Some customers are not worth caring about

Posted on February 17th, 2008 in Customer Centric.

Website success has as much to do with figuring out who is NOT your customer, and the information you will NOT provide, as anything else.

Some customers are not worth the effort. They say that the customer is king, but on the Web the customer is dictator. The customer is impatient and demanding, with their finger always on the Back button.

If there is one central flaw in web teams it is their lack of ability (or willingness) to make difficult decisions. Deciding to put more content on a website is an easy decision. Adding more links, expanding classifications and adding more features are easy decisions.

Easy decisions involve deciding that there’s an incredibly wide range of customers. That’s easy. And it’s a cop out. Why?

Because when everybody is the customer, then nobody is. And when every piece of content is useful then nothing is. And when everything is put up on a website, the website is out of control, unmanaged, and sliding down the slippery slope of uselessness.

Who are you not going to serve? For those customers that you do want to serve, what are the things you’re not going to give them? In what areas are you going to make things difficult for them? You can’t make everything easy. Making one thing easier invariably makes another thing more complicated. What are you going to leave complicated?

Web teams often become obsessed by the trivial and exceptional. There are really crucial (and boring) things the website should do but these get ignored. And the focus is put on the esoteric; the minor task.

The world of the Web is a small screen and an impatient eye. Nobody has time.

In the last issue, I wrote about how Ryanair went from a tiny regional airline to one of the largest low cost airlines in the world. It did this by relentlessly focusing on price. And it works.

Ryanair shows you no mercy if you’re late. That’s terrible for you. But is it so terrible for the 200 people on the plane who were on time? If Ryanair waited for you, they’d make you very happy. But there’d be 200 people who’d be somewhat unhappy.

Everything we do or don’t do on our websites has a price. If we try to solve one issue then in all sorts of (often subtle) ways we will negatively impact other problems. If we try to serve one type of customer, then we affect the speed and simplicity with which another type of customer can serve themselves.

Some customers are simply not worth the effort. Other customers only become worth the effort when we serve a narrow range of their needs. The Web is not a nirvana.

Practically every response I received about the Ryanair piece I did last issue was negative. Yet Ryanair flew 12.5 million passengers in the last quarter, and has $3 billion in cash reserves.

The Web is an endless space accessed through a small window. Success is down to focus. Who really is your customer? And what do they really need to do? Everything else just gets in the way.

 

9 responses

  1. Greg Comfort says:

    Added on February 17th, 2008 at 7:57 pm

    This article illustrates a very good point about being clear who your audience is.

    I know a science organisation that set a very clear communication strategy, defining who the prime audiences were - stakeholders, funders, other scientists. The public was set as a secondary audience, which was interesting, as many of the staff would say that everyone could see the web pages.

    Once, as webmaster there, I got a complaint from a member of the public that some web pages about Lepidoptera did not say that Lepidoptera are moths. The pages were a very long list of species known in the country. Such lists are standard fare for systematic and taxonomy scientists, and are very clearly intended for the use of specialist entomologists - most people would simply re-coil on seeing one.

    Having a clear communication policy helped me decide how best to deal with complaint. We politely told them the page was not intended for their use. Coming from a marketing background, this was hard for me to do, but in this case, we believed our policy was clear and the customer was wrong.

  2. Roman says:

    Added on February 18th, 2008 at 5:42 am

    I started my web hosting company 3 years ago. I wanted to serve everyone, founded later that some clients, are just here to complain.
    I really stick to : “Some customers are simply not worth the effort”.

    I decided to put some effort for those whom have problems, but wanted to find a solution, not adding problems.

    I follow the low cost rules, and I can’t serve everyone, and it work well now. Reading back comments on your last posts, reminds me some of my friends or other people I met, that will always find something that goes wrong. Let them speak, but at least, Ryanair is still there, and other companies felt down… who is right?

  3. Mrs S says:

    Added on February 18th, 2008 at 9:22 am

    Gerry - some great points made here - I think it comes down again to trying to be jack of all trades but master of none. Every time a potential change is thought about the web team need to think about the overall strategy, the customers they wish to serve, and the purpose of the site. If the new change doesn’t meet those needs it shouldn’t happen.

    I can’t believe you had so many negative comments about Ryanair - you’re right if people can’t be on time for a flight that’s their own fault - why should everyone else suffer?? Ryanair have a brilliant business model that works for the majority.

  4. Paul Higgins says:

    Added on February 18th, 2008 at 11:02 am

    I didn’t read last week’s comments, but I’m surprised they were negative - Ryanair is all about customer expectation: I expect them to fly me from A to B at the scheduled times, and they expect me to arrive on time and not delay the flight. I’ve flown with them (and other budget airlines) and I have no problem with their “cheap and cheerful” approach. Nor do I object to them charging more for hold baggage, nor anything else which increases the overall costs - you get what you pay for.

    Equally, if I go to a website which is concerned with widgets, I expect to find out about widgets; anything else (such as a smiling picture of the MD and his happy family, or a picture of the factory) is superfluous and gets in the way of the widgets. Unless widgets are touchy-feely and the customers expect that, of course!

    The big challenge is dealing with multiple customers having multiple needs, and clear navigation and clear language (the language of the customer) are key. Multiple customer focus can be like having four conversations at once!

    And the bigger challenge is who don’t you serve? Who’s a minority? Very difficult to decide, especially if a competitor DOES serve the minority…

  5. Douglas Greenshields says:

    Added on February 20th, 2008 at 2:49 pm

    I don’t understand this argument. Surely Ryanair are successful because although they don’t aim to provide great (or, really, any) customer service, they *do* cater to almost everyone because they set the barrier so low. Small amount of money, small amount of service, plane from A to B at some point. They’re successful because that’s the bare minimum most people will accept. Figuring out what you will *not* provide is important, but can you provide a better illustrative example?

  6. Scott O'Raw says:

    Added on February 23rd, 2008 at 10:37 am

    I would say that the difficulties are exacerbated by clients themselves not being able to make difficult decisions. In my experience the fact that web team’s “lack of ability (or willingness) to make difficult decisions” is often due to a lack of a clear brief or changes to that brief during the development process.

    You rightly say that the “customer king” but with an unhealthy desire to please all of our clients all of the time we do both them, and us, a disservice.

  7. Gerry McGovern (blog author) says:

    Added on February 24th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    Douglas, I think think what Ryanair has done is that simple at all. It may look simple now that it’s done, but when they introduced it, it ran against how most airlines operated. Many thought that customers would never go for it.

    I think Google is another example of an organization that has, not so much focused on one audience, but on one thing: search. Yahoo tried to do and be everything and has had to pull back. Google has had a relenetless focus and has thrived.

  8. Paul Higgins says:

    Added on February 25th, 2008 at 10:21 am

    A thought (slightly off-topic - apologies): is not Ryanair’s approach just part of a general ‘liberalisation’ of technology, providing wider (cheaper) access to something that used to be for the elite or the professional?

    Other examples that spring to mind include overseas travel in general, mobile communications, personal computing, digital photography (and printing), home music recording, satellite tv, health care, high performance (or high safety) vehicles, etc.

    Or just the general access to specialist information on the internet?

    But whatever the breakthrough, someone has to take the lead, and have the vision and the backing to persue it.

    And despite all this, the population are generally no happier, or unhappier, than thirty years ago. What went wrong?

  9. Gerry McGovern (blog author) says:

    Added on February 27th, 2008 at 5:19 pm

    Paul, I think you make a very, very important point here. It’s the liberalisation of technology and information.

    I know for one thing, most Irish people are much happier than they were thirty years ago. We only pretended to enjoy misery, and now we’re only pretending to be miserable about success.

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