Memahami konsumen butuh pemahaman ekstra

Mendengarkan adalah kerjaan yang pasif. Secara skill-pun, mendengarkan membutuhkan skill yang lebih rendah dari berbicara. Tapi di dunia yang berhubungan langsung dengan pelanggan, ternyata skill mendengarkan lebih sulit untuk diterapkan. Padahal, mendengarkan adalah kunci pertama menuju pemahaman.

Aku suka banget dengan artikel buatan temanku, Bambang Sukma Wijaya yang sudah pernah dia posting di blog dia sendiri. Berhubung nyari link-nya kok susah banget (dan aku sudah pernah ngopi ke MS Word), jadi maaf ya Bambang ... copasnya gak pake share link. hehehe. Intinya aku hanya pengen mengingatkan (diri sendiri) kalo nulis iklan bukan hanya kemampuan menyusun deretan kata-kata indah. Nulis iklan juga bukan hanya kemampuan bikin headline dan tagline yang ngebom. Tapi nulis iklan lebih banyak mementingkan kemampuan memahami pemasaran, pengetahuan tentang brand, dan pengetahuan tentang si target audience (si raja) itu sendiri


Have you ever been fed up to the children’s act? They’re crying when you don’t give what they want. They protest when you don’t put enough attention. Like children, consumers are also having the same characters. Of course the consumers are not our beloved children, but, unfortunately, they–as the traditional wisdom says—are the king. So, we have to understand their characters in order to preserve them.

I’m very important

Look at a consumer who attends a shop. They want to be served especially, even they only look around or just window shopping. They want to be always being heard, and if they feel ignored, they would sulk.
Like a child, they will show their dislike or do something annoying to get our attention, such as complain in yelling or write to newspaper with words full of hatred, and then they moved to other shop or brand to express their protests. They mope because we had failed to make them the very important attentively, treat them with care, and the most important, love them.

My own must be better than my friend’s

Ichal, an employee who offices at Menteng, just changed his cellular to the latest model as he
and actually she doesn’t really need the feature also. “I just want to try it while it was in the
free-tariff promo and wanted to show my sophisticated phone,” she said as she laughs.
Rahmat Susanta, editor in chief of Marketing magazine has approved upon the facts.
According to him, the consumers sometimes ask for features that not exist in their product while their friend’s or other people’s have it, even they might not need or use the features it self. “They envy if other people’s have more,”

In the telecommunication market, we can see many costumers complain, either about the operator (service provider) or the handset. Our research revealed that some respondents have moved from one operator to other operator as their complain. And when we ask them, they really have a lot of expectations on their chosen operator service. The tariff must be low, the credit Reload must be easy, the network has to be excellent, and it has to have a lot of bonuses and features, and so on. There is no other way to win their heart except understanding them like we
understand our own child. It means we listen to them seen it in a magazine. He assured
that his friends have not having one of those. “It feels cool to own something that others haven’t own it,” he revealed as he shows his Nokia E90. Erna, a MarkComm Mercu Buana University student, revealed that she has moved recently to another operator because it offers more
sophisticated 3G services than her friend’s operator, even that means she had to buy a new handset that provide 3G which is more expensive. When her friends only make calls and send SMS, she does video call and chatting. It makes her proud. But now, she doesn’t use the 3G services anymore because the promo has ended and the operator are now charging the service,
Susanta said. He gave an example of many people has chosen operator with free roaming service, even though 90 percent of them are rarely out of town. That’s why we have to be
smart on reading what the consumer wants. It might be unrealistic and frustrating, but
that’s how a child does. “They always demand what they wants or needs are available in
time,” Susanta adds.

So, if we have the patience or experience of taking care children, we probably could
successfully handle our consumers. Let’s prove it!