Customer is king
A chocolatier, a concierge, a dress maker and an optician walk into a room - what happens next ?
Okay, I have been a little liberal with the job titles but this morning I attended another of The Times Small Business Forum’s which, this week, focused on ‘Customer is King: responding to customers’ needs in a data-driven world.’
Some thought had gone into this panel because each of the participants clearly had something to say and collectively they pushed forward the topic with a lot of honesty and humility. That’s always refreshing and it’s not always the case.
Sarah McVittie the CEO and Co-Founder of Dressipi was fascinating as she described her company’s approach to helping clothing retailers predict what to stock, why and where - the ability to predict built on judicious and strict use of customer data was best practice - despite the fact we had been well fed with breakfast I couldn’t help but thinking if this sort of predictive approach would make it into restaurants at some point, I reckon a restaurant would be able to predict with some accuracy what I would order based on previous eating habits. But I digress.
I’m going to put Alex Cheatle, CEO and Co-Founder of Ten Lifestyle Group, Angus Thirlwell, CEO and Co-Founder of Hotel Chocolat and Tom Davis, Founder of TD Tom Davies into one, common theme - which they each approached from different directions but to the same effect.
The interpretation of data and the importance of human intervention.
All three waxed lyrical about the need to drill down on customer motivations, to get in front of customers as much as possible and to benchmark data against real customers. That sounds like duplication but it’s not - you can have all the raw data you can gather but unless it is correctly interrogated against valid customer motivations and desires you’re probably going to end up making the wrong judgements.
This was a small-business event and all four panelist’s were company founders - no matter what stage of the maturity of their businesses they all make a point of (and enjoy it) engaging with their customers.
And the other secret of success - whatever their scale they all behave like they just launched last week.
It was an inspirational start to Friday.
About The Author
The author is a brand consultant and founder of Mission Critical, a collection of highly focused and curated weekly and monthly briefings for time poor and information hungry decision makers.
