The setting: a room full of 3,000 plus individuals listening to a very charismatic speaker regarding strategic planning for today’s world.  The story below was told to the audience and while I have attempted to produce it here as closely as possible to how it was told, I elected NOT to include the name of the offending company.

“This past month, my wife took a look at the suit I was wearing and remarked, ‘honey, I believe it’s time for you to consider replacing or expanding your wardrobe again.  You need to go shopping this weekend.’   Now, it’s not that shopping for a new suit or dress wardrobe is that unusual, however it is unusual to get the blessing of my wife to have time to myself on a weekend to reinforce my wardrobe, so I jumped at the opportunity.

I headed to (retailer), from whom I had bought suits, shirts, and ties in the past.  I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing;  had the day to myself for some casual shopping for something I really enjoyed shopping for plus, I was only going because my wife forced me into it so I was totally guilt free and looking forward to a great experience.

I have shopped at (retailer) several times in the past and each time it was a wonderful experience.  They stocked the styles and names that I liked of course but what I really enjoyed was how their salespeople made the whole experience just so amazingly perfect.  It almost seemed their salespeople knew more about what I liked and what looked best on me than I did.

So, I walked into the store with great expectations, thinking it was going to be a wonderful way to spend the afternoon!

As usual, shortly after stepping through the door of (retailer), I was approached by one of their associates to assist me in my endeavors.  Only this time, it was completely different from what usually happened with (retailer). 

I mean, from the suits to the shirts to the ties this associate presented to me as options, it became quickly obvious he not only had no clue how to pick things I liked, but he was not able to interpret my words telling him what I liked and didn’t like and reflect them in the various options he was bringing to me for consideration. 

I know it’s not fair, but my comparison standard was a seamless, enjoyable time spent in the past where the sales associate literally brought me clothing to consider that really struck home with my sense of style, which may not be much compared to others in the audience, but for me, it is MY sense of style.  As this current shopping trip continued to play out, my memory continued to strike me as to how little I had had to even think during the previous shopping experiences.

As time drug on, I realized the only way I was going to leave there with any new clothing was to find it myself.  The look on the sales associates face appeared to get longer and longer each time I told him what he was bringing to me was not “quite what I was thinking of.”

It got to where I sent him off on phantom errands just so I had some time to find something I actually liked and preserve the day of shopping.  After awhile I settled on some shirts, a couple of ties, two new suits and a dress jacket.  What I noticed though was, while I found clothes I liked and would wear, I felt like something was missing. 

I felt a little cheated in a way.  You see, you can buy clothing anywhere, even online if you want nowadays.  I realized, this thing we call shopping was creating a different expectation and meeting a different need than it has in the past. 

In the past, I’m sure people were more than happy to even have a store that offered them clothing to buy.  But that’s not today.  I realized I had arrived at this retailer expecting an “experience.”  Something that made it worthwhile to spend the few extra dollars I’m sure I was spending on the type of clothing I was buying.  When that didn’t happen, I felt cheated somehow.  Even though I found what I eventually wanted, I didn’t feel good about the money I was going to spend on the items.

Now you might think the story ends here . . . but it doesn’t.  I still had to pay for the clothes. 

I handed my card over to the associate thinking, ‘well, at least nothing can go wrong with this.’  I was wrong!

Evidently, the machine that swipes the cards in that store was not working that day.  As the associate keyed in my number, he repeatedly got the numbers wrong – I could tell from where I was standing.  Each time he would turn to me to tell me that the card had been rejected I had to point out to him that of course it had, the number he punched in was wrong and would not map to my zip code or to me.

My day of slowly growing to a boil in frustration turned to ending very quickly in total frustration and disgust.  By now the manager was involved.  Within seconds, he was able to verify that yes; the card was mine and was able to handle the charges.  In those few seconds, came the infamous question regarding ‘how was your shopping experience today?’  I felt I had to share my frustration with the entire experience with this manager.  He had to know the absolute ineptness of his staff within that store.

My this point also, I had had it.  The day was shot for me and this experience was over.  I asked for my card back, told them not to worry about it – through gritted teeth, trying to preserve some dignity myself – left the clothes on the counter and turned to leave.

The manager caught up to me and asked that question you almost hate to hear as a customer, ‘is there anything we can do to make this right with you?’  As I looked past the manager to the forlorn face of the sales associate, I realized it would take too much time to explain and they would not really care anyway, what this experience was supposed to have meant to me.

I looked the manager in the eye and said, ‘no, there’s nothing you can do about it,’ turned and left the store.”

There are several things to learn within this story. 

The obvious learnings apply to every b2c company in the world, but two umbrella concepts in particular struck me as I sat in the audience taking copious notes regarding this speaker’s experience.  First is how online has given every customer’s experience in lack of meeting or exceeding their expectation a new platform.

While this speaker was able to share his story about this retail experience with 3,000 or so strangers – and, we all left thinking twice about going to that particular retailer in the future – the online world allows this type of message to go out to literally tens of thousands of people. 

The principle involved is not new at all.  Using traditional research methods of the past we deduced that a “great” experience was shared with two to three close friends or relatives.  A “less than good” experience was shared with 18 to 20 people including strangers.  A terrible experience was shared with up to 50 people, the vast majority of which being strangers to the person sharing the story. 

The digital world has simply put these percentages on steroids.  The distribution is forever tilted enormously.  The delta between impact of positive and negative impressions from customers and clients of all ilk; b2c, b2b, and b2g, has broadened into a great chasm.

The current method of trying to tease this information from survey data comes in the form of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) which focuses on analysis of only one question to gain understanding into a company’s potential for growth success.  While this method has serious flaws, addressed in my downloadable paper The Myth of Customer Satisfaction, it is quite telling that many businesses have embraced the process of NPS and so-called “Voice of the Customer” programs wholeheartedly.  Such was not the case even a few short years ago.

Secondly, I was reminded of the customer experience brand impact we found in our Brand Engagement™ study (see Brand Engagement™ Report).  In this study we determined that a pure online originated company held a branding advantage of 11 to 23 percent over an offline originated company’s online efforts.  In that study we refined what we discovered in the ‘90’s relative to all self-service offerings; ATM’s, self-service checkout lines, etc – the new definition of service components IS self-service requirements.  Hence the gap between online and offline originated companies and branding. 

Does that mean online originated companies get it right?  Do web analytics, defined as measuring machine output such as time spent, unique visitors, bounce rate, etc, equate to guaranteed success for a company in the digital world?  After all, the web is the most measurable and measured medium the world has ever seen, surely we’re not allowing this type of experience to take place online, right?

Wrong!  For two main reasons:

1) web analytics are ALL backward looking statistics.  They only show where and what happened on predetermined paths of action.  They can NEVER tell you why it happened so you can affect a strategic shift in corporate culture and eventually design to better meet a consumer’s needs.  In the case of the story above, which happens very frequently on numerous websites and digital interactions, web analytics would miss this entire interaction and its impact on the company.

2) digital creations, whether for online, mobile or in the future, the television space are designed and implemented by humans.  Much like some sales associates are better than others, the same principle applies to the world of digital designers and developers.  Alignment with a poor design and development firm will create the same end-user response as illustrated in the retail shopping experience story above, only MORE so.

In the end, it’s ALWAYS about the human experience, even when the experience appears to be mechanically enhanced through technology.  And for that human experience, you have to hold meaningful, statistically reliable and actionable discussions.     

Which of these current goals for business’ websites are answered through server-based information?

In getting close to customers of numerous businesses, I’m once again struck by the apparent inability of business to understand and apply anything other than the lowest common denominator in their attempts to sell more to customers.  That goes for B2B and B2G companies too!  Don’t think you get off the hook just because your sales process involves committees and purchasing agents on the buyers’ side of the equation.  Your differences from the hyper-competitive world of direct consumer sales are often used as excuses for not looking to the future of where your own customer will be.  In so doing, you put yourself at risk for having any future with your customers, just the same as a B2C company.

But I digress.  What I am talking about is the compunction in the business world to adopt tactical implementations without a strategic focus. 

The terms laid out at the start of this post are touted by business as the new goals they need to adopt in relation to their customers to succeed or in the current economic condition – survive, in the future.  Anyone following the massive growth of social networking combined with the attitude shift in green quickly understands why this is occurring.

In the 90’s, throughout all of our research, we heard concerns from consumer and business alike that the rise of the internet would create a majority population which never saw the natural light of day (you know, that thing called the sun).  This new phenomenon of tethering yourself to an individualized, personalized machine was deemed to be the end of human community and interface.   

In study after study we heard the common complaint among individuals that something as simple as gathering together to discuss pretty much anything would soon become a lost art.  Technology, viral marketing and the entrepreneurial spirit once again have made that concern non-existent.  Today, our children have more friends and acquaintances online through their Facebook accounts and we as professionals have more contacts through our LinkedIn accounts than we could have imagined.

IF you want, you can now take up your entire day in meaningful(?) discussions with people around the world you have never met and probably never will meet.    What once was a concern can now become a distraction.  With mobile technology of wireless access and iPhone capability, this can be done WHILE enjoying the great outdoors so even exposure to that big burning light in the sky is no longer a concern!

This mobility of access combined with fully-functioning interactive communication tools, what we call “arms-length relationship facilitation,” creates a new intersection of humans and technology that is catching the majority of businesses by surprise.  This “arms-length relationship facilitation” requires a deeper understanding and relationship with people.  In the case of business, with their customers – who happen to be peopleJ

Everything is connected

While we may not know or understand everything, make no mistake that “everything” is connected.  I’m not just talking about people being connected to each other in ways we have never seen before.  That’s just an outcome.  I’m talking about our current ability to understand the root connections which comprise the causality between thoughts and actions, in the case of business, with their customer.

Whether we see it or not, there is a cause and effect for everything that occurs.  The scientific theory of chaos is a prime example of what I am referring to. 

In studying and evaluating the natural order in the universe, scientists continue to derive relationships that stretch the imagination of the human mind to the point of incredulousness (remember the butterfly effect postulation?).  When I read their findings in the world of chaos theory, I believe it was misnamed.  A far better title is “order theory.”  If there is a relationship they have not found between certain events, give it a couple of years of study and they usually will find it.

This has direct bearing to what we are facing in the current business world. Humans react to technology by following a continually revising set of pattern rules.  These “rules” can be deduced through direct and indirect feedback and business can, and should, respond accordingly in order to meet the rising expectations, needs and requirements of their consumptive audience.  One current capsulation of this concept is the theories put forth in the book “The Wisdom of Crowds.”  This book’s theories are constantly cited as support reference for much of the serious data crunching that is taking place for and within companies.

The whole reason real-time predictive analytics works, used most notably by Amazon and Google, is because we as humans react to patterns of thought, concept, design and function in predictable manners.  Simply because you do not know the shape of the pattern a person is responding to does not mean the pattern is not causing the response.  It simply means you have not uncovered the causal relationship yet.

In the old days, about ten years ago, a business executive could rightly say, “we don’t know why such-and-such is happening, we’re just happy our consumer is responding in the manner that best suits our business goals.”  Today, in the online world (and eventually the entire digital world of mobile and televised content), not only is there no excuse for thinking this way, there’s no excuse for not actively, meaningfully, and positively impacting your customer contact.

Then, why a disconnect, why is business not acting on this?

One reason.  Businesses fail to understand their key to future survival, let alone growth, will be their ability to gather information from the right audience, analyze it correctly and shape strategic direction from it.  The implementation, or tactics, SHOULD be the no-brainer part of the process.

Today, this equation is operationally backwards in all but a few companies.  Need proof?  Ask your executive management what their strategic goals are for their website(s).  After the long pause, the deer-in-the-headlight looks between members of executive staff reaching painful levels; someone will blurt out the obvious corporate statements.  Then the argument, or discussion, starts.

Here’s the fact of the future:   Online is nothing more than a training ground for the customers of the future!  Websites are nothing more than an opportunity for business to embrace, learn and position for survival and growth with the customer of the future!

It really is that simple.  Yet, the thought process given toward a company’s website relationship with the company’s target audience has barely crept past 1997 levels.

In discussions with another research agency considering entering the world of online surveying tools, executives were quizzing me regarding capabilities they could build into the tool.  According to their intensive market reviews of current methods and tools available in the world today, they had found none that offered the combination needed by companies.

They were more than slightly surprised to learn we had developed seamlessly integrated capabilities critical to measuring the entirety of customer experience success® back in the 90’s (Refer to Equation and Metrician posts for background).  Their client base, consisting largely of Fortune 500 companies are only now beginning to understand the need for tools, products and services developed in the 90’s for creating a better online customer experience.

Engaging in order to create engagement

So, the answer to the original question of: engagement, relevance, authenticity, transparency and transformation – which are answered through server-based information?  None.

That’s right.  None! 

I know this flies in the face of current attempts by some to devise convoluted equations back-ending server-based information such as page views, time spent, bounce rates, etc, into engagement metrics for business.  These attempts are not surprising.  They are examples of the information industry trying to provide a least common denominator response to business needs.

In reality, back-ending engagement, relevance, etc, metrics from server-based information is like estimating how to positively influence a batter’s capabilities from a pitching machine’s output in baseball.  For the non-sports reader, I apologize for using sports analogies but this one seems to fit the current environment. 

Server-based data tells you what the servers or machines are doing.  Just like you can know how many pitches a pitching machine throws, the speed of each pitch, the trajectory of each pitch and, in conjunction, you can even know how many balls the batter hit at each speed and trajectory. 

Yet, can you draw up a strategic, predictive plan as to how successful that batter is from this information?  Of course not, you need more mission critical information.

Analyzing pitching machine output and response tells you nothing about why the response from the batter occurred, analogous to your customer responding to your website or online interaction.  If your business depends on understanding and responding to your customer and you are attempting to get at that with only server-based information, you’re estimating with the output part of the equation, not the input.  Unfortunately, the output side is the least important half of the equation. 

Add to this example, the variances and errors which occur using cookies, the primary driver of server-based information, and it is easily apparent that, while interesting and helpful guidance, server-based information has severe strategic bias and weakness.

I’m not saying this type of information does not have its use.  If you are not at a minimum using Google’s Website Optimizer to understand how to better your site experience, even if you are a small company, please email me (john@arthurgroupinc.com).  Yes, we will charge you to implement tests you should be doing.  But to have such tools available and not use them to optimize tactical website components borders on fiduciary negligence.   Analysis of server-based data, when activated within a testing environment such as Google’s Website Optimizer, is extremely powerful.  In my humble opinion, this should be the minimum used by everyone who has a site.

To get at the strategically powerful factors of engagement, relevance, etc, requires a two-way conversation in order to be deduced as to a company’s performance relative to these factors.  A simple example illustrates why server-based data alone is not sufficient.  This from intranet work we did for a major firm. 

The inherent assumptions made were; the more time spent with the application and the more pages being viewed; the more successful the application was in meeting the needs of the user.  Simple key performance indicator (KPI) right?

Can handle that one in your sleep using basic server-based tools.

One problem – the entire assumption was incorrect.  In truth, there were serious errors occurring at the end-user’s level which were NOT captured by any of the myriad of server-based data at which the company was looking.  This resulted in increased time spent and increased page views, not because of positive engagement with the site, but rather because it was the only option for users completing the necessary actions required of them.  The end-user hated the interaction, hated the application, and cursed the internal department handling the application. 

Using our direct interaction protocol, where we actually “talked” to their users, we learned a number of things that totally changed the strategic direction of this intranet, its tactical implementation, and most importantly, its success among users.  We found much more than the serious recurring error, it just happened to be the obvious showstopper for the success of this particular intranet. 

We now are in a long-term relationship with this company continuously metering end-user’s response to the intranet on variables which provide a direct relation to the investment made in this technology.  All because we discovered and proved you have to do more than infer pitching machine output to strategic results.

By the way, what we employed was not the current “voice of the customer” tactics offered through some research vendors.  These approaches, while helpful, again do not go deep enough in providing information which is meaningful, statistically viable and ‘relevant’ to a business’ ROI equation.

Why is this so difficult?

Why are human relationships of any kind so difficult?  This level of involvement requires getting directly involved with your customer or end-user; not an easy or common thing to do.   It can get messy and be difficult to interpret unless you know what you are doing.

To the vast majority of business leaders, they do not do this well, they are awkward when doing it and they typically do not listen very well IF they do engage with their customer or end-user.  It’s so much easier to infer how things are going through the route of the least common denominator – let the analysis of the machine data tell you all you need to do – seems to be today’s mantra. 

Hmmm, haven’t we heard this story before?  Oh yes, the auditors of a company’s financial records used to say the same thing about P&L and Balance Sheet information.  Weren’t they the only thing needed to guide the company?  Time and circumstances have mightily changed that perception.

So should business relegate themselves to being driven by less then optimum information?  Absolutely not!

But at some point, you have to actually “communicate” with your customer or end-user to derive mission critical, meaningful, statistically reliable information for strategic decision-making.  In order to know if your customers are engaged, YOU have to participate.

When I first published my book in 2002, Website Success: from the only perspective that matters, your customer!, (a revised and updated version is on it’s way soon) I naively thought I had given the world of business and industry all the answers they needed to create compelling, meaningful and successful websites for the future.   In a way, I had.  Many answers to questions businesses raise today about their websites are in that book.  

However the “key,” is the same as the key to applying any customer experience success® principle.  It is the application of knowledge not the dispersal of it that creates winners from otherwise also-ran companies.  It goes right back to the heart of long discussions with clients very early on in my professional career that formed my entire approach to the research and information business.  “Data gets me so far, information is turning data into something interesting for my business, but John, if you can turn it into something I can act on.  . . That is golden for me.”  

 While we try to cross that holy grail of a bridge with each study, with each market or marketing evaluation, alas we are not responsible for implementing the tactical.  At some point, someone other than the information geeks have to be able to understand what is being said and learned from data and information, realize the strategic options realistically offered from this knowledge and transform it into meaningful creative, design, and campaigns.

In the ‘90’s, the phrase that struck me most from all the online user interviews we conducted was “I love the web, I just hate a lot of websites.”  Simple, to the point, blunt truth.  That phrase formed the basis for the first version of my book, Website Success. 

This last month I heard the reason that epitomizes why I’m publishing an update to my book.  “When will they ever learn?  Don’t they know that if there’s any problem (by the user’s definition) with their website, we will leave in a heartbeat, never come back and more than likely buy or use whatever they are offering – from someone else.”  Not as cogent as the first phrase, but in some ways, this new view carries much larger impact to companies failing to meet online user’s expectations.

Now, I know there are some readers in the audience who believe with all the types of user research, web analytics, audience measurement panels, and tracking capabilities afforded by the world’s most measurable medium (the internet) that there are no more frontiers in this space.  The theory goes, everything that is needed for companies is provided.  Things are pretty much operating on a standardized platform with no need for new information or evaluation.  We may like to think this, and I believe I honestly thought with all the effort spent making websites and the online experience better at the internet’s inception that some day there would be validity to that thought process.

But alas, spending time with companies’ actual customers and potential customers has a way of changing your perspective.  Actually, this latest round of frustration from customers of various companies and online users of all ilks is not a total surprise.

We have been tracking online users’ thoughts, attitudes, feelings and opinions regarding their online experiences since 1994.  With the broad adoption of what is called web 2.0 (however you wish to define that term), we have seen a steady decrease in online user’s attitudes, feelings and interactions toward company websites.  This decline occurred after website evaluations reached a peak in our website optimization scoring from 2004 to 2005 (depending on industry).  In some cases, the impact of this decline has been severe, with companies reporting drops in key business metrics from 25 to 80 percent.  In other words, it’s a real problem today!

Over the course of the next few posts, I’ll share some thoughts on what is available for those responsible for websites, the online customer experience, and a company’s overall online presence.  I’ll also, of course, share where our approach helps companies fill in the gaps that still exist today and account for why the online experience gap is widening rather than improving for many industry leaders.      

Personally, I found the entire experience absolutely fascinating!  As someone who lived and worked through the environmental movement of the early ‘90’s I was very interested to see how this latest resurrection of the green theme was actually being implemented within companies.  The environmental movement of the early ‘90’s was predominantly regulatory driven with environmental science companies springing up practically overnight to handle the testing requirements of new regulation applied to the construction industry.  Given this focus, there was not a lot of reason for anyone outside of the development community to attempt to understand the movement, let alone change their own business practices. 

It looks like this time around, the environmental movement part two (sustainability) might actually stick!

In a way, it is another story of the chicken or the egg – which comes first?  There are three primary areas of convergence that have to work in tandem in order for a “trend” to actually reach the momentum necessary to be viable for business.  I believe I witnessed factors that showed this convergence is happening in the area of sustainability and creating real dynanicism and momentum. 

Technology Provides Options

Throughout the conference, every so often you heard the cry – especially from international attendees – that doing sustainability or going green has to cost more money and therefore must be more expensive to the end consumer.  The wringing of hands occurred as to “how do we get the consumer to buy off on this and understand they need to pay more for a ‘better-for-the-environment’ product.”  This message has not been lost on consumers in the U.S.  From a number of studies, including our own, the percentage of U.S. consumers who think green costs extra ranges from 67 percent to 74 percent.  This is one of the major barriers to broad market acceptance of most green initiatives in the U.S.

I am happy to report that technology is once again changing the economic realities of the monetary equation in going green and establishing a strong sustainability presence.  In fact, technological advancements in many areas are allowing companies to produce and introduce innovative, sustainable products to their end-markets – without charging extra!  This is breaching a major barrier from the past and was very encouraging to see.

Business is Experiencing Real Benefits

Some say business has been reticent to move on sustainability initiatives because the consumer has not been ready.  Well, our own research, which we unveiled at the conference, proves this is not the case and has not been the case for quite some time.

Let’s be honest, much like the commitment to customer experience which I have been preaching from the advocacy pulpit for over two decades, there are times when businesses just do not want to take action that can be seen as taking a risk.  “We’re doing just fine and have been for years,” “I’ve never talked to them before.”  These are just a few of the excuses we have heard about not committing to a long-term focus on customer experience. 

While the excuses are different for sustainability, they flow freely from the tips of executives’ tongues.  However, given time, enough of the case studies we were privy to this past week will start filtering through the business community.  Once that happens in enough quantity, I believe we will pass a threshold where the discussion can mirror that of the adoption of online. 

The questions will be: how did your company make that move?  What was the trigger point for acceptance throughout the company?  What are the communication mechanisms and messages that worked best for you?  These will be only some of the questions the majority of businesses will start asking in the very near future.

What are some of the benefits to business? 

It starts with the fact that business as usual is more costly than changing to today’s sustainable alternatives.  The poster child for this fact is Wal Mart.  They saved $10 billion dollars (that’s straight to the bottom line dollars) through changing their packaging requirements throughout the company.

It moves through to the consumer as companies start to realize sustainability must be one of the lenses through which they view their business – from their consumer’s eyes.  The impact of this results in a ratio of more impact in a negative direction than positive but the point is, if you don’t know where your brand is positioned on the elements of sustainability you lose by default.  It was demonstrated that a one percent increase in brand for sustainability (presented well) resulted in an increase of $8.7 million in revenue.  Inversely, a decrease in brand for sustainability (poorly applied and messaged = green washing) cost the company $24.4 million in revenues. 

This is very similar to what we discovered in consumers’ response to a company’s online efforts.  The negative backlash against online efforts done poorly was three to four times as severe as the positive response to online efforts done well.  The primary point in all this is we have reached a tipping point where the consumer will reward companies for doing sustainability very well and inversely, they will punish companies severely for doing it poorly.  This is a critical juncture that has to take place before the lemming nature of business leadership kicks in and executives feel comfortable that the rules of the new paradigm fit that of a more traditional ROI model. 

Finally, there is one often overlooked impact which all businesses will soon have to face.  This is indeed a trend encompassed by a whole lot of other research data the likes of which most companies have a hard time digesting.  This is the ability to woo top talent from the younger workforce to meet tomorrow’s demands.

There is no question the younger generation is seeking a new set of requirements from the companies they chose to work for.  Green or sustainable initiatives are theoretically set in a new standard of transparency and authenticity.  Two characteristics very appealing to the younger up and coming workforce.  Two characteristics which traditional and established companies have not been very good at implementing. 

Customer Experience Is Critically Important

I absolutely LOVED this part of the conference!   No matter who was speaking, no matter the company they were representing or what process they were highlighting – the terms “market research” and “customer experience” were freely and unashamedly used as a central component to describe the what, why, and how’s of sustainability. 

It was like watching an industry in its infant stage realizing a truth I have forced down the throats of industries for over two decades.  The good news for me – all the leaders at this conference got it!  Already! 

They realize the required buy-in for future success of their initiatives rests solely on the consumer’s response to their initiatives.

If we look at it through the eyes of past “movements” it’s a strange combination of the Total Quality Management (TQM) movement and the online paradigm shift.  TQM because companies realize a cost savings benefit.  But, as I said during the heyday of TQM, no company ever paved their way to industry supremacy through cost savings alone.  While providing a company much needed bottom line impact, there is a limit to the benefits of cost-savings.  At some point, you have to make a statement and grow, something not accomplished through cost-savings.

It’s eerily similar in nature to the changes in consumer behavior brought on by the advent of the internet and online everything.  However, this time, while technology is providing businesses the ability to conduct innovation, the real change is taking place in consumer’s attitudes first and then followed by actions, much the same manner which consumers took to the internet.

 The challenge not adequately addressed by companies present at the conference – the what, why and how of holding marketing accountable for doing a good job of selling a company’s benefits to consumers of their green or sustainable endeavors.  However, unlike in the past, this time, the convergence of focus on three key areas: technology, business benefits and customer experience – gives rise to optimism that sustainability in some form will impact and change business moving forward in lasting way.  Only time will tell whether this wave can weather the impact of hostile economic conditions that helped derail the environmental movement of the early ‘90’s, but there is much that provides a strong indication that your company, if you work for one, will soon be wrestling with the issue of sustainability and it’s impact.

It’s ironic as you continue to read, listen or watch these people, how, usually within the same show or article, you can find them quoting some market research study or another.  They do this because the findings from the study they chose to quote support their view and opinion on the subject upon which they are pontificating.  Hmmmm, whatever happened to that notorious, boldly proclaimed stance so strongly opposed to any sort of information resource as lending guidance to their opinion? 

I guess we’re just to realize that if they quote a study that supports their opinion, it’s their opinion that lends credence to the study, not the other way around?  They say it; therefore the study findings are true?  Quite a leap of faith when you think of the logic they want you to follow isn’t it?

Inc. magazine was absolutely notorious for this in their early days of publication.  In fact, if there had been a visual icon for a business man’s “gut” opinion, Inc. would have been the centerfold of that publication.  You would be hard pressed to find a more vocal and venomous voice spouting anti-information based market research obscenities than Inc.  For Inc, it was a purposeful cry of “All hail gut instinct!!!”

At the time Inc. was originally published, the internet was non-existent and “traditional” market research was only operating and impacting a few sporadic industry circles and leading companies.  Yes, there were some general successes, but the “customer-based” information industry was just beginning to feel the empowerment of unleashing our tools caused by the amazing shrinking microprocessor chip. 

We had just exited the world of running simple multivariate analysis (we’re talking basic Chi Square and ANOVA tests) on a single study, and not seeing outcome results until the next day or two, if we were lucky.   Our analytical resources were computers with less than a megabyte of RAM that took up office real estate the size of your grandmother’s ice box.

I found it very interesting to read Inc. at that time.  Why?  It seemed such a demonstrative voice against my entire profession.  Here’s why.  They invariably had to resort to using research findings to support the viewpoints of at least half of every article in each volume!  Here was the bastion publication for the entrepreneurial spirit, wanting desperately to hold up “gut instinct” as the end-all-be-all for success criterion, and even its contributors had to resort to some form of information-based decision-making eventually.  Today, after weathering the rise of the internet, Inc is far less swift to cut off information-based decision-making compared to earlier years.  And rightly so.

Let’s take this perspective to its extreme today.  Imagine you are the president or executive vice president of a medium sized company.  You pick up a magazine and every article is telling you what to do to increase marketing effectiveness, increase sales levels, increase product innovation success rates, or optimize closure rates on your website.  As you read, you realize the only evidence supporting the majority of examples they cite for why you should follow their suggestions is . . . .  1) their lone opinion, or 2) one other company tried the process or implemented the approach they are telling you about and was successful! 

There you have it – trust their recipe for success!  They decided it or it worked for one other company at a particular point in time in its lifecycle!

Unhindered by facts, case study or consumer-based information of any kind, how seriously would you take the opinions of such a publication? 

When you read it from the perspective presented above, any person who has – 1) held the responsibility of determining how to get enough revenue through the door to pay employees on a regular basis or 2) reported to a Board of Directors why a specific strategic or tactical path was taken – would feel a little silly saying they would continue to read such a magazine on an ongoing basis as a source of insight for their business decisions.  Sadly, though, many of today’s celebrity-based business autobiographies are a modern morph of the theme perpetuated by Inc.

To sum up the majority of business idioms in the flood of newly pressed pages swamping both virtual and real bookshelves, the modern day cry is much the same as it was for Inc. magazine.  “I was successful in this position because of the great choices I made trusting my gut instinct.  It is all about the gut baby!  I am a business star and you can be too, you don’t need anyone else, you don’t need any consumer information just trust your gut!”  It’s phrased much more politically correct of course.  But whenever you hear such phrases as: ‘market research is too slow,” “it doesn’t relate to reality,” or any of the other 48 ways to mitigate the need for customer-based information, you are getting close to someone wanting you to suspend reason and blindly accept what they say based on a couple of examples or lone opinion.

Why am I spending this time elaborating on an irony of human nature among business leaders?  Because the exact same approach is occurring in decisions relating to companies’ strategic and tactical efforts in green!

As I mentioned in my previous blog, companies are basing decisions to “go green” on the idea that the Board of Directors feels good about gaining a six month (at most) lead over other competitors in terms of being able to tout going green as part of their brand.  Let me ask you, who was the first to enter the retail market with “everyday low prices?”  Newsflash, it was not Wal-Mart. 

You could go through just about every relative slogan or market position in any industry and the current market leaders were, in most cases, barely a blip on the radar screen when others were forging ahead thinking they were establishing an industry leading market position by being “first-to-market” in a particular position.  Green is just one more such market position in the case of the vast majority of companies.

Is it wrong to jump on the green bandwagon?  Of course not.  But just like doing customer experience right is more important than making sure you pick the best CRM software, doing green right is more than calling what you have been doing for years green.

In a recent study we conducted of extremely similar design options for a consumer packaged product, we determined that the offer stressing “green” as a market position was hindered by the green focus.  Is this important?  If you are comfortable selling approximately 10% fewer sku’s than what the market for a product will bear, then fine, go right ahead.  Don’t use innovation, make a better product, offer a real solution both corporately or to the customer, or understand what your customers are really thinking about the topic.  Just slap “biodegradable” on the label and color it green.

A simple understanding of the target market’s segmentation against our Eco-Brand Monitor™ would have easily deduced the negative impact of thoroughly positioning on only green.  More importantly, it would have directed the company in how to position the product and design in such a way as to accomplish both market position and a more meaningful product.

Sadly, the consumer is watching the term “green” slapped on everything from checking accounts to light bulbs.  So much so that they are already becoming jaded.  They have a term for it, green-washing.  Green-washing describes very well the idea of hurriedly slapping a name on an old concept so it fits with the fad of the year.  This never worked in the past for quality when TQM was the fad, it does not work today for customer satisfaction now that that has reached the faddish tipping point, and it will never work for green moving forward.

Our research shows significant consumer acceptance levels for truly innovative leadership product or service offerings.  Anywhere from 44 to 55 percent of the broad market population is very likely to SWITCH brands should a simple yet innovative and meaningful product position be offered to them.  Let me repeat that – 44 to 55 percent will SWITCH brands.   Think getting it right matters?  Think getting it right through understanding and integrating the green position into your overall customer experience can create real market impact? 

Understanding your customer experience market position, knowing what is important for the large “green-inclined” segments within the market you serve, knowing you are producing a meaningful answer to their concerns and also producing a better product at the same time – this is the optimum path to doing green right.  Do I even need to fill in the gaps as to where and how customer experience success® fits here?  If you have read me at all, no I should not.

There is no need for you to feel alone if your company is not achieving this level or moniker of customer success in green.  As of yet, NO company or product we have tested (and we have tested many) currently can lay claim to doing this right and capturing a leadership position.

So, back to the point I spent many paragraphs making at the start of this post, if you are following what everyone else is doing because of one success story you may have heard or because a “green consultant” told you too – you are already avidly reading the wrong magazine and buying a line that will never get your company where I’m sure it wants to be! 

Next time, the steps needed to do it right.  Hint, they’ll seem vaguely familiar.