at most buyers were women, and that women bought differently than men. They designed solution for women buyers. For example:- women care about installation; men think they can do it themselves. Best Buy bought Geek Squad and packaged installation with all purchases.
- women care about bundles, like plugs and wire accessories; men think of these items as discrete purchases. Best Buy arranges its stores so accessories are conveniently located with the electronics.
- women often shop with children; men mostly solo. Best Buy has play areas in each store so Mom can get some quiet shopping time.
From shopping assistants greeting customers to selling solutions rather than products, Best Buy has transformed its experience in a way that has enabled it to survive the recent economic downturn in good shape.
The key to Best Buy's insight? It is the commitment of management to declare that to remain relevant in today's electronics marketplace, Best Buy needed to see the world throught he customer's eyes. Author Ranjay Gulati describes:
"Becoming customer-centric means looking at an enterprise from the outside-in rather than the inside-out — that is, through the lens of the customer rather than the producer. It's about understanding what problems customers face in their lives and then providing mutually advantageous solutions.
"It's the approach Best Buy took and it's a key reason why the company has survived in the tumultuous consumer-electronics marketplace, while Circuit City is gone. Best Buy took the time to understand who its customers are and what they need and then started selling solutions instead of products."
My View
As we examine the role that Perfect Service design plays in creating a successful sales process, it is useful to look at companies who have done so. Best Buy decided to take a traditionally price and features sales process and turn it into a needs and solutions process. It even targeted a specific buyer to make the experience even more specific!
The wisdom to do this is bold...and rare in business these days. Awareness is only part of the equation, since even with the knowledge, most managers do not commit to transform! States the writer:
"Even when a company and its employees try to make sense of what they are hearing from their customers, they often find themselves immobilized by their own organizational architecture — the internal "silos" that inevitably grow around specific units and functions.
"I hasten to add that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with silos. Division of labor, specialization, and departmental responsibility are necessities in any operation. But most firms today are still structured around product and geography. They have excellent perspectives on what they make and where they distribute and sell it, but poor views of customers and their problems. And these inadequate sight lines impede coordinated action toward solving these problems."
It appears that most companies desire to deliver a premium customer experience, some may even organize to gain insight as to what that experience entails. But too few actually do what is necessary to deliver that experience as a matter of competitive differentiation.
My comment on the HBR Blog:
"Great insight into a company that is taking its delivery of customer experience seriously. I took particular note of the comment that "it would be hard to find a CEO who would tell you that his or her firm isn't customer-centric already. And that's exactly where mass delusion begins for most companies."
"I have also found that many companies want to think of themselves this way, but do not have the nerve to walk away from any part of the market in order to focus on this perspective. So these campanies become pretty good at the customer experience, pretty competitive when pricing their products, and fast followers when it comes to product/service features. In short, they are pretty good companies on their way to long-term extinction.
"For companies to stay relevant and viable (read non-commodity), they must decide their market, and fully fill that market's needs in some dimension. For Best Buy, it may be service; for Apple, it may be product; for WalMart, it may be price. But in the end, management must decide and act."
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