Alone we can do so little; together, we can do so much.

—Helen Keller

Loyal Customers Convert Into Employees

Can companies increase customer satisfaction by cutting costs? The problem, though perplexing, has been resolved. The corporate world has arrived at a solution that is simple, elegant, and cost-effective.

The irony is, customers are unknowingly an integral part of the solution.

To increase customer satisfaction, corporates are ‘hiring’ customers as partial employees. Once customers become partial employees, complaining about bad service is tantamount to complaining about themselves.

Take McDonald’s, for instance. You stand. In the queue to place your order, pay for it, collect the food on a tray, walk back to your seat, consume it and deposit the waste in the bin. So, were you only a customer at McDonald’s? No, you were also a partial employee. You did things that should ideally have been done by employees hired and paid for by McDonald’s.

But did Mcdonald’s pay you for the services you performed for it? Of course not.

Is McDonald’s the pioneer in recruiting customers and converting them into partial employees? Read on.

Say’s Law of Markets

In 1916, a grocery chain, Piggly Wiggly, owned by Clarence Saunders, devised a store format that we now take for granted: self-service. Before this, a person always stood behind the counter to serve the buyers. In Saunders’ self-service model, customers had to step inside the store and pick up products from the range displayed inside the store. Then they had to cart it to the cash counter, where a cashier made the bill and bagged the purchase.

Much to Saunders’ delight, sales in this new format were more than in the earlier structure. How did this miracle happen? He had unknowingly put Say’s Law of Markets into play, which states that ‘supply will create its demand’! It merely means that if people get access to ‘supply, they will find ways to use it.

Many companies we admire have drawn upon Say’s Law and behavioral science principles to build innovative business models.

IKEA, the world’s largest home furniture company, is a prime example. It has successfully attracted buyers to its store because it has built a sterling reputation of delivering its promise of consistently offering a wide range of well-designed home furnishings products at low prices.

It has intelligently interwoven three concepts to give birth to a profitable business model:

Say’s Law: Supply creates demand.

Do-It-Yourself(DIY): The phenomenon of carrying out tasks without experts’ support leads to a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment among buyers.

Effort Justification: When we put in our efforts, the outcome seems more valuable to us.

IKEA is a self-service store, and the store layout is designed in a circuitous manner; the entrance and exit are on either end of the store, and the path between them winds through almost every section. This has been deliberately done to ensure that anyone who enters the store looks at all the products before making their way out. Seeing the merchandise (supply), the buyers most often deviate from their shopping list and end up buying things they did not know they needed till they were exposed to it!

Upon reaching home, IKEA’s Do-It-Yourself and ‘Effort Justification’ comes into play. The furniture needs to be assembled before it can be used. Guided by simple and clear instructions, the buyer—now owner—gets down to complete it. The process of producing the furniture requires the buyer to put in effort and time. Upon completion of the activity, when the buyer surveys the creation, they feel a sense of satisfaction, accomplishment, and pride. The assembled furniture appears more valuable and appealing to them: after all, their sweat has gone into making it!

IKEA’s strategy is tantamount to ‘outsourcing’ the assembly process of the furniture to the customers in exchange for providing a lower price and a feeling of satisfaction, accomplishment, and pride. 

We have always emphasized on the importance of having a good website for your company because it can act as your best tool for marketing and sales. A poorly designed website can repulse people from your business and can cause you to lose customers before you even have them. Get in touch with HyperEffects to work on creating, enhancing and making the website of your company more user-friendly.