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 was 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.
Fortunately, the culture of this organization did not frequently tolerate such thinking, at least not publicly.
As market researchers, we must be especially careful about how we talk about 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 as market researchers 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.
To be concluded.
