How to get started with Open Marketing
Step 1. Believe in your customers - Part 4

Hello everyone. I am Hayashi, the representative of Monosus.

As Step 1 for engaging in Open Marketing, I have explained three times that you should "believe in your customers."

Last time

• Clarify why customers continue to buy your company's products and services over other companies by conducting in-depth interviews with regular customers
• The interviews should be with customers who like your company's products and services and use them frequently and continuously.
• During the interview, you will find out the customer's motivation for first purchase and motivation for continuing purchase , but rather than immediately accepting what is verbalized, you need to listen carefully from various angles.

The content was as follows.

This time, I would like to talk about how to analyze the content of customer interviews.

Basic flow of customer interview analysis

How to analyze customer interview results
It is effective to hold a workshop by following these two steps: 1) Get appropriate members from within the company to participate, and 2) Provide a facilitator with the proper skills.

While reading the contents of the customer interviews together with the members,
We will pick out some memorable customer comments and discuss them.
Meaningful analysis is not possible without participation from the right people within your company.

The right members are:

• Members who normally provide products and services directly to customers
• Members deeply involved in product and service development
• Members who have a lot of contact with customers, such as call centers

These are members who are as deeply involved as possible with products, services, and customers.

Conversely, the participation of members involved in management decisions must be carefully considered.
For example, if the president participates in a workshop,
Every statement made by the president influenced the statements of the other participants.
The diversity of speech will be lost.
If you do attend, it is advisable to do so as an observer and refrain from speaking as much as possible.

In addition, when conducting a workshop, it is essential to have a facilitator with the proper skills.
The ideal person would be someone who can facilitate the situation as objectively as possible, without making assumptions or self-judgments.
In that sense, it is extremely effective to employ an outside person as a facilitator.

Explore the motivations and values behind our actions.

In the workshop, participants will pick out memorable phrases from the customer interviews and use them as a basis for discussion.

What is important in this discussion is that
Find out why the customer said what they did.
Discussion should not involve guesses or conjectures.

Of course, there are reasons for what customers say,
Most of the reasons for this lie in some kind of action on the part of the product or service provider .
During the discussion, identify the actions you took that prompted the customer to speak up.

• If the reason was the product's strength, what did you do to develop it?
• If the reason was due to customer service or service content, what did you specifically do?

Another important thing to consider is why we took that action .

Every action has an underlying motivation, and even a set of values that serve as the source of that motivation.
We will discuss these issues using comments from customers as triggers.

The diagram above shows this.
Customers are basing their statements on things that actually happened, so they are taken as fact.
And for that fact (event) to occur, there must be an action that caused it,
Actions have motivations, and motivations have values that generate them.

In other words, by picking out the facts from customer interviews that motivate continued purchasing and digging deeper into those, you can trace back to the company's values that are appreciated by customers.

Some of you may have a question at this point.
"If we are talking about the motivations and values behind our actions, surely we can discuss it among ourselves without having to go to the trouble of interviewing customers?"
That is the point.

For example, this discussion:
"Pick out the actions of your company that you think are appreciated by your regular customers,
Please tell me why you are behaving in this way."
Based only on surveys and comments from company members,
We can extract things that are usually consciously shared within the company,
What we do unconsciously cannot be up for discussion.

But it's this unconscious thing that's important.
It is no exaggeration to say that customer interviews are conducted to extract the unconscious behavior of your company that motivates your regular customers to continue purchasing .

So why are unconscious actions important?

Values lie hidden in unconscious actions.

Take a moment to think about it.
Think about yourself as you read this.

How would you answer if you were asked the following three questions?

Why do you think your friends have remained friends with you for so long?
"Why do you think your boss, who thinks highly of you, recognizes you?"
"Why do you think your most valued customers have stayed with you for so many years?"

I don't think there are many people who can answer this question fluently.
(On the other hand, it's weird if someone can answer that question fluently.)
And there is no point in answering this question through imagination.

Now, here's why unconscious behavior is important:
On the other hand, it may be easier to understand if you think about conscious actions.
For example, in response to the previous question, you might say, "I always behave in a certain way around that person so that I am appreciated."
What if the answer was:

It may be effective for certain people, but
This behavior towards multiple people,
And it's very difficult to get evaluated.
Also, acting in a way that is appreciated means acting in accordance with the other person's values. This leads to major problems.
You will no longer have a sense of self.

Can the evaluation you gain by losing yourself really be called an evaluation of yourself?
And I don't think you can do it differently and successfully for each person, family member, friend, coworker, and client.

In other words, in reality, your strengths, your advantages, and the things that attract people are,
It lies dormant in our unconscious actions, and those actions have motives.
There are values that motivate you, and others pick up on those values from your actions and judge you accordingly.

That's why you need help from others to find it.

And the same is true for businesses.
Services, products, and promotions that are hastily concocted in an attempt to impress customers may bring in temporary customers, but
We cannot have regular customers with whom we can maintain long-term relationships.

That's because your company itself won't be able to take any action to retain the customers you've attracted through your quick-fix efforts.

What I've noticed through my many years of working on projects with various companies is that
Regular customers are not dependent on temporary promotions or one-off services.
Through ongoing interactions with companies, we can get a sense of their values,
This is what attracts them and they have become regular customers for companies.

However, since many companies usually act unconsciously,
They are unable to recognize the value their company feels to its regular customers.
Therefore, by conducting workshops based on customer interviews,
The company's actions, motivations, and underlying values are systematized.
It can be visualized.

The theme of the first four sessions has been "Believe in your customers."

There are probably already customers around your company who understand your company's values and are committed to your company, rather than just receiving temporary promotions or one-off services.

In a sense, I hope this has given you a sense of faith in your customers, who care about your company more than you do.

Thank you for reading to the end this month as well.
I'm hoping to move on to Step 2 next month.