In the business world, what matters most is the bottom line or, to a large extent, the result.
The result is a vital point for assessment of the overall performance. It is the sole standard by which an organisation or business is measured.
Business in nature engages customers, yet customers are only genuinely interested in how important a business is to them personally. There is no such thing as customer’s loyalty to a business.
The result to customers in this context will be how convenient, fast and better a business can be of service to them.
For instance, Japan recently defeated Germany 2:1 at the World Cup in Qatar.
The current Japanese players don’t have the quality or consistency that German players have shown over the years as a team with regard to convenience for winning the World Cup – the speed with which they play as a cohesive team and how better they have progressed as a team from their defense to attack as a team.
The pre-match commentary from most pundits was that Japan was not going to beat Germany and for them did not see this happening.
The pundit’s assessment prior to the commencement of the game was due to the fantastic players, the experience and the pedigree of performance of Germany in this particular competition.
Most of the pundits actually stack to the point of how Germany had been doing so well in the World Cup competitions over the years.
Well, it is all about the result.
It just doesn’t matter how beautiful and entertaining a team is, and the effort and the intent to win, if the result doesn’t favour the team, the team will still be assessed by the result and nothing else in the short and medium term.
The most intriguing aspect of the Japanese supporters was that they predicted defeat before but after the game, they exclaimed with joy. They said: “We don’t care about how we played, all that matters is we won the match against a very super quality side like Germany”.
This clearly demonstrates the point of the premium placed on the result.
Now supporters can’t actually continue to be in business with you as a football manager if you are not delivering the result. For them, it is about significance and pride. This significance is derived from results churned from the pitch. Supporters may tolerate entertaining football for a while without results but sooner or later, they will demand the removal of the football manager.
So it is with the business world, customers only thrive on the result being given to them. It has nothing to do with loyalty.
Customers are only concerned about businesses being significant in their lives.
Customers don’t care about how the CEO and its staff are doing, all that they care about is the result.
For example, not too long ago, NOKIA was the most preferred phone of choice by customers in terms of capital market share because of the innovation they brought to the phone handsets, but as soon as NOKIA focused on how big they were at the time and not what the customers desired, the customers switched to BlackBerry till they too failed in this result – as seen by customers.
Now Apple and Samsung are the customers’ most preferred handsets, and the bottom line is customers are getting the result from these two phone handset manufacturers.
It is a fallacy to believe customers are loyal; they are not! The result is what matters to them, the sole standard and nothing else.
