Moses came down from the mountain with 11 commandments. Not many people know that. Most people think there were only 10.
The eleventh commandment read: “Thou shalt give your customer what he wants.” Moses was not happy. It’s going to be picked up by CNN, he thought. They’re going to change the wording to make it politically correct; it’s going to be rephrased as: “Thou shalt give your customer what he or she wants.” That’s too clumsy, it loses the impact.
Or even worse. It could likely be reworded to: “Thou shalt give your customer what she wants.” That would be really embarrassing. That would destroy Moses’ reputation in the macho world of Middle Eastern politics.
So the 11th commandment was quietly left to one side. But it didn’t disappear. It matured quietly in the background, trying out a variety of alternative wordings. It eventually re-emerged, triumphant, as the telecoms industry mantra “Customers buy services, not technology.”
Having emerged, this mantra has been repeated endlessly. We’ve all been told “Customers buy services, not technology” a million times over the past decade. You can see people squirm visibly when they hear it preached at telecoms conferences. You can observe them screaming, figuratively if not vocally, as, once again, this truism is presented as a flash of inspiration, the answer to all our problems, the ultimate solution that we’ve all been seeking. Glory be to the presenter. He (or she) has led us to the Holy Grail. Again!
The real problem is not the triteness of the statement. The real problem is that its meaning has become debased. The most frequent chanters are, in fact, those who are trying to push a specific technology. Don’t be honest about your product, they are saying, pretend it is something different. The marketing message will transcend reality.
In practice the real requirements of customers are rarely taken into account in the early stages of service development. When a new industry sector emerges, customer needs are often nowhere to be seen. The needs of the initial industry players are paramount. Jockeying for prominent roles and acquiring positions of strength are the initial priority. What the customers want can be considered later, when the victors have agreed how to share the spoils.
It’s all about land grab in the early days. And we’re in the midst of the early days of public WLAN. Wi-Fi hot spots are sprouting all over the place-in obvious venues as well as in the most unlikely places-and every man and their dog is seeking to grab a piece of the action.
The action could be attractive to many customers. Time to spare at the airport or conference center? Flip open your laptop, click on the icon and you’re away. Broadband access to the corporate VPN, just like being at your desktop. And the charge, a reasonable and acceptable one, is billed to your account.
Wi-Fi hot spots have been in place for some time now. But customers haven’t. Usage is pathetic. And it’s not hard to understand why. Almost every site is different-different owners, different service providers, different access procedures and different tariffs. Customers have to be really determined, knowledgeable, patient-and rich-to get any benefit from the Wi-Fi services currently offered.
There seems to be more players in the market than customers. And cooperation among players is low on the list of priorities. Each is hanging in there, hoping to become dominant as the others fall by the wayside. Most are already willing to sell, looking for a quick return on their investment. The more sites they cover the bigger the price. It’s pure land grab all over again. No one talks about traffic, never mind revenues.
All the players have their powerpoint presentations. And it’s a good bet they all contain a “Customers buy services, not technology” message. A pity they didn’t listen to their own mantra. A cooperative attitude in the beginning could have generated a genuine customer service. Now it could be too late.
Ignoring the 11th commandment could result in retribution. But there’s still time to repent. The 12th commandment may yet come to the rescue.
But that’s another story.
