Comments on: Did Marks & Spencer listen to the voice of their customers?

By: Stephen Cribbett

Stephen Cribbett — Tue, 26 May 2009 08:55:17 +0000

Hi Martin, Your points are very valid, and in our opinion you’ve hit the nail on the head by saying that M&S aren’t so well versed at ‘listening’, when they’ve traditionally been so focussed on the transation at point of sale, and the push messaging that supports this. Were they to have ‘embraced’ their customers a lot earlier, and used the insight gathered to help them make the right decision, then this situation might not have occured. Organisations spend a lot of money on insight, yet most fall foul of how best to use it internally. Social media provides some of the tools to enable this, but as you rightly point out, the organisation needs to have the right skills in place to harness the intelligence.

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:36:05 +0000

A question this raises is why didn’t they do some of the things mentioned above?

1. Because there is no infrastructure internally to undertake it
2. There is no appreciation that the rules are changing
3. its about listening skills and they are used to telling

So who should be responsible inside a company for managing this kind of activity and what is the budget called?

By: Alison

Alison — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:56:57 +0000

Good grief, I hadn’t heard about this. *jaw drops*

What next? A surcharge on size 14 and over? Discount for people with small feet?

Unfortunately the message is actually ‘We don’t care about real women.’ Given M&S’s stance on this in the past, no wonder the public went for them.