insights!-Episode #2: Customer Centricity as key to success of the GAFA companies?

What do the GAFA companies do so well? Today it's about the GAFA companies – that's Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. What these companies do particularly well, you'll find out now. GAFA is Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. For some of us, these companies are actually our livelihood. For others, they're exactly the opposite. And to shed a bit of light on that, we recorded this session. The GAFA companies, to approach it from the numbers, are gigantic. These four companies are worth as much as the gross domestic product of the fourth-largest country in the world: India. Just think about that for a moment – these four companies are as big as India. And they've grown massively too. The question is when these four companies will be bigger than the largest country in the world. That's one thing. On the other hand, these companies can grow, grow endlessly fast. They have low marginal costs on one hand, and on the other, almost unlimited liquid assets. And that's also a bit of the problem we see here. While one person as an Instagrammer earns money and generates advertising from that, or as a marketplace seller sells products there, other companies in their respective sector get squeezed so hard that nothing's left over. We saw something similar almost a hundred years ago, when supermarkets simply pushed out the small corner shops. Something similar is going to happen again today and tomorrow, but across many sectors this time. We need to be aware of that when we support these four companies, buy something there or use something there. What's interesting is why that is. On one hand they're the Fantastic Four to some, to others they're the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. All four companies do one thing particularly well: they put the customer at the centre. They know how to talk to the customer. They know what the customer expects and can play that whole keyboard. Here's a personal example with Amazon: shortly before Christmas – this was a few years back now, but still holds true – the parcel still hadn't arrived. It should have been there long since, and I barely had time to get anything new. So I rang Amazon and asked, do you know where the parcel is? And they said, yes, it's at the delivery depot of such-and-such courier. But they've got a problem. Hold on a moment, would you be interested if we just get all three of us on the line? To which I said, how, all three? Yes, all three, with the relevant staff member from the courier company. Sure, why not, and within no time I had a staff member from them on the call too. And he said, yes, I could offer you something personally – you come and collect it. Because we sadly can't get our lorries out, everything's so frozen over we probably won't manage it for the next two days either. Brilliant! Why was that brilliant? Amazon took my concern, my worry that the parcel wouldn't arrive in time, seriously. They tried to find a resolution, even if that meant I'd have had to drive 80 kilometres. And on the other hand, I understood the background to the problem. In the end, Amazon handled it ideally

Understood, pick up on me and my pain. And same happens with other companies. Facebook earns money with advertising. And how does Facebook manage to place as much advertising as possible? Sure, because I use Facebook, or Instagram.And how does Facebook get me to use Facebook, Instagram? With right push notifications. Not for nothing did they hire an army of psychologists who work out exactly when I'm triggered how, when I respond to what and what not. And whatever I respond to, they push much, much more often, because I get shown advertising on Facebook. And that of course does something to us, everyone knows it, we use these media intensively in a completely omnipresent way, at work and at home too.Interesting thing is these four aren't simply the villains from my point of view, though it certainly puts some businesses under, they can't survive any more. But those might also be the ones that wouldn't have made it in four to six years anyway. What's special is that this customer/company interface is served so ideally. And that's what many companies in Germany, in our view, still don't do well. Actually not only Germany, but Europe and beyond too. Namely those coming more from retail, from being a brand. Those are clear changes. Ten, twelve years ago there was a conference with the Institute for Retail Research, and they asked what's one of the biggest points for coming years? I said, click and collect, omnichannel retailers in particular need to look at that much more closely. Some have done it, some do it very, very well, like Decathlon. And others call it call and collect. Experience shows though, call twice, pay somewhere at the till and then collect it! So not a good process. Call twice, because even taking the order over phone with my name wasn't that easy. And that's what I'm getting at, that's the core point why some companies are successful and others aren't. It's the customer experience behind it. That's what we need to do, and in sessions that follow now we'll go deeper into individual topics. And I'm glad you're staying with us! Thanks for listening and I wish you a nice day or evening. You can subscribe to this podcast on all common channels. Tell your colleagues and friends about it too, the bigger the community gets, the more content and discussion we can bring and create for you.