Customer Reviews

Simply Better: Winning and Keeping Customers by Delivering What Matters Most

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Crucial messages need not be complex. The simple message of Simply Better is that in single-mindedly pursuing differentiation, many companies have failed miserably in their stated goal to be "customer-focused". Except for relatively rare instances, customers care little for the addition of unique features and clever innovations. What they really want is the reliable delivery of "generic category benefits" - products that *work* and reliable services that take place on time. Although companies often dismiss this as "table stakes", the data show that businesses fail to deliver these basics far too often.

If time is of the essence, it is my editorial duty to let you know that you will find most of the important ideas of this book in the authors' MIT Sloan Management Review article, "Don't Be Unique, Be Better." Barwise and Meehan do not entirely dismiss the conventional wisdom that competitive positioning and differentiation require companies to offer customers something they cannot find elsewhere, but they do insist that this has distracted companies from maintaining a true customer focus and from delivering the essential category benefits valued by customers. The only area in which differentiation is clearly the right way to go, they argue, is in your advertising and marketing messages. Elsewhere, they urge companies to think "inside the box" by refining, perfecting, and delivering on the essentials that customers badly want. The failure of companies to do this has created deep customer dissatisfaction.

The good news in this is that organizations that adopt a true customer-centric perspective can generate a low-risk, high return opportunity. To help your business reach this state of genuine customer-centricity, the authors first explain how customers see your brand and make purchase decisions. They then explain how to convert that understanding into a clear view of what customers really value. These are the actual (and potential) generic category benefits. The book also examines the management challenges to creating these benefits.

The last chapter sums up by providing six rules to becoming "simply better": Think category benefits, not unique brand benefits; think simplicity, not sophistication; think inside, not outside, the box; think opportunities, not threats; for creative advertising, forget rule 3; think immersion, not submersion. This last principle refers to the authors' discussion of important arguments in favor of managers getting out of their offices and directly interacting with customers. This kind of immersion works because it avoids distorted images of customer reality, it helps filter indirect data such as market research, it acts as a source of storytelling and anecdote, and it spreads the results of both learning and the act of learning.

If you decide to read this book, rather than the excellent article-length distillation, you'll find some other fine points that often go well beyond the article. Contrary to the usual concentration on measuring customer satisfaction, Barwise and Meehan make a strong case for measuring and monitoring the drivers of *dissatisfaction*. They add to what seems to be a recent trend by emphasizing the risks and drawbacks of flanking strategies that require strategic innovations, arguing that it is usually better to be an excellent imitator. Chapter 6, "Customer-Focused Mind-Set", sets out a refreshing (though not truly original) view of "fast and right processes and a pure air culture". These honor the practices of "hard work decision making", "accountable experimentation", and a culture in which challenge and debate are seen as forces for good throughout the organization, and where no one expects an easy yes to proposals.

In the course of my work I am required to read many Marketing books during any given year. Since I often have to recommend Marketing books to practicing managers I tend to divide the world of Marketing books into three simple categories. There are books that are:

1. Useful basic text books and reference books that cover the entire gamut of Marketing and are useful for those about to embark on their marketing careers. In Marketing the classic examples would be Kotler's series in Marketing Management in all its many editions and variations, or for European audiences the late Peter Doyle's Strategic Marketing Management.

2. Useful reference guides for those familiar with Marketing but who feel uncertain in certain aspects of the profession, such as pricing or event marketing.

3. And finally there are books that argue a definite point of view about the profession. These are the books I am most likely to recommend to seasoned marketers since they invite reflection on current behaviors and challenge existing mental models. Simply Better falls into this last category of books.

In truth I rarely manage to read an entire book in this last category. Too often the point of view would have been better expressed (if less lucratively for the authors) in a business journal article. I have already grasped the major thrust by the end of the second chapter and the rest is just padding. Simply Better I read cover to cover.

That is not to say that you need to read to the end to understand the main tenet of the authors' argument. You can grasp that easily within the first few pages. It is cogently summed up on page X of the Preface:

"You need not offer something unique to attract business. Customers rarely buy a product or service because it offers something unique. Usually, they buy the brand that they expect to meet their basic needs from the product category - gasoline or strategy consulting or mortgages - a bit better or more conveniently than the competition. What customers want is simply better - not more differentiated - products and services."

And if this paragraph seems to you in any way to defy conventional wisdom - then you will understand why this is the book that I am now recommending to seasoned marketing professionals.

Simply Better is worth reading cover to cover because it deals in depth with the vexing but essential paradox of Marketing: If Marketing is so conceptually easy to understand, how come it's so difficult to do properly?

That so many companies find it difficult to deliver something better to customers is powerfully demonstrated by the authors' inclusion of data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which depressingly show that in the last 10 years - a decade during which customer satisfaction has been more has been written about, talked about, and even measured than in any previous time - customer satisfaction is now lower than it was in 1994 - and has been lower than the 1994 figure for the entire decade. If Simply Better can spur marketing executive thought and preferably action to do something about this - then its publication is indeed timely.

Barwise and Meehan carefully dissect the problems and the myths that have plagued good Marketing practice and have deflected attention away from the fundamental task of delivering what the customer wants. They recommend that it is time to refocus thinking "inside the box" instead of on fanciful flights of fantasy "outside the box". They point out that customer contact means more than taking the odd one of two out to sporting events. To learn what customers really really want, requires purposeful, and sometimes uncomfortable and even embarrassing visits by executives (including non-marketing executives) to see their products and services in action.

The authors have been careful to back up their thesis with data from research and many anecdotes. The engineering company Hilti perhaps suffers from a little bit of over-exposure here (although the anecdotes from Hilti are particularly memorable) - and Hilti's inclusion is understandable given that Sean Meehan is the Martin Hilti Professor of Marketing and Change Management at IMD. At least Hilti provides a much needed offset to perhaps an over preponderance of examples from the world of business-to-consumer marketing as opposed to business-to-business marketing - but that is hardly a fault peculiar to this book alone.

If there were one issue I really wish they had given a lot more space to, it is the difficulty in making the delivery of total customer satisfaction "happen" in very complex large global organizations. Here the issue is one of alignment - aligning large numbers of marketing professionals who are not only scattered around the world but additionally charged with executing a very wide variety of tasks that real Marketing demands including strategy and planning, executing and enabling the marketing and sales organization to communicate the promise. These professionals in turn are required to get alignment from the rest of the organization such that the entire organization delivers on this promise. Barwise and Meehan are aware that the "grind and vision" that they quote from Jim Collins and Jerry Porras' Built to Last is part of the requirement to get such alignment, but in the Chapter they devote to this important topic they place too much faith in corporate values as the solution to this problem. Perhaps it is because they have acknowledged tha this issue is a "so-called soft" issue (p26) that they have dismissed it too easily. Most marketing professionals in large global organizations (and especially those in business-to-business and high tech companies) certainly do not experience the difficulty and need for organizational alignment around the delivery of a better customer value proposition as in any way "soft." Rather, it becomes the sole focus of their "daily grind." But perhaps this is a topic for a book all on its own - and one I hope tha Barwise and Meehan write about - if only because they write so eloquently.

In the meantime, I can only applaud Barwise and Meehan for confronting us Marketing professionals with the uncomfortable truth - if we ever thought we were customer oriented, we need to think again. Barwise and Meehan highlight the areas that require immediate re-thinking. I am sure that all customers everywhere hope that the resulting re-actions will result in positive benefit ... at last.

'Common sense' and 'obvious' are great compliments for a book like this. These charges are often made when powerful ideas that no-one else has come forward with are well argued and clearly presented - and that is the case here. This book cuts through so much of the overly complex nonsense that is written about marketing and presents down to earth, pragmatic ideas that can be acted upon immediately. The case examples are terrific and the style is very reader friendly. All in all a great and useful read. This should be on every marketer's bookshelf.

If you are in management or a student of management this is a must read. Anyone from staff supervisors to CEO's will benefit from this work. In plain language with great practical examples the authors show how to keep customers and clients happy, and in the end that is how you keep customers and clients.
Students of management should especially take note of the concepts and ideas outlined. Theory is one thing but this is what works. I am sure it will become required reading at both undergrad and graduate level before long.
Those already in management, at all levels, will find themselves appreciating the straight forward approach the writers take to complex questions, and from that clarity become better managers.

Shane Humphries
General Manager and Chief of Operations
Third Colony Corporation
New York, New York.

... what goes on in your customer's mind, here's a chance to step into your customer's shoes. Literally!

Challenging conventional wisdom on differentiation as the critical factor in winning customers, Simply Better provides a straightforward, no-nonsense approach (thinking inside, rather than outside the box) that will help marketers determine which basics matter most to their customers and offers the necessary tools and ideas for delivering them.

Meehan and Barwise do a thorough job in identifying what is most important to the customer, what you can do to understand your customers better, and how this can translate into actionable tasks you can implement into your marketing strategy. By utilizing examples in both B2B and B2C markets, they have showed how companies have increased market shares and customer satisfaction levels or even drastically reversed downturns in their revenues. Some interesting thoughts include:

Think simplicity, not sophistication - how Shell understood the commoditized nature of gasoline retailing and still grew leaps and bounds by offering the customer shelter from sun, wind, and rain along with a quick payment method. And unlike its competitors, it didn't run to offer them a great cappuccino instead.

Think opportunities, not threats - how successful companies look at today's technological innovations, changing governmental regulations, or societal shifts as opportunities instead of threats and give their customers what they really want.

Think immersion, not submersion - the authors describe several companies which have shown that immersing themselves in the realities of the marketplace is not just a way to find and prioritize opportunities-it is also key to energizing the organization and keeping it focused on what really matters.

The authors have a website noted on the back flap of their book which has some interesting articles worth a read - look up www.simply-better.biz

There have been a lot of marketing books that tell you you need to have unique products, somekind of gimmick or whatever. This one is different. The theme of the two authors is that the old standby rules still work, and work better than the new gimmicks.

The authors talk of a study done by Shell Oil. What people want is to refuel at a reasonable cost; be sheltered from sun, wind, and rain; and pay and exit quickly. They expect the pumps, and the bathrooms to be clean and working. The customers are not looking for a great cappuccino. No body believes that the super additives being advertised as brand differentiation does anything that the additives that every one has in their gasoline.

I'm reminded of the Warren Buffett investment strategy, invest in companies you can understand, whose revenue and earnings are growing, and don't change too often.

I then like the way the authors say that for advertising, forget these rules. To be heard in today's market you need distinctive, out-of-the-box communications; inside-the-box standard advertising won't be heard.

Simply Better: Winning And Keeping Customers By DeliveringWhat Matters Most is the collaboration of Patrick Barwise (Professor of Management, London Business School) and Sean Meehan (Martin Hilti Professor of Marketing and Change Management at IMD, Lausanne, Switzerland). A straightforward guide to what customers really want, and how to attract and keep them - not with silly bells and whistles, or trivial differences between brands, but rather by offering the solid benefits of good service, on-time delivery, and quality products. Chapters address the challenges of striving for innovation, warn against the impracticality of "inside-the-box" advertisement, the importance of distinctive advertising (far more so than having a distinctive product!), and much more. A solid treatise, recommended especially for business managers and owners striving to improve the bottom line through higher quality and better customer reputation.

This book is a must-read for students of management and for managers themselves. It argues - very pursuasively and with the use of many excellent examples - that the key to customer satisfaction is to first really listen to the customer and then actually deliver what the customer wants. Not a series of "new and improved" features; not a new product aimed more at competition than at customers; and not wild "out-of-the-box" thinking that satisifies no one. The book's style is easy to read and digest, and would be useful for both in-house seminars and for students. The end of chapter "Idea Check" feature is particularly useful as a review of concepts presented, and as a self-check for managers.

Messrs Barwise and Meehan have really succeeded in creating a business book that you actually want to read. Their simple idea is explained, illustrated and elucidated with clarity and without the usual repetition and sycophancy which authors of business books use to puff out their oftern half-baked theories. Like all things good and simple, this book organises and articulates things that you should already know - read it with a marker pen and you will find yourself regularly stealing bits to help communicate and simplify ideas that corporate life has complicated beyond comprehension.

The cool, conventional wisdom says that to succeed in business these days means you have to innovate and think "outside the box". Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan beg to differ in the book Simply Better: Winning and Keeping Customers by Delivering What Matters Most. Often it's just executing the basics better than everyone else...

Contents: Differentiation That Matters; How Customers Really See Your Brand; Identifying Generic Category Benefits; Challenges of Innovating to Drive the Market; Caution - Inside-the-Box Advertising Doesn't Work; Customer-Focused Mind-Set; How to Be Simply Better; Notes; Index; About the Authors

Many of today's business books offer programs and plans on how to deliver unique innovation, making your product unique from all others. But most consumers are looking for a blend of things when they buy a product, and your "unique selling proposition" may be something that doesn't even matter to them. The example of a fax machine being marketed as having the "smallest footprint" is one where the company thought it was great, and the consumer doesn't care. The alternative is to understand the generic category benefits that your product delivers, and then strive to deliver them better and more memorably than anyone else. Consistent, high-quality product and delivery matched with brand recognition means that when available, consumers will associate quality with your product and will take the path of least resistance when it comes to repeat purchases in that category. There are plenty of examples of this scattered throughout the book... Crest vs. Colgate, Proctor & Gamble, and Target vs. Wal-Mart, just to name a few. Simply Better presents the perfect counterpoint to creating chaos and disruption, thinking that you know better what the consumer wants and needs...

If you're failing at the basics, then innovation won't offer any panacea or escape. Simply Better will help you to figure out how to solidify your core market and deliver value by being better than everyone else at the things that do matter...