I find it difficult to understand why we forget that the houses we build will one day have to be inhabited by people. Why we design cars with surprising aesthetics that nevertheless take years to incorporate safety elements that are already known to save lives today. Why do we travel on airlines in which the smile of their staff has to be paid for separately as a plus, whose planes contain impossible spaces for passengers of more than normal heights. Why when we eat in half-empty restaurants we ask for the table next to the window, we are not granted it because it is for four and there are only two of us. Why do we have to listen to our doctor giving us a diagnosis that we only understand clearly when he tells us verbatim and nakedly that we have two weeks to live. Why is it always the other window. Why are they forcing us to sign contracts in which everything is fine print. Because? But what is all this about?
It's funny how much we can transform when we put on a robe, a uniform or a tie. At what point do we stop being people to start playing a role. I am unable to detect the moment when my children, with excellent behavior in class according to their teachers, experience (their mother and I suffer) their great transformation from school to home. And it's only three blocks!!!
It is surprising how little we are aware of how our behavior is influencing the rest of our co-workers, employees and collaborators, our suppliers and of course our clients, which, let's not forget, are all of them. And how these attitudes, in the end, and above the product we sell or the service we provide, determine the construction of our brand and end up defining the perception that the consumer has of it. What are we playing?
The most unprecedented thing of all is that many companies or institutions not only turn a deaf ear to these situations but end up encouraging them under the umbrella of a business culture for which the only thing that matters is the short-term result. Companies that create brands that are increasingly stripped of traits of humanity, therefore lacking affection and, above all, understanding towards others, starting with their employees and ending with their customers.
Apathetic brands, incapable of learning and understanding their customers' point of view, connecting with them, responding appropriately to their needs (beyond the functionality that the product provides), listening to their ideas and sharing their thoughts and feelings. .
They are dedicated to the search for differentiation, whether in the functions of the product, in their logistics and location, in their presentation or in their communication. A differentiation so full of nuances that the consumer neither seeks nor is able to perceive and that in the vast majority of cases becomes frustrated at the moment of truth, leading them to greater promiscuity and infidelity in their purchasing behavior.
A consumer attitude increasingly based on the rational attributes to which they are pushed and therefore deciding simply by price or by what a participant in an Internet forum, whom they do not know personally, recommends.
We live in an increasingly volatile, ephemeral society, in which everything has an expiration date, in which everything is express, and in which many brands prefer to satisfy in search of a cheaper short-termism, without efforts and without investments in commitments. that they do not think about complying.
And that is precisely why they are afraid of losing customers. They know that their relationship with them is not based on commitment, it is not based on respect for the person who is behind that client, on provoking a two-way dialogue and at the same level, on connecting with the reality that they have in their lives. daily and daily.
They are, in many cases, brands that use their size to impose but have lacked the skill, interest or humility necessary to put themselves in the shoes of their client (or their employee) and generate enough engagement to grow or even to survive. Why doesn't the shopping experience of these brands resist the slightest pressure? Why do you always resent your weakest link, the most neglected, the ultimate architect of your failure or success, that is, your own staff? Customer orientation is no longer an added value, although for them it does involve an additional effort; People orientation cannot be an option.
As we said, they are short-termists, incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of their employees and collaborators, of listening or reading nothing more than the data that comes out of their Excel, selfish and who do not believe in the relationship and in the training of their talent and who Therefore, they do not assume empathy as a feature of their brand that must be projected from within.
Companies that, in extreme cases such as those that occurred in some companies in France, have shocked the world due to the high number of suicides of their employees due to the pressure to which they were subjected. And instead of investing in how to tackle the origin, they have launched programs that tried to prevent the end, suicides.
Respect, listening, transparency, coherence, consistency, dialogue, understanding, solidarity, are just some of the traits we look for in a company to work for. These are just some of the attributes that we demand from a brand so that it can truly become part of our lives.
If brands are a mirror in which the consumer seeks the reflection of values with which they identify and in which the “evolution” of society has been portrayed, many of them begin to run great risks of survival in the medium term. .
Deep down, what happens to many people when we look in that mirror is that it gives us an image with interferences between what we think and what we really do. We face an existential void that leads us to bet more on having than on being, to respond to the short-termism in which we find ourselves immersed, rather than to build the relationship based on the understanding of those around us, to the fracture between expectations that we create and that we generate and the reality that we perceive and that we create. A reality that is increasingly distant from the ideal we seek, from what we are and from what we believe.
How long will it take for companies that forget that both behind and in front of brands, there are only people to disappear? How many of today's successful brands will not exist in ten years? Why will many of these brands end up committing suicide, leaving this as the only trait of their humanity?
Sebastian Fernandez de Lara
