Consumer Relevancy means the ability to see business through the customer’s eyes and conduct business on terms that the customer finds personally meaningful. People are searching for meaning in their lives and their buying decisions are one of the few ways they feel in control.

Trained people in your organization will understand that apathy has swept our landscape and voter turnout is below 50 percent. Seldom do families eat together, they barely talk to each other. Quality time between fathers and children has fallen to six minutes a day, down from an average of 45 minutes in the 1960’s.

Yet, meaning is a basic human need. People need to believe in something, need to feel validated, and need a connection with others. Feelings of alienation have increased along with the pace of life. Everything is moving faster, and more and more people feel that they can’t keep up.

Our workforce is more stressed than previous generations. Depression is second only to heart disease as the largest medical problem. Anti-depressant sales exceed four billion, and suicide rates have jumped 60 percent topping the murder rate by more than half.

Meanwhile, trained employees know that consumers are deluged by intrusive ads and information they don’t need or want. The result is cynicism and confusion. In this chaotic environment, when a customer needs a product or service, he craves clarity, ease, certainty, and trust.

If giving customers what they want is so fundamental to business as to seem self-evident, why can’t more companies do it? Thye answer lies in lack of training. Ideally, a business transaction should be a safe haven for a person besieged by an incomprehensible and dangerous world. One thing customers want is a basic level of competence that seems to be lacking.

What good is it to have a coffee shop in a bookstore if untrained employees have never heard of the title you’re looking for? In 2000, American Customer Satisfaction Index plunged to its lowest levels since 1994.

What do consumers want? They’d like to know that somebody in the company is thinking, and thinking of them. Take the way airline tickets are sold. The most valuable customer is the business traveler who may travel 100,000 miles a year. The family vacationer, by contrast, may travel only once a year.

Logic would dictate that the business traveler deserves the best treatment; he is punished by paying the highest price. Although he may gain admittance to a comfortable lounge and preferred seating, the vacation traveler, who has bought a ticket 21 days in advance may get an 80% discount for the same flight.

The same is true in grocery stores, where the casual shopper with a few items is given a short line and the serious, repeat customer with a huge cart full of groceries is made to wait half an hour in line.

Well traines organizations will ask: “How can we add more value, from our customers point of view?” Everyone should be thinking and thinking about the customer.

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