Penny is Everyone and Everyone Is a Customer

I was auditing a training recently and this question was asked by the instructor.

"How many customers do you know by name?"

There were about 40 marketers with 2-25 years of professional experience. I was the only one who raised my hand.

“I know plenty.” I said with a dash of alacrity. The instructor misheard me. “You know Penny? I really want to hear about her.” **Laughter** finally broke an awkward and stale silence.

The training was about storytelling. The hypothesis was fair. How are you going to engage, inspire and educate your customers if you don’t know who they are, what language they speak, and what their real and perceived pain points are?

It can be confusing who the customer is as complexity mounts and the value chain evolves. Who you should you think about telling stories to? Right, and then there is that pesky little “resources” issue - if I have 20 customer “segments” is there enough time in the day to tell 20 different stories. Maybe I just start with one customer. Let’s call her Penny. *grin*

Is Penny the channel? The multi-family property manager? The builder? The architect? The real estate agent? The bank? The employee? Is Penny the human who is planning a 4th of July party and wakes up on the 2nd to hot air blowing at her from her floor vents. That Penny is a human in crisis. (That is roughly what my B2B2C stakeholder map used to look like). Lots of difference and complexity. But what elements of each human in any stakeholder map can we all relate to? A need for comfort, a need for help, a need for calm, a need to prosper?

Ultimately, we don’t need every Penny to transact with us right away. We just need her to add us to her transactional logic. (Maybe we tell one Penny she really needs to think about new windows, a security system or a product to heal her leaky house). Penny could be a “Business” (owner) or a “Consumer.” She could be both. Does Penny change her logic when she gets home from her mechanical engineering firm and starts browsing [insert e-Commerce URL]. Probably not. Penny is just a human. So maybe we live in more of a human to human (H2H) ecosystem now.

In the >>> new normal <<< Penny is everyone. Everyone who wants to stay safe, be healthy, pay lower energy bills, stay connected and enjoy a little sanctuary outside of their hyper-connected lives. Today everyone needs a path to sustain, recover, be well, be calm and plan for the next era of prosperity.

Think about everyone. They are the new human customer. Work for everyone. Join us.

#customer #CX #names