Calling all customer activists (yes, you)
My thoughts on when customer focus isn't enough
👋 Heya! It’s Alicia. Welcome to Finding Customer Focus - a newsletter to help you accelerate growth by putting your customers at the heart of your business.
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Last Friday, I was stuck in Angel, Islington, feeling pummeled by the sounds of firecrackers ping-ponging off the high street. It was Guy Fawkes night. My stress-fractured foot and lazy disposition meant the 60-minute Tube journey home was a no-go.
I called a Bolt. Sorry, no supply. I called an Uber. Cancelled. I called a Bolt and waited 10 minutes only for the driver to arrive with two girls in the back seat who looked mortified at the sight of a giant blonde lady in a puffy coat and sweatpants encroaching upon their locked door. Then he sped off, and cancelled.
Finally, after 50 minutes of humiliating failed attempts, I got a ride home.
The lovely driver showered me with app alternatives to add to my next Rideshare Russian Roulette. Ola. Gett. Free Now. It’s endless.
And he’s on all of them.
After chatting through the trip back to Walthamstow, I asked what it’s like to drive for these apps all at once.
“They’re fine - Bolt charges X%, Uber charges Y%… it doesn’t really matter. They DEFINITELY don’t care about you as a driver… No matter what the customer says, they are always considered right. On Bolt, we get shut out of the app without a chance to contribute. At least Uber lets us defend ourselves against customer feedback.”
The obvious rant I want to go on is the utter lack of differentiation between these gig economy competitors. They’re all just competing on price and hoping to chip away at earning your trust and preference over time.
But for today, I want to take this argument down a level - down below the customer (meaning, the consumer) and instead focus on second class customers (treating people as logistics components).
Customer focus is impossible if you treat people like logistical components
One of my favourite podcasts, Land of the Giants, did a season covering the evolving food delivery industry and modern gig workforce. What really resonated was this rapidly-changing baseline of consumer expectations around immediacy of service. We’ve rewired whole cities and economies to be “always on” and beckoning to every glimmer of demand. Certainly for the B2B partners involved in this sea change, there are tremendous upsides like business growth, exposure to new customers, and a suite of tech tools to help you run a more efficient business.
But as expectations change, we’re dragging with it a shift in how we perceive the value of a service provider.
We’re getting scarily close to seeing service providers as an object commodity — a transactional exchange. More often than not, my marketplace customer experiences feels categorically removed from the soul that keeps service providers tethered to a sense of place and belonging, of motivating humanity, of community support.
Want loyalty? Help people feel good about working with you — across your marketplace
My love for product marketing is rooted in the work we do - synthesizing together customer insights and market research to build go-to-market strategies that create something special in the market.
It’s about creating space to defend the Voice of the Customer and fighting to keep their interests at the heart of decision making.
Why, then, are we collectively frothing to serve the needs of consumers and not our B2B customers, too? Why do we insist on treating riders and drivers as conduits of a customer experience, and not customers in their own right?
Why do we treat vendors and merchants - or, to elevate their value, business founders and entrepreneurs - like necessary components of a logistical supply chain that ultimately serves the consumer?
We are all consumers, and we are all people.
It’s no wonder B2B gig economy NPS / satisfaction scores are generally in the toilet.
Prioritise the needs of your B2B partners as customers of equal weight, importance, and value to your bottom line and watch your customers take notice.
Calling all customer activists
I’m often ranting about a similar topic in my day job with Lune - trying to help businesses embed high quality carbon removal into their customer experiences. I believe it is not the primary responsibility of individual consumers to fix climate change. It is the responsibility of private sector business, global governments, and non-profits to fundamentally reshape capitalism.
Our actions do help. However, the best thing we can do is identify as activists and realize the power of our voices in forcing conversations about the bigger picture.
The same can be said for our context - I want you to become a customer activist.
And I especially want you - founders, marketers, entrepreneurs out there - to pay more attention to your B2B customers, too. Invest in their value proposition as much, or more, as you’ve invested in your consumer experience.
To me, the essence of ‘good’ product marketing is rooted in social activism and human empathy. That might sound slightly bullshitty but I absolutely mean it. You cannot be a ‘good’ product marketer by just following the textbook list of activities. You must tap into your courage and stand for something - even if that means raising your hand to say “I literally have no idea what you’re talking about right now” to a bunch of folks in the Tech Org.
Because SO many decisions are made in tech — especially in complex marketplace models that serve as the bedrock of gig economy giants — are based on trusted groupthink and the assumption that everything has been thoroughly considered.
The customer is not always right.
Customers are people. Flawed, hypocritical, and complex. Entrepreneurs, vendors, and merchants are people. Drivers are people. When we begin to view all sides of the marketplace as customers, we will find that innovation and growth begins to drive itself.
🌟 Exciting announcement! 🌟
James Doman-Pipe and I are launching a unique short course to elevate the next generation of Product Marketers! We’re taking applications for B2B startup marketers who want to become PMM experts. Learn more and apply for a spot on WTFGoToMarket.com - they’re going fast!
