The Secret of Good Relationships

The China Disneyland was inaugurated recently. One of the actions CEO Robert Iger took to push the deal, was to seek a personal relationship with China’s paramount leader, President Xi Jinping. On learning that Xi’s father, a revolutionary leader, had visited Disneyland in 1980, he pressed his staff to find a photograph. They found one which showed the President’s father, wearing a Mao suit, shaking hands with Mickey Mouse. Iger presented the photo to the leader as gift and a symbol of the partnership.

INSIGHT
Poor, peasant, privileged or president we all love to be made to feel special.

Feel For Your Customer

Hard-sell  morticians at the China Dragon Garden graveyard in suburban Beijing set up hundreds for gravestones bearing the names (living) local residents in gold letters. Sales staff would show residents their names, saying, “Look! That could be you.”

Insight
Being close to your product is good, and creative marketing even better, but not at the cost of distancing yourself from customer sensitivities. Know your customer, feel for your customer. #KnowYourself #Connect2Coach

Wise Leadership

In the week in August that saw more than $1 trillion wiped out from the Asian markets making people around the world jittery, a memo went out from the CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz. The email to his employees urging them to be more sensitive to anxious customers, said,"Today's financial market volatility, combined with great uncertainty both at and abroad,  will undoubtedly have an effect on consumer confidence and perhaps even or customers'attitudes and behavior...Let's be very sensitive to the pressures our customers may be feeling, and do everything we can to individually and collectively exceed their expectations."

Wise leaders care for the needs and feelings of their people and customers. Their sensitivity makes them to respond at the right time and in the right way. In turn, people and customers return their gratitude, by helping wise leaders make their enterprise a success.

Adapt or Perish

Restaurateurs today, realising that food is not the only carrot drawing diners in are giving more emphasis to the design and giving their places a makeover. Attention is being paid to the decor, layout, music. lighting, the clean fragrance (of herbs or fresh coffee and bread or wood charring in a clay oven) comely staff. All of which come together very nicely to pull in the customers.

#MyLearning
Adaptability is one quality that is key to success.  Know when to focus on targets, when to pay attention to emotions and when to focus on the changing needs of customers. Being sensitive to the ecosystem and responding as per need the need of the time is the essence of adaptivity.

Why Customer is King

ET Panache,  is a supplement which comes with the Economic Times. It calls itself an "Advertorial and Promotional feature," a polite way of saying  all news in the supplement will have to be paid for.  So in today's issue we have billionaire industrialist Yohan Poonawala complaining about his dissatisfaction with premium auto maker Porsche. His SUV caught fire and he is apparently unhappy about the way the company has handled the complaint. This is bad press for Porsche.

Now, whether Poonawala has paid for the news to be featured  as headline news, maybe pure speculation, but what made him vent his ire in this manner? He says he contacted the India director the morning after the accident, who told him he will revert within 48 hours with a solution. Next,  says Poonawala,  he was informed that the director has left for a 'pre scheduled meeting' to Germany,  where he would bring up the issue. An anonymous source has told the paper that it takes a minimum of two weeks to address an issue like this,  and that an investigator is  his way down from Germany.

So where did the India director go wrong in dealing with Poonawala? Considering he is a car aficionado and a billionaire to boot, should the director have been in constant personal touch with him? Should be have offered Poonawala another car as a temporary replacement?

There are several possibilities here,  but only one lesson in customer relationship management -  do not take your customers lightly. They have any number of forums, paid, and free, to vent their spleen on you. 

And that can have serious consequences for your company's image.