The Principles of Consumer Centricity

Over the course of a career as a merchant (at retailers Crate & Barrel and Macy*s—Executive Training Program class of Fall 1989) and consultant to retailers and brands, I have come to know a great deal about consumer behavior.  How and why we buy has always been fascinating.  As a kid, helping out my father in his corner store here in Columbus, Ohio, I learned the fundamentals of service and operations. See my post Channeling Mom & Pop.

I have been fortunate to work with very smart, talented clients, fellow strategists and designers from every discipline.  Throughout this body of work, I have seen patterns and core ideas that I have distilled into “The Principles of Consumer Centricity”.  They act as our guiding principles as we work with our clients.

At ConsumerX (cX) we apply them to retailers and consumer brand marketers, but the principles apply to most endeavors that involve people and money.  A wise woman—my wife—once said, “Everything is retail, isn’t it?”

Take a look and let us know what you think.  Look for posts about each one and the rules and tools we use at ConsumerX.

The Principles of Consumer-Centricity

The Prime Directive: Create SHARED RESPONSIBILITY with the consumer.

INTERNAL

Principle No. 1: Know Your BEST Customers. Fire the bad ones.

Build business around consumer segments not around products or operations.

Principle No. 2: Keep it FRESH

Link offerings with strategic partners to add value and maintain an ongoing conversation

Principle No. 3: Align everything around the IDEAL EXPERIENCE

Connect internal processes to focus on consumer experience

Principle No. 4: COLLABORATE across functional areas

Always ask how new ideas and opportunities benefit the consumer

Principle No. 5: Create DIRECT RESPONSIBILITY to consumers for all staff

Motivate and reward based on consumer behavior

EXTERNAL
Principle No. 6: Know THEIR story

Develop customer relationships based on DEEP INSIGHTS into their needs and lifetime value.

Principle No. 7: Know YOUR story

Speak to, listen and respond in CONSUMER LANGUAGE (informed by brand stance)

Principle No. 8: Tell THE story

Create consistency across all consumer touch points.

Principle No. 9: Let them IN on the story

Respect & learn from their intelligence: make actions TRANSPARENT and VISIBLE to consumers

Principle No. 10: Write the SHARED story together

Be where they are: Let your customer CHOOSE how to converse with the brand

Allow experience (with the brand) to be personalized and customized to develop emotional connections

©2010 Consumer Experience Design. All rights reserved.

Posted via email from ConsumerX: cXChuck's Stuff

Domino's Pizza Turnaround? Maybe. Probably not.

Friday is Pizza & Movie night at our house.  It’s our family time and we’ve been doing it for years.  We try to find a movie we can all enjoy and a pizza we can all agree on.  Not always an easy task.  This time around I wanted to try Domino’s; their “Pizza Turnaround” campaign (see my compare/contrast blog post here: http://bit.ly/cg1oSk) had caught not only mine, but my kids interest.  They noticed how different the ads were, in that the brand was saying some not-so-nice things about itself.  Kids.  Pretty bright, as it turns out.

Online Ordering

So I thought I’d try out their online ordering system and compare it with how I typically order a pizza, on the phone.  Comparatively it’s a much more robust, albeit time consuming experience.  On the phone, you have a preconceived idea—mostly from preference and perhaps from suggestions made in advertising media—about what you want.  Same goes for online ordering, but the visual cues allow for a bit of configuration play with crusts, sauces, toppings.  Being a normal person, I started with the coupon offers to see if any of them fit with what we wanted.  There it was: two large pizzas and a 2 liter of soda for $19.99.  Given the idea of a pizza we can all agree on, we wanted one for the kids and one for the grown-ups.

The trip from the coupon to the pizza configurator was wonky.  The interface used confusing language, so I didn’t know how to tell it that I wanted double cheese on one, mushrooms on the other and Diet Coke to drink.  I hesitantly clicked what I thought was the right button, and whew, it was.

The experience of building my pizzas was kind of fun (not thrilling, just kinda).  For example, when I ordered double cheese, a prompt came up letting me know that the reason I couldn’t see the extra cheese on the pizza (a limitation of the visual database, I imagine), was because the extra cheese was layered below the top layer.  That was a nice moment of reassurance and thoughtfulness.  It reinforced the promise in the “Pizza Turnaround” campaign that Domino’s is different now.

Once the order was complete, I got a nifty order tracker that tells me when the pizzas went into the oven and when they will be ready for pick up. It's very interesting; I found out at pick up (no Domino’s near my house) that there is actually a Cory, and he made and boxed my pizzas. I like the idea of the real-time tracker, although it made me feel like I was tied to my computer screen.  If it were delivery, I could see how reassuring it could be.

The Pick Up

The closest Domino’s is on busy High Street near The Ohio State University campus.  On my way over, I checked my email (at a red light—don’t drive distracted) and saw that I got a confirmation of my order spelling out all the details in a mobile-friendly format.  Nice.

I found a parking spot on the street, jumped some giant snow piles and dashed in (the parking spot wasn’t exactly sanctioned by the city of Columbus).  Yikes.  There was a bit of a line and at the front was a smallish woman with twenty pizzas piled on the counter in front of her.  This was going to take longer than I thought. 

It didn’t take that long.  The staff was courteous and efficient; this of course is a high volume location and it has to work like a well-oiled machine.  Further reinforcement of the turnaround promise.  I told the staffer that I had ordered online, she immediately grabbed my order and started ringing me up.  I didn’t have to present the coupon and since I opted to give the online system my card number, it was ready to go.  I asked her if there really was a Cory, she smiled and said yes.  She pointed him out and I thanked him for making my pizzas.  He grinned (it might have been pride in his work or a way to get this nut-job-who-knows-my-name out of the store, I’m not sure which).

Make It Yummy

In my family, it’s the driver’s prerogative to taste the pizza on the way home.  It’s really about quality control.  Really.  I was hungry. First bite.  Not bad. 

Once home, we settled in to watch the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic games.  As we’re munching on the pizzas and discussing our dinner, the consensus was resoundingly neutral.  It was ok, but there’s better pizza out there.

So yes, it doesn’t taste like cardboard anymore, but it doesn’t really taste like pizza either.  It seems that Domino’s is pitting itself against its biggest competitors and shooting for parity.  If this is the case, they have achieved their goal: they have moved beyond pizza that consumers openly mock to pizza that is as ordinary as the next huge national chain. So what?

I’m sure they and their marketing agencies have worked very hard to realign their operations and build compelling stories, but at the end of the day, they may be disappointing these new and returning customers by giving them what they expect from Pizza Hut and Papa Johns.  Will the cool order tracker or the courteous staff get me to go back?  No.  Those things are vital to the experience.  They are expected.  (It’s still easier to call on the phone.)

Those things don’t make the pizza yummy.   

Our Favorites

This week we're back to our local favorites here in Grandview Heights Grandad's http://bit.ly/dkcZD5, Rotolo's http://www.rotolospizza.com and Cow Town http://www.cowtownpizza.com .

Let Me Know What You Think

I invite you to give it a try.  Start your customer journey here: http://www.dominos.com/home/index.jsp.  I’d love to hear about your experience with Domino’s Pizza Turnaround.

©2010 Consumer Experience Design. All rights reserved.

Posted via email from ConsumerX: cXChuck's Stuff

Olympic Design

Watching the Winter Olympics with the family. I've always been fascinated with the comprehensive execution of Olympic aesthetics. I thought it interesting that the visual standards book and lots of info about how the team developed the graphics. Here's an interesting link: http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca/officialgallery/graphics/vancouver-2010-graphic-identity/

What sparked this idea was the torch from last night's opening ceremony. The design of the torch is elegant and organic. The design team cites the patterns winter sports makes in snow and ice as inspiration. Check out the designer's brief here: www.bombardier.com/files/en/supporting_docs/BI-Bombardier-torch.pdf

Posted via email from ConsumerX: cXChuck's Stuff

Ideal Experiences Start with Provocative Conversations

When designing the ideal consumer experience, where do retailers and brands start?  The smart ones, of course, start with the customers.  The brand landscape is littered with companies that have become so operationally-centric that they become irrelevant to their customers (let alone new ones).  Why DOES Domino’s pizza taste like cardboard?  Why did it take them so long to listen and respond in consumer language?



Take a few minutes to watch this video.  Does your marketing team think of your customers like this?  Do your customers feel neglected like this?  You won’t really know until you ask. 

Now, contrast it with Domino’s Pizza Turn Around. 



I hate to call it a campaign, because it seems to be the best of consumer-centricity: listen and respond.  What they are saying here, is that they are re-aligning their operations around delighting their customers and in turn, they have faith that they will bring back those of us who wouldn’t think of ordering from Domino’s and perhaps win over new generations that don’t even know the brand. 

Domino’s response has been about presenting a level of transparency that feels fresh.  They have committed national media buys to telling the story of what they heard and how they are responding.  Innovation and creativity applied to the consumer experience; keep an eye on this.  We should all be learning from it.

©2010 Consumer Experience Design. All rights reserved.

Posted via email from ConsumerX: cXChuck's Stuff

SnowPocolypse 2010 Videos

It is a truly beautiful experience when it snows here in Grandview Heights, Ohio.  It’s still snowing and starting to get messy.  I’m going to close one eye and just look at the snow coming down.

Posted via email from ConsumerX: cXChuck's Stuff

SnowPocolypse 2010

The photographer in me couldn’t resist.  It is beautiful right now here in Central Ohio.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from ConsumerX: cXChuck's Stuff