{"id":486,"date":"2019-11-26T13:48:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-26T11:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/?p=486"},"modified":"2019-11-26T13:48:58","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T11:48:58","slug":"the-product-always-obscures-the-customer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/2019\/11\/26\/the-product-always-obscures-the-customer\/","title":{"rendered":"The product always obscures the customer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Customers\nform the most important resource of a firm. Without customers, the firm cannot\nexist. Think about the heading again. The\nproduct always obscures the customer<\/em>. An obsession with products,\nproduction processes and routines creates near-sightedness and makes customers\ninvisible. If this indeed is the case, how can firms successfully maintain\ntheir customer relationships, and acquire customers in the first place?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A\nproblem with products is that when developing, designing, producing, selling,\nmarketing, delivering, installing, repairing and maintaining products these are\nso concretely and intensely present. Even more importantly, products occupy the\nminds of everyone involved. Consequently, so much time and energy by the\nsellers are devoted to handling products in various ways and capacities that a\nthorough interest in the customers suffers. Customers truly are at risk to\nbecome invisible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nproblem does not concern execution only. Middle management and the firm\u2019s\nstrategic management equally much use their time and energy to strategic and\noperational issues related to products, and the much-needed focus on customers\nand their lives and goals are marginalised. At the same time, it is safe to\nassume that a truly customer-focussed firm probably is more profitable than one\nthat is internally focussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not\nonly manufacturing firms suffer from this near-sightedness. Service firms may\nalso find themselves overly preoccupied with tangible and product-like\nresources, processes and routines. Especially, when productisation is confused\nwith standardisation and not understood as systematisation of resources and\nprocesses, service concepts, delivery routines and standardised means of meeting\ncustomers can turn what could have been service into product-like procedures\nthat equally much obscure the customers, both physically and mentally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put the product and productised service aside for a moment and focus on the customers first.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

How\ncould this problem be handled? The answer is quite simple: put the product and\nproductised service aside for a moment and focus on the customers first. Acquire\nthorough insight into the customers\u2019 life and activities, be they mundane or\nunique and seldom occurring. Get solid knowledge of what they want to achieve\nor could achieve in their lives, and why they are not able to achieve wanted\ngoals or perform wanted activities. Find out what activities they find\nuncomfortable or difficult to perform. With such insight into the customers\u2019\nlife, products and services can be designed and developed and the many\nprocesses and routines that tie a firm and its customers together can be\nplanned and executed in much more customer-focussed ways that create use value\nfor the customers and stand a fair chance to be more profitable for the firm.\nIt is a matter of turning inside-out\nmanagement into outside-in management<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfirms need to understand two fundamental things: they must understand their\ncustomers\u2019 activities and goals as well as they are familiar with their own\nproducts and many processes and routines, and they must understand what their\ncustomers consider good quality as well as they understand their own quality\nstandards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conventional\nand standard market research is not enough. Ethnographic methods are required\nto study for example what goes on in the customers\u2019 life, and how they think\nabout what they are doing, would like to be doing, or are not doing at the\nmoment. Furthermore, the firm must know the customers\u2019 basic values. Such\nvalues determine what kind of solutions are accepted and not accepted. Only\nwhen all this is understood, that is, when thorough customer insight has been\nacquired, one can come to conclusions about what is needed. Starting with\nstudies of what customers need often leads astray and makes managers make less\naccurate and sometimes even dangerous decisions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christian Gr\u00f6nroos<\/a>
Professor Emeritus<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Unsplash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Customers form the most important resource of a firm. Without customers, the firm cannot exist. Think about the heading again. The product always obscures the customer. An obsession with products, production processes and routines creates near-sightedness and makes customers invisible. If this indeed is the case, how can firms successfully maintain their customer relationships, and …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,14,16,15,13],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cers","tag-customer","tag-management","tag-marketing","tag-product"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}