CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Customer Stereotyping
And Brand
Stratification: Do
#CustomerLivesMatter?
By Carolyne Gathuru
At a time when world consciousness
has been raised to boiling point
about discrimination with the
re-eruption of the #BlackLivesMatter
movement spurred by recent criminal acts
laced with racial bias, it is time that the
corporate fraternity took a step back to
examine discrimination from a customer
experience view point.
For corporates to review their position
for possible discriminatory biases
whether overt or nuanced, conscious or
subconscious, it would be important to
revisit what discrimination actually is. The
dictionary lists synonyms for the same
as: prejudice, bias, bigotry, intolerance,
narrow-mindedness, unfairness, inequity,
favoritism, one-sidedness, partisanship,
and apartheid. All strong words that elicit
equally strong reactions towards rejection
should there be any implication towards
alleged practice.
Many a corporate organization in their
responsibility statements indicate
that they respect diversity, are an equal
opportunity employer, and have a non
‘non-discrimination’ policy based on
gender, age, disability, sexual-orientation,
religion, age, class, cultural bias or any
other circumstance that would elicit
intolerance. All good when documented
on paper and when placed in policy files.
However… would these organizations
sail through an audit when assessed for
compliance? Would both the internal
and external customer experience audit,
yield a clean plate when pitted against the
discrimination scale? Would the brand,
marketing and customer experience
initiatives hold fast to the nondiscrimination
agenda when the customer
stratification, customer segmentation, and
customer differentiation strategies are
examined?
Every brand, marketing and customer
experience syllabus is built on
the foundation of “Knowing Your
Customer”. A premise that advocates for
understanding customers, knowing what
their demographics, and psychographics
Would both your internal and external customer
experience audit, yield a clean plate
when pitted against the discrimination
scale? Would the brand, marketing and customer
experience initiatives hold fast to the
non-discrimination agenda when the customer
stratification, customer segmentation,
and customer differentiation strategies
are examined?
call for, and responding in tandem with
the right products and services, and
appropriate messaging that resonates with
each group.
These customer assessments are based
on the persuasion that it is critical to
dig deeper and understand customers’
cultural heritages, religious inclinations,
socio-economic orientations, geographical
alignments and schools of thought;
and that armed with this information,
customer responsiveness will soar based
on the ability to service specific needs and
provide client specific solutions. All good
when documented on strategy documents
for implementation.
However… where does the line between
positive customer stereotyping, and
customer discrimination begin and
end? Is there such a thing as a positive
bias when it comes to designing great
customer experiences? Does shelving the
batch approach and stratifying customers
work well towards delivering customer
satisfaction?
Two main customer experience
philosophies exist in this realm, with
one advocating for matrixing general
assumptions about different customer
groups and mapping out effective ways
to serve them. The other pushes for
the cessation of customer profiling as a
customer experience strategy, owing to
customer outliers and exceptions being
collateral damage in the customer group
initiatives application process.
The first assertion leans towards making
a deliberate effort to understand the
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