Consumer Centric

Sitting in church recently I couldn’t help getting caught up in the energy of the baby boy sitting on his dad’s lap just in front of us. I wasn’t the only one–my wife and kids joined me in making weird faces and waving to the little guy for nearly an hour! You know exactly what I mean if you’ve ever made eye contact with a cute tiny one who stares back at you with genuine intrigue.

During this back and forth, I was captivated by the interaction and real communication between this boy and his very attentive dad. The kid couldn’t have been more than nine months old; he was barely sitting up with the balancing act facing you when you’re head is bigger than the rest of your torso. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t write. But boy could he ever communicate. And he and his dad had a very real conversation throughout the church service. Dad had to work hard, but he delivered at every stage of the little guy’s experience at church that morning.

So, what’s the point? And why was I thinking about work ideas at church?

The kid’s happiness and enjoyment were a direct result of dad’s interest in him, familiarity with him, and relentless responsiveness to what he was ’saying’ to dad; all of this without a single word being spoken.

Consider this interchange. Dad sees smile on kid’s face, dad smiles back, dad picks up string of beads and drapes it on kid’s ear. Kid desperately tries to get his hand to find and grasp the beads only to knock them off his ear and fall to the ground. Dad picks them up and the scene is repeated until kid’s attention shifts to his sister. You get the idea. You’ve seen it before. This was repeated in various iterations with food, toys, fingers, etc.

Dad listened. Dad’s genuine interest put him in a position to understand every emotional shift expressed on his son’s face. Dad was prepared with a seemingly endless stash of tactics to test in an attempt to meet his son’s needs. They interacted. And it worked because he observed, understood, and acted to a certain extent on the kid’s terms. Dad accomplished his goal of entertaining his son during the church service.

Companies with genuine interest in their customers, who know their customers, and who relentlessly respond to what they observe succeed in helping the people they interact with find happiness. Sure, we call it satisfaction, loyalty, or passion about a brand. In the end, isn’t it really about caring enough, doing enough, and interacting enough to act on their terms? The terms of your customers.

In my view, that is the point of being people centric. Companies who get it will plan and deliver their marketing (the relentless interaction trying to solve a kid’s needs) and create their products (trying out from an endless stash of toys and things) to be truly authentic and relevant.

Word of mouth within this context is real, because actions and behaviors are real.