Three Cases: How to Hear the Voice of God

If we still refer to the motto "Consumer is God" widely circulated in Chinese marketing circles, then, understanding the needs of "God" becomes the top priority for businesses. Here are three cases from different industries: Yoshinoshima in the retail industry, Venice in the hospitality industry, and Lamex in the furniture industry.

Different industries face different "Gods", how do they listen to the voice of "God"?

Yoshinoshima Mall: Accurate positioning and targeting of target customers

Yoshinoshima is the largest retailer in Asia and one of the most profitable retailers, and its market and customer research level is also ahead of its peers. The Yoshishima Friendship Department Store, a joint venture in Shenzhen, opened for just over two months, and has already achieved good economic benefits. "During the period of opening, the company's turnover exceeded expectations by 60%, and now the brand recognition of Yoshishima in Shenzhen has reached more than 90%." The deputy general manager of Shenzhen Yoshishima Friendship Department Store Co., Ltd. Inoue Hiroshi said proudly .

Inoue Hiroshi believes that thorough market and customer research and correct market positioning are the keys to Yoshinoshima's success.

Yoshinoshima's parent company in Hong Kong has a dedicated research department. Before opening the Shenzhen joint venture, the company conducted two stages of investigation. In the first stage, more than two years ago, the company started preliminary market and customer research, mainly conducting detailed research on Shenzhen's local GDP level, consumer groups, consumption habits and local policies. A year ago, the department conducted an on-site inspection of the business site, Shenzhen CITIC Plaza, including the number of pedestrians, bus and private vehicle traffic, surrounding facilities, and competitor analysis at several fixed time periods.

Inoue Hiroshi said that the results of the survey are exciting. The first is that Shenzhen is one of the wealthiest regions in China, with the highest per capita GDP in China. Although Wal-Mart and Jia_Love have taken the lead, they pursue "everyday parity" as their main appeal, targeting the general mass consumer groups. The shopping malls represented by Seibu serve top consumers, while the middle and high-end consumer groups The scale is huge and the market prospect is promising.

Yoshinoshima positions itself as a mid-class consumer and tailors its products and services to their needs.

There is a difference between middle and high-level customers and the general consumer group. Inoue Hiroshi said that when they buy goods, they also pay attention to the shopping experience in shopping malls on the basis of pursuing low prices and high quality, and some consumers also pay attention to the cultural atmosphere. For this reason, Yoshinoshima has put a lot of effort into the layout of the mall and the supply of goods. The shopping mall occupies an area of nearly 20,000 square meters on the first floor, with spacious corridors and high-end decoration. Japanese products account for more than 30%. There are Japanese-style restaurants in the shopping mall to promote Japanese culture. important means of homogeneous competition. The mall has 8 entrances and exits, fully implementing its "open shopping" concept and strategy of taking a differentiated road.

CITIC Plaza, where Shenzhen Jizhidao is located, is located in a prime location in Shenzhen. There are many world-class brands in the plaza, such as Seibu Department Store, Starbucks Cafe and Pizza Hut. Such a perfect brand supporting environment is in line with the company's positioning to target the middle class. .

The customer survey of Shenzhen Jizhidao Friendship Department Store is divided into two parts: internal and external.

The annual off-site survey is of a public relations and marketing nature, mainly to understand the local popularity of Yoshinoshima, customer spending power and shopping habits. Internal surveys are mainly in the form of customer voice stations and employee feedback cards.

Hiroshi Inoue introduced that it is important to take appropriate measures when obtaining customer opinions. Yoshinoshima has found in many years of practice that if a friendly method is not used, such as forcibly distributing opinion cards to customers, it will often lead to resistance and affect the effect and quality of customer feedback. Therefore, the mall has set up a "customer voice station" in a prominent position, customers can write their opinions voluntarily, and these cards will be sent directly to the general manager's office. At the same time, because employees are the first level of contact with customers, most customers will directly express their opinions and suggestions to the waiters, and employee opinion cards have become an important means to collect these first-hand information. Based on this information, the general manager will discuss with the middle and senior management if necessary, and then make a decision. At present, hundreds of feedbacks from customers and employees are received every week. Many products that were not available before were added after referring to the feedback information. Taking fresh fish as an example, Jizhidao has no fresh fish supply abroad, but through feedback from customers, we learned that most families in China like to buy fresh live fish, so they made corresponding adjustments immediately. The sales of fresh fish have remained strong.

Lamex Furniture: Establishing a smooth information transmission chain

Lamex Group was founded in 1977. As one of the most well-known companies in high-end office furniture, Lamex Group relies on a strong and complete customer survey system to ensure excellent research and development strength, and became the designated office furniture provider for the 2002 APEC meeting.

Xiang Zong Wei, Manager of the Product Development Department of Lamex Group, said that R&D is the soul of furniture companies. Today, when information exchange is very convenient, the phenomenon of plagiarism of product design is very serious. Most of the manufacturers in mainland China are small in scale and have insufficient investment in research and development. Copying other people's ideas and designs has become an important means. Therefore, Lamex, as an industry leader, must maintain its advantages in R&D and always be one step ahead.

Lamex believes that customer research is not limited to a fixed form, but should run through all aspects of the organization to ensure a smooth communication mechanism with customers, and then process the acquired information well to become product development The basics.

To this end, the company has established a smooth information transmission chain with customers, distributors, sales specialists, customer service department, product development department as the main links, and the production and marketing departments jointly participate.

Introduced to Zong Wei, product development mainly includes the development of new products and the improvement of original products, both of which rely the most on customer research. When a new product is put into the market, there will inevitably be defects of different degrees, which need to be constantly adjusted, and at different stages, popular styles and people's preferences will change. At this time, we must first understand the needs of customers, and then make targeted improvements.

The basic procedure of customer research conducted by Lamex is as follows: First, the franchisor, sales force and after-sales service department collect customer feedback, including evaluations and suggestions on product quality, style, workmanship and materials, and timely pass the computer system. to the Product Development Department. The company will hold a sales meeting once a month with the participation of the sales department, customer service department and product development department. The meeting is responsible for the detailed discussion and analysis of the results of the customer survey and customer feedback. After analyzing the specific category of the problem, it will be transferred to the relevant departments, and will be tracked by the Product Development Department and the Customer Service Department.

Lamex's key account tracking system also benefits. Ms. Wu Shuping, Operation Support Manager, introduced that Lamex has a complete set of tracking system for major clients and visits major clients on a regular basis. Due to Lamex's franchise sales strategy, customer tracking is mainly done by dealers around the world. Although manufacturers' investment in sales channels will be greatly reduced, the problem is that close contact with customers cannot be guaranteed, which increases the difficulty of information communication and management. Therefore, Lamex is very strict in the training and supervision of dealers, and has established a strict reward and punishment system. Lamex directly contacts major customers by phone or visits from time to time, listens to their opinions on products and services, obtains first-hand market information, and serves as a basis for evaluating dealers.

Sometimes the feedback from customers is mostly direct and preliminary, and some information is immature, which needs to be analyzed and processed by the manufacturer, and then corresponding measures are taken. Therefore, it is necessary for manufacturers to grasp the cutting-edge information of the industry and consider the world as a unified market.

As an example to the manager, Lamex introduced the beveled-edge desk design 10 years ago. During the survey, customers reported that the edges and corners of the desk easily made their arms tired. In response to this situation, Lamex conducted on-the-spot investigations on foreign markets and discovered the popular table-side nozzle design at that time, becoming one of the first pioneers to introduce the concept of "ergonomics" in the Chinese market. The company's ergonomic products have been selling well in the market for many years and have become the object of imitation by competitors. In addition, the trend-leading "consultative sales" concept and Lamex's current best-selling table and chair assembly are all based on customer research. There are more than 60 people in the product development department led by Xiang Zongwei, with positions such as engineer, product director, designer, etc., to obtain customer feedback through the front end of the market, plus information on exhibitions and the Internet, to carry out product research and development. At present, Lamex's export share is not large, but the growth rate is much larger than that of the domestic market. Xiang Zongwei believes that the disorderly competition in the domestic market and the company's strong production capacity have made the company's overseas market expansion on the agenda. Researching overseas clients will be a big challenge for his team.

Venice Hotels: More professional companies do

Customer research in the hotel industry is different from other industries. According to Peter Pollmeier, general manager of Shenzhen Venice Hotel, most of the world-renowned hotels are managed by hotel management groups. For example, Six Continents Hotels, the management agency of Crowne Plaza Shenzhen, owns several brands. As there are more than 3,200 hotels in the world, the workload of its customer research is very large, and it usually hires a third-party professional company to complete it.

Like other hotels in the Six Continents Hotel Group, The Venice Hotel Shenzhen conducts continuous customer research. Mr. Pollmeier said that while the investigation was mainly done by third-party agencies, the hotels themselves had a lot of work to do. First of all, the hotel should order a standard questionnaire in the corresponding language from a designated third-party agency for its own customer source market, the Customer Satisfaction Survey Form (GSTS), and ensure that the questionnaire is distributed to the guest rooms according to the specified ratio. After the guest fills in, the hotel will collect and seal it up, and send it to the survey company once a month.

Professional survey companies have a complete set of automatic questionnaire statistics and analysis systems, which are highly automated, efficient and intelligent. From the opinions and suggestions of customers, we can timely understand the advantages and disadvantages of each hotel in terms of overall and details, hardware and software, determine the improvement links, and plan the future development direction. The automatic analysis system avoids the subjective influence of manual intervention, and provides an objective and scientific basis for the improvement of the hotel.

Since GSTS needs to be sent to the survey company on a monthly basis, it takes a certain period of time to get feedback. In order to speed up the feedback on customer opinions, Liuzhou Hotel Group has also set up an internal questionnaire system in each hotel. For more specific and detailed questions about the hotel's daily operation and services, seek customers' opinions. The form is reviewed by the general manager of the hotel every day, and feedback to the guests on the same day to improve the service in time and ensure the fast and smooth flow of information. The hotel also encourages front-line staff to provide feedback at any time based on how they are dealing with customers.

Not long ago, a survey by The Venice Hotel Shenzhen showed that customers felt that hotel staff were slow to respond to guests. The hotel immediately took action and found that the main reason was the poor communication of internal information, so the floor service related personnel were equipped with walkie-talkies, and rectification was carried out for other links. The response time to customer requests was shortened from 8 minutes to 2 minutes now. In addition, according to the habits of Chinese guests, a kettle is added to the coffee maker in the room; toothbrushes of different colors are provided in the same room so that guests who stay at the same time can be distinguished. These improvements are all feedback from customers, which may seem insignificant, but have a non-negligible impact on customer satisfaction.

In addition to employing a third party to conduct customer opinion surveys, Six Continents Hotels Group also employs a third-party survey company to conduct brand positioning analysis and survey work. The hotel brand is characterized by high quality and high value, and business conference services are the main development strategy. The Venice Hotel Shenzhen was selected as the first pilot Chinese hotel under the Crown brand to carry out new brand positioning.

Pollmeier said that this survey shows that there is a great demand for business meeting services in the Chinese mainland market. Although high-end hotels in China have these functions, many hotels are not professional enough, and the level of software and hardware needs to be improved. Overall satisfaction with this is not enough. The Venetian Hotel Shenzhen has invested a lot of manpower and material resources to ensure world-class hardware and software facilities, and this year hosted many world celebrities including former US President Bill Clinton to attend the conference, establishing itself as a leader in the industry.