie into business sense. There are just so many lessons we could learn from a movie to not only improve our personal lives but also improve the way we do business.

I do sincerely hope. No! i should not hope . I should act and will try my best to be committed to share my thoughts again.

Whether anyone will be listening to me? i am not sure. The intention is to share. I take it as a personal obligation to make our world better.

Starting tomorrow i will start with my 1st thoughts!!

Keng Teck, don't disappoint yourself!!