Surface Ripples

A Marketing Miss?

We’ve been acting (on behalf of the elderly owner) as “palliative carers” for an elderly dog (13 years plus) who recently passed away.

She’d been taking a pharmacy-full of pills and was also prescribed three different tonics for other different ailments.  In the end, we realised these were doing little more than prolong her (poor quality) life and that was even if she’d take them. 

For the meds that were in pill form, there wasn’t usually a problem in crushing them up and mixing them in with her food.  However, they had to be crushed up very finely.  If you just put the pill in whole, she wouldn’t eat! 

The problem came with the tonics.  They were brown in colour, so discoloured the food .  They also had a distinctive smell.  If dog spotted that they’d been added to the food, she wouldn’t eat it.

I know that often with small children (and even some adults) “nasty tasting medicine” isn’t something we enjoy taking.  The pharma companies have made efforts to disguise unpleasant tastes or smells without affect affecting the healing properties of the medication.

My question is, “Why can’t we do the same for animals?”  Their sense of smell is far superior to that of humans, so it’s easy for them to detect a foreign object in their daily meal.  The stronger the smell, the less likely they are to eat the food it’s being mixed with unless they’re really hungry.

There are those who’d say that it’s not worth making such an effort for animals, but when we think about the place they occupy in our lives, anything that makes it easier to alleviate their suffering is surely a good thing.

How many times have we encountered situations in our business where a simple change to a product or service makes it far more acceptable (and even desirable) to customers?  At times perhaps the cost of making that small improvement isn’t worth it and that’s fine. But if a small cost is offset by a huge increase in let’s call it “acceptability”, it’s worth it.

Is our business “missing a trick” because someone thinks it’s “not worth it”?

I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management.  I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. 

Labels: Customer Care, Selling

posted by William Martin @ 08:55