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June 2000 Volume 1.11
"Merge like a zip" (Part One)
by Rodger Gallagher
Determining what to include in a Customer Value
Questionaire
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Every day the producer of a news web site such as
cnn.com must decide the content of the home page. Which news stories
are important enough to be included on the home page as a link,
and which ones are important enough to justify a full story? And
of the full stories, which ones are so important that they require
an accompanying photo, sound clip or video clip? The producer is
faced with a dilemma if there are more important stories that need
to go on the home page than there is space on the page to accommodate
them. The home page could be made longer or wider to accommodate
the extra news items, but then web visitors would have to scroll
down or across the page to see the extra items, and they might not
scroll down right to the bottom. If the producer decides to make
the page a bit longer to accommodate some really interesting news
items, there is a practical limit to the length of a home page.
If material is to be excluded, this means that the producer must
also decide which stories are not important enough to even appear
on the home page as a link. The producer decides what is included
on the home page and what is excluded on the basis of what items
are important in terms of news and what items will be interesting
for the visitors. The producer needs to merge these requirements
like a zip and make sure the zip is the right length. Similar decisions
and actions must be made when designing a Customer Value survey.
Customer needs and business requirements
When designing a survey that accurately measures the value that
businesses deliver to customers, it is critical to consider both
the purchase criteria that business people believe are important
for their customers, and the criteria that the customers themselves
say are the most important. If we simply listed all of the criteria
that both customers and business people told us were important,
then it would be easy to write a survey that would take an hour
to complete. We know from practical experience that most people
are happy to take part in a 10 to 15 minute survey. When the length
of a survey goes up to 20 minutes people start to complain about
its length, and some drop out of the survey before it is completed.
If a survey increases to 25 minutes in length then few people are
willing to complete it, unless it is on a specialist subject that
they are passionate about, such as luxury cars. So for practical
purposes the maximum length of a survey should be about 15 minutes.
The zip must be the right length.
It is important to talk to people in a business about
customer needs for two reasons. Firstly, people inside a business
interact with customers, and know what is important to the customer
from within the business looking out to the customer. Managers in
the business can also provide insight on any new products and services
that the business might be deploying in the future, so these can
be taken account of in the survey design. The business people who
are experts in specific products or services are known as subject
matter experts. They might be marketing people responsible for a
specific product, or customer service people with day-to-day contact
with customers. It is not necessary to obtain input from all of
these people, but it is important to capture the views of a sufficient
cross section to reveal the different business processes and customer
needs that exist in different regions and markets. Experience confirms
that these differ widely according to managerial style and local
conditions.
Secondly, the views of people inside a company need
to be captured so they are included in the Customer Value project.
The most difficult part of any Customer Value project is getting
people in the business to take action once the Customer Value information
is made available. We find that in Customer Value projects where
a good cross section of employees has been involved in the early
stages, there is always greater urgency and drive to begin using
the information for business gain. Once we have the entire view
of customer needs from inside the business, we construct a conceptual
waterfall of the major steps for the customer-facing business processes
that deliver products and services.
The next step in determining customer needs is to
gather the views of the customers themselves. This is carried out
by a qualitative market researcher, skilled in the Customer Value
approach, using the conceptual waterfall process as a framework
for populating with the needs of the customers. With this step we
begin to close the zip so customer and business views are merged.
(Part 2 of "Merge like a zip" will be in the next issue.)
PHONES AND OTHER
STUFF
 Raglan
Dealers is the sort of second hand shop that has a bit of everything-
junk, second hand furniture, collectables and the odd antique. It
is at 21 Bow St in Raglan, New Zealand. I like to look at the assortment
of old radios along the back wall. One is a little mantle radio
in a white plastic case. This was the same radio that my brother
and I grew up with, on the middle of the dressing table between
our beds. I remember the dial with two semi-circular bands, one
with the New Zealand stations and the other with some of the more
powerful Australian stations. When the reception was good we very
excitedly listened to 2UE from Sydney, but most of the time we listened
to Auckland stations carrying programs like Randy Stone, the reporter
who covered the Nightbeat for the Daily. At the end of each episode
Randy used to say, "Coffee, boy." I used to think it must be good
being a reporter and being able to ask for a cup of coffee at your
desk. Eventually I worked out that what Randy was saying was, "Copyboy"
which made more sense, but made me decide not to be a reporter.We
have made a few 'finds' in Raglan Dealers. One of the most interesting
is a plate made by Crown Lynn potteries which has a map of central
Auckland, New Zealand on it as the design. What makes it really
interesting is that the map shows the location of all major hotels
of the period. Based on the streets and the hotels shown, the plate
is circa 1965. Why did somebody get this plate made with a map of
Auckland's hotels?But our best find so far has been an Ericsson
skeletal phone like the one in the photo above. The one we found
isn't quite as smart as the one in the photo, but it is pretty good
order. The crank, magneto, and all of the working parts are made
of brass and exposed. Ericsson started making these phones in 1892,
delivering a gold version to the Kremlin in 1903 for Tsar Nicholas
II. The phone was used in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa,
and most European countries.
Regards,
Rodger Gallagher
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