Market Research Consulting: Respect Your Customers

Some years ago, I worked for a large corporation which provided shuttle services among its various locations. Entering the van, I encountered two other employees engaged in a lively conversation. The van was small and the conversation large—I could not avoid overhearing.

The gist of the conversation was data and voice networking. The two employees were in sales. And the tone of the conversation was about how the customers just did not understand the complexities of service provisioning and thus were given to complaining and ultimately to attriting.

“Damn customers, they just don’t get it,” one said vociferously.

As market research consultants to either our internal or external clients, we must be especially careful about how we talk about consumers and customers. We are often the sole representative of all of a business’s customers. Sales looks out for the interest of the customers they service; market research represents the entirety of the customer base.

If we bad-mouth customers or dismiss them as lacking knowledge or not understanding, our ability to help our clients to think about (and treat) customers with empathy will be severely limited.

I recently read The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It (Portfolio: New York, 2009) by Christine Pearson and Christine Porath. Pearson and Porath systematically studied the effects of incivility which they define as ‘the exchange of seemingly inconsequential inconsiderate words and deeps that violate conventional norms of workplace conduct.’ (They are in turn quoting a definition by Lynne Andersson of Temple University.)

Pearson and Porath are mainly concerned with the effects of incivility within the workplace and document, in solid bottom-line terms, just how damaging “negative emotions and ensuing negative responses” are to a business’s functioning.

However, incivility toward customers has a severely negative impact. And this begins with internal attitudes toward both employees and customers. If a culture of civility is honored and rudeness, gossip, back-stabbing, and all similar behavior are not tolerated, a positive environment is fostered.

We market researcher consultants can be very effective at contributing to a positive attitude toward customers by constantly probing for a greater understanding of customer attitudes and behavior. Rather than disparaging customers for their lack of understanding, it is part of our mission to uncover the customer drivers.

And the starting point of this mission is to always talk respectfully about customers to our clients.

Dr. Bob