In his “Fight Off Your Heavy User Obsession: What About Noncustomers” article, David Aaker observes that firms are “trained to look to the heavy user, where the money (and competition) resides. But there can be a substantial market that is lying dormant because there is a deficiency or omitted feature in the current offerings that prevents these people from buying.”

David proposes turning this heavy user obsession on its head by identifying and addressing the barriers that prevent noncustomers from buying your product.  Shimano is one case in point:

“Shimano, a top bike components manufacturer, talked to some of the 160 million Americans who did not ride. These people generally had fond memories of childhood biking but believed the sport had become too complicated, expensive and even intimidating. To respond, Shimano developed and defined the experience of a “coasting” bike — wide seats, reachable ground, backward-kick braking, upright handle bars and no controls. The gear box, hidden and controlled by a microprocessor, automatically shifts between three gears. Fueled in part by the Shimano Coaster and by an increased desire to commute with bikes, coaster bikes started to take off.”

See also: Can courting so-so customers be good for business?

I found this WSJ article on the Patagonia Common Threads Initiative fascinating.  Please note particularly:

 “Last November, on Black Friday—the unofficial American holiday of consumer gluttony—Patagonia took out a full-page ad in the "New York Times" with the bold-face headline "Don't Buy This Jacket." Below a picture of the fleece jacket in question, the ad copy listed, in grueling detail, how much water was wasted and carbon emitted in the course of its construction.

"I've never seen a company tell customers to buy less of its product," marvels Harvard Business School professor Forest Reinhardt. "It's a fascinating initiative. Yvon has the confidence to pull it off." In fact, Chouinard says the ad boosted Patagonia sales—though he argues it didn't drive more overall consumption, but rather stole existing customers from his competitors.”

Can you sell more by telling your customers to buy less?

This instructive US Airways’ Wally case study was included in this New York Times story about Nuance.  Please particularly note the highlighted parts:

MEMBERS of US Airways’ frequent-flier program who have registered their mobile phone numbers are greeted by name by “Wally,” an interactive voice system that Nuance created for the airline.

One day last month, Wally was talking to Kerry Hester, a senior vice president at US Airways, who had called to check on her own flight.

“Hello, Kerry, I’ve matched your mobile number to your Dividend mileage account,” Wally said. Her flight from Phoenix to Los Angeles, Wally reported, unprompted, was “still scheduled to depart on time at 11:20 from Gate A23.”

If Wally’s voice sounds familiar, that’s because it belongs to Wally Wingert, the announcer on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” who prerecorded all the words that callers hear.

US Airways introduced Wally last summer, as part of a relocation of its offshore customer service call-in operation back to the United States.  Nuance designed the system to anticipate callers' requests.  Wally, for example, can automatically tell frequent-flier members their seat assignments or report whether they have received upgrades.  It also converts people's speech to text, so that, should customers ask to speak [to] a live operator, they don't have to repeat their original request.

Wally, Ms. Hester says, has reduced the number of customers who ask to speak with agents, as well as the average length of customer calls. “Without the system, we would have had to hire a couple hundred more agents,” she says.

Wally, which never lets on that it is an automated system, seems so personable that many people say “thank you” before hanging up, Ms. Hester says.

“I think that tells us that they were satisfied,” she says. “I think it tells us that they felt they were interacting with a person.”

Will voice technology change the customer service game?

The evidence on the return on investment in retail employees is becoming more and more substantial.  See particularly Zeynep Ton's work on QuickTrip and Mercadona:

“By investing in employees and giving them more responsibility, QuikTrip enjoys a competitive advantage in service and benefits from continuous process improvement.”

“For Mercadona, investment in employees is part and parcel of process and product improvement. In 2008, the chain invested four weeks of training time and €5,000 for each new store employee. "In the United States," Ton points out, "the norm is only seven hours, and the difference shows."

See also Marshall Fisher’s work on the same topic:

“On average, revenue increased by $10 for every additional dollar of payroll added to a store, and for some stores that were particularly understaffed, the revenue lift was as high as $28. At the 40% gross margins this retailer was earning on revenue, adding payroll was highly profitable, and fully supported by the numbers, once you had the right numbers.”

If investing in employees yields such big dividends, why don’t more retailers do it?

I found this Paying when patients wait story very thought provoking.  Please note particularly:

“The Daily had an interesting story on a handful of doctors who are paying their patients — either explicitly in cash or in the form of a gift — when they make their patients wait past their appointment times (Their Wait in Gold, Mar 19).

There’s a promising new trend afoot in doctors’ offices around the country: With average wait times growing in recent years, some physicians have begun offering goods, services and even cash to waylaid patients.

“Why is my time more important than my patients?” asked Dr. Cyrus Peikari of Dallas. “True service can only come when we put our egos aside.”

To make up for canceling some appointments last year, Peikari mailed each patient a check for $50.

Dr. Timothy Malia of Fairport, N.Y., keeps a supply of $5 bills on hand. He dispenses them to patients if they’ve been made to wait past their appointment time.”

Should you pay your customers to wait for you?   Can this concept be practically applied to customer service?

Barclaycard just introduced the Barclaycard Ring credit card.  The concept is deeply customer focused in many ways.  See for example:

“The Barclaycard Ring MasterCard card will have one, low interest rate of 8 percent for all balances, no balance transfer fee, no annual fees and simple, easy-to-understand terms.

For the first time, through a virtual cardmember community, cardmembers will have visibility into the card’s financial profit and loss statements. An online framework will provide cardmembers with the ability to influence decisions that impact how the card is managed and serviced and a unique Giveback(SM) program will enable the community to share in the profit generated from its collective decisions.

Using social media, the community will also provide a forum where cardmembers can exchange ideas, share knowledge and provide direct feedback to Barclaycard US to help determine future features of the product.”

Is the beginning of the future of credit cards?

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I found this video describing The Norwegian Bank (DNB) letting The Norwegian Broadcasting Boys Choir sing their automatic [IVR] telebank menu very inspiring:

“DNB is the main sponsor of The Norwegian Broadcasting Boys Choir. We wanted to promote the sponsorship in a relevant setting, letting The Choir do what they do best: Sing. In December 2011 they sang every word of the automatic telebank menu if you called DNB BANK. Merry Paycheck everyone!”

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Walmart just launched the “Get on the Shelf” program to enable producers to receive space on the Walmart shelf:

“How does it work? Pretty simple actually. Submit a video of your product to Get On the Shelf and then, when voting starts, rally your family, friends and fans to vote for it. The product video with the most votes wins.”

Is this practice likely to become more and more prevalent?

I found this Shin and Sudhir study on “When to Reward Your Customers” very thought provoking. Please note particularly”

“The award-winning paper helps to reconcile a contradiction between marketing theory and practice. Marketing scholars have generally held that in order to maximize profits, firms should attract new customers with low prices, rather than giving discounts to current customers to reward them for their loyalty. But such rewards for existing customers are common in practice.

Shin and Sudhir found that rewarding your own customers can be justified in industries where two conditions apply. First, heterogeneity in customer value is high; that is, a small group of customers provide a large percentage of profits. And second, stability of customer preferences is low: customers can easily switch to competitors.”

Should you reward your own customers or your competitors' customers? [or is this a false choice?]

I found this AP article on customer feedback fatigue thought provoking.  Please note particularly:

“Surely, it's nice to be courted for input, at least sometimes. But some consumers say they're fed up with giving time-consuming feedback for free, don't like being drawn into a data web used to evaluate employees or feel companies don't act on the advice they get. Others say they simply don't have anything revelatory to impart about, say, ordering a shirt or buying a package of pens.” 

Do your customer surveys breed feedback fatigue?