Talk to Our Customers? Are You Crazy?

(Fonte: FastCompany)

Mothers in the small Swiss village of Bulach may have been wary of the man with a goatee staring at them as they struggled to navigate an ATM, grocery bag in one hand, fractious child in the other. But the man didn't care what their PIN numbers were or how much money they had in their accounts. He wanted to know, Why didn't they just put the bag down?

The answer: The bags were paper, and when the ground is wet--it rains a lot in Switzerland--putting them down means getting the contents soggy. Now, thanks to the man with the goatee, Stephan Kubler, the moms using the ATM at the Credit Suisse branch in Bulach can keep their groceries dry, by resting them on an inch-high grille.

Kubler spends each and every working day spying on Credit Suisse customers. He's part of a small team led by customer-experience renegade David McQuillen, a 36-year-old American who's challenging the top executives at the blue-chip Swiss bank to get out of their Zurich offices and--gulp!--meet some customers.

Almost every company has something about customer focus in its mission statement. Trouble is, the larger the organization, the more executives tend to insulate themselves from customers. Some rely on customer-satisfaction surveys and focus groups. Others simply assume that customers are just like them.

No, they're not, says McQuillen. And the problem with thinking they are is that companies end up creating products and processes that suit them, not their customers. "You need," he says, "to go out and talk to customers to find out what they want."

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