CHAPTER 2

Witness Your Customer through an Anthropologist’s Lens

You can observe a lot by just watching.

—YOGI BERRA

Because of Winn-Dixie was a 2005 hit movie based on the best-selling novel by Kate DiCamillo. In one scene the movie’s star, ten-year-old Opal (played by AnnaSophia Robb), and her new dog Winn-Dixie visit the local storytelling librarian, Miss Franny.

The storyteller spins a tale about her great-grandfather, who created a candy factory that baked feelings of sadness into a sweet candy he called Litmus Lozenges. Miss Franny gave Opal a decorative can of the antique candies to share with her friends. When Opal gave a piece to her seven-year-old best friend, Sweetie Pie, she put the candy in her mouth and exclaimed, “It tastes like not having a dog.”¹

Sweetie Pie’s powerful and poignant line got me thinking about how innovation comes from understanding the target dilemma in new ways. When my granddaughter, Annabeth, asked me if rocks could feel, I had to think awhile about her question before giving her an answer that would not risk dispelling her curiosity or dampening her wonderment. Innovation begins with a need or dilemma.

I selected anthropology as the metaphoric customer-understanding lens for a deliberate reason. Psychologists practice their craft to heal, but anthropologists seek only to understand and find insight. Social anthropologists seek to comprehend how people live together in cultures and societies. And they examine without colored lenses or biased ears. Renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote, “Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.” It means understanding the customer in new ways to gain new shades of perception.

Wear Your Customer’s Moccasins

My wife’s hairdresser, Johnny Adair, has been known to get a permanent. When I asked him for his reason for this unique practice, he said, “I see my customers’ facial expressions of vulnerability, embarrassment, or discomfort; I want to know more about what I can do to lighten their emotional and physical burden. Experiencing what they go through has enhanced my attention to the details I can manage to make getting a permanent a little less unpleasant.”

This is more than simply paying attention to your customer’s world to learn what is being experienced and how it can be improved. Like an anthropologist immersing him- or herself in the habits and mores of the people of a culture, Johnny embeds himself rather than simply observing. He is in the performance onstage, not just a spectator in the stands. Curiosity in action is absorption, not just inspection. Such absorption can also come from learning from people who know the customer in special ways. Enter John Longstreet.

When John Longstreet (now CEO of the Pennsylvania Hotel and Restaurant Association) was the general manager of the Harvey Hotel in Plano, Texas, he occasionally served a free breakfast to the taxi drivers who transported guests from his hotel property mostly to DFW airport after their hotel stay. During breakfast he held a focus group discussion to learn more about what drivers learned from his guests. He learned far more than facts; he gained insights, those aha’s not likely gleaned from a survey or answers to a “How was your stay?” query from a front desk clerk.

Guests told taxi drivers that hotel bathroom towels with a slight scorched smell were to them not about a careless housekeeper who left them in the dryer too long, but about the potential of a hotel fire. A burned-out security light in the parking lot really meant a perceived lack of security in hotel hallways. Dust balls under the bed signaled bugs on the way. The examination of meaning, not facts, led to a set of insights that created depth to the solutions. When employees gained insights behind common hiccups, their attention to detail and preventive maintenance went up.

Ask, What Would Margaret Mead Do?

Margaret Mead was a renowned cultural anthropologist in the 1960s and ’70s and the author of over fifteen books, many breakthroughs in her field. In 1979, Dr. Mead was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter. When then UN ambassador Andrew Young made the presentation to Mead’s daughter, he said, “She mastered her discipline, but she also transcended it. Intrepid, independent, plain spoken, fearless, she remains a model for the young and a teacher from whom all may learn.”²

Anthropologists study the target of their examination using “frameworks of seeing.” These include time, values, traditions, and language. What is the person’s or culture’s practice of time, what values shape their beliefs, what traditions govern their behavior, and what special words matter or malign? This anthropology mosaic can provide a path to an enriched understanding of your customers in the quest to know them more deeply as well as bolster their trust more fully.

We all have the same amount of time, so “out of time” or “late” can signal a low priority. Walmart founder Sam Walton called Procter & Gamble CEO John Smale and announced, “We were going to name you our Supplier of the Year.” At the time, P&G was doing over $2 billion worth of business with Walmart. “Were?” asked Smale. Walton continued, “You never returned my call when I called to tell you that. So, we had to name someone else.” It triggered a significant shift in how P&G treated Walmart as a customer.³ Find out what the concept of time means to your customers and manage how the relationships might be threatened with disappointments around time.

All customers have a set of core values. Experiences that are in conflict with their values can subconsciously erode their loyalty. Knowing those values enables you to avoid encounters that are dissonant or in conflict. Applying a “values dissonance” lens, a large hotel chain learned that guests’ disdain resulted after their affinity program changed control over upgrades from the front desk to the computer. Many guests enjoyed the perception that the friendly person at check-in was making the call on whether they were upgraded to the concierge level. Key learning? Make certain you know the true meaning of your customers’ values. Just guessing or assuming “they are just like me” can lead you astray.

Traditions are the customs, mores, and habits shared in a relationship, group, or society. When a customer was invited to a brainstorming meeting, the meeting leader sat at the head of the conference table—a common practice at most organizations. Someone noticed the customer was initially uncomfortable, and politely probed to learn more. The next time the company invited the customer for a discussion, the first question asked was “Where would you prefer to sit?” It was a minor adjustment, but the company reports it was worth the effort since it made them more aware of other traditions that might be practiced by their customers. A conflict of traditions surfaces when your practice fails to jibe with the customer’s expectations.

Language means more than communicating in French or Spanish. It means paying attention to the buzzwords, acronyms, and secret lingo reserved for insiders only. A common language (in its broadest sense) can bond and connect; code talking excludes and snubs. When former Alfa Romeo CEO Luca de Meo came from Audi to head up marketing at Volkswagen AG, he realized their global marketing function was filled with gossip. A silo mentality, fueled by an assembly-line linear approach of design to delivery, prevented the cross-pollination of ideas. Without a culture laced with shared meaning, a path to innovation was unlikely. According to authors Linda Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove, and Kent Lineback in their book Collective Genius, Italian-born Luca learned to speak German so he could converse with his associates directly and not through a translator!⁴

Watch Your Customers in Action

Continuum, a Massachusetts-based consulting firm, was hired by Moen Inc. to conduct customer research for use in the development of a new line of showerheads. Continuum felt the best way to really understand what customers wanted in a new showerhead wasn’t to ask them via surveys but rather to watch them in action. According to the New York Times, the company got permission to film customers taking showers in their own homes (I just report this stuff) and used the findings in the new design. Among the insights gleaned were that people spent half their time in the shower with their eyes closed and 30 percent of their time avoiding water altogether. The insights contributed to the new Moen Revolution show-erhead becoming a best seller.⁵

A major hotel chain offered frequent guests a discount on their room rate if they allowed a hotel staff member to follow them to their room to observe their process of unpacking and settling into the guest room. The hotel learned about guest workarounds—small issues never large enough to make the guest comment card. Couples checking in had only one luggage rack to use; guests using their own hairdryer had to unplug the one provided in the bathroom—all small incidents, but when added together with others, they created a negative experience so subtle guests would never mention them.

Never assume you know what customers value. I once stayed at a chain hotel in Philadelphia that did not slide my receipt under my hotel room door the morning I checked out. I was in the lobby at 5 a.m. to catch the first shuttle to the airport for an early morning flight. “Why was my receipt not under my door?” I asked the way-too-perky front desk clerk. His answer: “We want you to come by our front desk to get your receipt so we can bid you a proper farewell.” My response: “I think if you asked your guests, they will tell you that the last thing they want at five in the morning, rushing to catch the hotel shuttle bus, is a proper farewell!”

The fun-loving Frisbee wasn’t always a toy. Customers changed its character completely. William Frisbie purchased a bakery in the late nineteenth century in Connecticut that he called the Frisbie Pie Company. After his death, his company grew, reaching a peak production of eighty thousand pies per day. One unique feature of the pies was they came packaged in plate-shaped tins embossed with “Frisbie’s Pies.” But that is the point where the customer took over and created an entirely new product. Yale students discovered they could turn the tins into toys to toss around campus. When the flying disk approached its intended target, the person throwing it shouted “Frisbie” as a warning, much like sounding “fore” on a golf course. Walter Morrison patented the plastic version and sold it to Wham-O.⁶ The rest is history. Again, never assume you know what your customers value or that their preferences will remain static.

Learn from the People Who Know

When Cameron Smyth was the mayor of Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles, he was eager to know what mattered most to his citizens and to gain an appreciation for the issues about which they complained. He knew sending out a survey might not yield the insights needed. He held the city’s first annual hairdressers’ banquet to learn the real truth. Not only did their gossip turn into the intelligence he sought, he was able to position hairdressers as valuable advocates for the city. The security guard’s assessment of the demeanor of a departing key customer can sometimes be more instructive than forty focus groups. Most taxi and limo drivers have X-ray vision. A Google search regarding your customer, including reviews and social media chatter, may give you intelligence a conversation might miss.

Witness Your Customer through an Anthropologist’s Lens: The Partnering Crib Notes

Watch the details of your customer being your customer. Take a mental empathy walk tracing your customer’s steps through their entire experience with you and your organization. The concept today of customer journey mapping is one my business partner and coauthor, the late Ron Zemke, and I invented in the late 1980s to meticulously understand the customer’s world through their eyes. However, we learned that without the customer’s affirmation of the map, we could easily miss or misinterpret a customer moment of truth. Be a customer sleuth and look for clues to better understand their world. Examine word choices loaded with insight (like Sweetie Pie’s description). Pay attention to the meaning behind what customers communicate. Become a customer whisperer through unprejudiced interpreting. Get intelligence from the customer; get intelligence from people who know the customer.

The skill an anthropologist brings to exploration is partly their astute attention to detail and keen observation acumen. But what separates a great anthropologist from an “also ran” is the ability to remove bias and predisposition from a point of view. They observe and learn like a mirror. Except for the one owned by the evil queen in Snow White, a mirror has no opinion on who is the fairest of them all. The objective is to learn deeply about your customers and their proclivities. In a judgment-free arena, there is an evident invitation to surface imaginative ideas, perspectives, and insights.