Yesterday, we laid the foundation of the company/customer connection and established that the customer dictates the relationship. But as companies grow and general development occurs, the company side of the relationship often finds itself needing to make changes. Before analyzing effective navigational principles let’s look at some examples…
Internet Search giant Google has been providing Internet surfers with a search website since 1998, approaching 12 years. For the duration of that time, their search homepage contained their logo and a search box for the user to enter their search string. In the beginning, it was a webpage that contradicted the busyness of most other webpages in 1998 and over time it became a benchmark within Google defining what their webpages and services would be like. With a rapid growth in popularity, what was initially an internal decision by Google transformed into a public customer expectation. That is until the last week or so when Google rolled out full screen background images on their search page. The quality of the search hasn’t changed, just the background image, but that small difference has some customers upset.
In the 1980s, Consumer Reports ranked McDonald’s as having the best French Fry. But as the health craze movement took hold through the 1990s, the company decided to make their fries more healthy and changed their cooking methods.
New Coke and Classic Coke… need I say more?
Those are some examples of a company needing to make a change on their side of the company/customer relationship for one reason or another. Some have worked well, some have worked and New Coke failed miserably (fortunately Coke recovered and is still available today). Next time we’ll look at these matters within Cape Air.
