Some call it a score, most commonly, a customer lifetime value score.
Chances are that if you have used a bank, bought lingerie, traveled on an airplane, looked at pretty much anything online, filled your car with gas, seen the doctor or had a birthday recently, your details have been run through countless algorithm mangles, and your lovely new lifetime score was spat out the other side for all of those in the know to pay for and use as they wish…. Had an unsolicited spree of adult diaper ads thrust into your inbox or social feeds recently, that’ll be your recently recalculated ‘Customer Lifetime Value Score’.
Customers. Customers. Customers. Customers.
We all know those people who are offered an upgrade on a seemingly endless basis, or those people who have the best credit rating imaginable but yet still get turned down for finance. This is down to how valuable this particular company sees you thorough their “Retail Equation.” This is a set of parameters for the kind of customer that they deem fit for their brand. This framework is set in place to protect against abuse and fraud but also allows for companies to target customers with certain behavioural tendencies with incentives, discounts, better levels of service or even a refusal of service.
Retailers, when engaging with customers, have always collected information on us. Our spending behaviours, what we bought, and now, because everything is digital, they can link data from one company with another, link service providers and your credit history, know what kind of house you have, what you look like, how old you are, and they have created algorithms to predict “how you’re going to behave”.
Now, I am not explaining any of this to highlight the negative effects by companies such as, Best Buy, CVS, Victoria’s Secret or Amazon, of such targeted data usage, but rather to show just how so many companies are able to take full advantage of information and data collected. To allow a glimpse into the manner in which “Customer Qualification” and “Accountability Parameters” are calculated for the large industry players, and have been for decades and for it to be seen as totally normal and socially correct.
In polite society, however, the mere suggestion of allowing “Small Businesses” to qualify their customers or to rate their customers in the same manner as the likes of ‘Uber’ and ‘Airbnb’, who have proudly rolled out their accountability platforms and in fact have advanced their programs recently, is met with distain and doubt, as if it would drive a customer to not use their products and services. And to have access to the more invasive and seemingly increasingly unfair “Retail Equation” should be seen as simply unforgivable.
Try asking someone you know, if your business should be able to rate their customers back, chances are, if they aren’t part of a small business, their eyes will bulge and their hat will fly off with disgust.
But why shouldn’t small business be able to take advantage of a “Customer Accountability Platform“?
The answer is very simple….. It should!
‘Micro Business’ and that of ‘The Small Business’ would benefit enormously from knowing even the smallest behavioural detail of a customer. Not to allow targeting, but to allow for a more tailored approach. An approach that can save time, money and stress for all parties.
These businesses are held in the same light as much larger companies and are prone to being treated as faceless, as able to absorb losses, deal with abuse, both verbal and increasingly physical, and defend themselves against the threat of dwindling cashflow due to late/ withheld and non-payment.
The truth is that they are far more likely to be taken advantage of, or have to allow for poor behaviour because they have little choice. The transaction means much more, the chance of a bad review far more damaging. The unfortunate thing is that the icy fingered shadow of this, let’s call it, ‘abuse of the limited system’, that is sociably acceptable to operate within, reaches that much further and has far greater implications.
It’s never just business….. When you are a part of a growing business, its always personal!
As an owner of micro and small businesses throughout my career, I can fully attest to how stretched resources are on even the best quarter, and just how easily the months of encouragement, moral boosting activities and enrichment can be wiped away, when customers become unprofessional. Most businesses simply do not have the ongoing resources to accommodate for the losses caused by what turns out to be less than ten percent of the overall customer base, one percent of its turnover, but which demands 200 percent of what was originally agreed upon and then some.
Over the years…
The newly self-employed, to the time served industrialist who now employs a small-ish team, are encouraged to cast a wide net, to target everyone as a potential customer and to shy away from any aspect that may qualify their customers that doesn’t include a “Pay Per Click” system and cost between $7.00 & $65.00 for no other reason than that’s the cost.
With all the hand rubbing glee of Pinocchio trying desperately to start a fire, they are encouraged to educate themselves in every aspect of their business. To invest in the latest techniques and gadgetry to afford efficiency, and then to spend heavily on advertising, social media posts, blog writing software (not used here by the way!), and lead generating company lists. But, whatever they do, the general idea is that they should never even consider being able to actually qualify their customers, to ask that their customers be worthy of their goods and/or services….. Why the bloody hell not?
Well??
It’s time that this all changed. It’s time that, WE as small business owners, started to Enrol In Our Own Community Based Customer Accountability Platform, a true CRM, a proper Customer Relationship Management Tool, not to allow for an unfair bias towards a certain type of customer, but to allow for the customer to think before they decide to treat our business, its reputation, our employees and colleagues and other customers poorly and with impunity.
The idea is, as a collective, as a community, to bring about balance and a certain decorum besuiting of the high level that we all wish ourselves to be seen.
I am a customer…. The chances are very high that, you too are a customer. Would you understand if a business rated you? I would…… I do!
Saving resources, adding time to your day, sleeping better, being able to be more open with customers, paying your employees more and being able to grow your business more quickly are just a few of the benefits of Customer Accountability, of the customer being encouraged to lift their elbows from the table and to sit up straight as it where. To help your business be a healthier member of the community that you reside and develop those within the organism and enable them to thrive.
It isn’t about good or bad ratings for your customer, its about a better community, a better future and a better world overall.
