Staying Close to The Customer

Everyone has a vocation or calling of some kind. The trades and professions are educated and trained in their particular careers to meet customer and market demand efficiently and effectively, as also those in public service are trained to administer to people, represent them and act on their behalf. There is a social contract. Everyone has to learn something to start with one way or another. There is a change process. It involves leaving society or the community for awhile. If they are socialised on return and in solidarity with the people they can sympathetise with them and understand them by sharing their uncertainty and limitations. Asymmetric information is always with us. Staying close to the customer to use the words of Peters and Waterman is a form of continuous marketing research providing the data and information necessary for continual innovation in both goods and services.

There are old and new forms of practice and process as well as products. Old ways tried and tested, reliable and trusted may not need to be replaced but occasionally old ideas and practices have to give way to new ideas and practices. They way business is done today is totally different to the way it was done fifty years ago and in fifty years time it will be totally different again.