Getting Customers Right

GM's announcement today of their largest quarterly loss since 1992 was expected by industry watchers, many of whom have been saying for years that GM isn't getting what it takes to meet customer needs. In 1992 the company had roughly 40% market share in the US. Today, GM has somewhere between 24-26% share depending on which source you consult. Although many of the company's profit woes are related to health costs, it's hard to argue that health costs are contributing to market share loss.

Problems with marketing and poor design of models are two key factors that are having a major impact on buying decisions. GM Execs keep saying that they are trying to "get it right" when it comes to listening to customers and creating great products. A little research across news sources, websites and consumer auto sites reveals numerous instances of GM execs using similar phrases over the last year.

But are they really making any strides to get things right? In a post in the BusinessWeek Online blog Brand New Day, David Kiley takes GM marketers to task for getting things wrong despite changing marketing strategies multiple times in the last few years.

But let's look at the stuff GM can control and has botched. New products and advertising. Pontiac and Buick have had recent marketing makeovers, yet GM marketing chief Mark LaNeve says they aren't right yet. Huh? How'd you get through a process, practically a new brand strategy every year for the last four years for those brands and still not get it right. Press GM executives on Saturn and Saab, and they'll tell you that the marketing strategies hatched for those brands aren't right either.

Maybe they weren't looking online for some of their marketing ideas. If you review the many online auto enthusiast sites you can plainly see that there has been a tremendous amount of feedback available for a long time from their most loyal customers as well as people who don't like GM cars. People post ideas about product features (tranny's, power systems, grills etc.) mentioning both what they like and dislike as well as what promotions and discounts are attractive or completely uninteresting.

Whatever the feedback, it's important that companies listen to all voices, not just those filtered by support staff or cumbersome surveys, in order to understand what's important to people today and what trends are emerging over time as the economy and other buying influences change. GM has taken a step in the right direction by launching a couple of blogs where people can write comments directly to their engineers and Vice Chairman, Bob Lutz. Not everyone likes the GM blog but it is good to see that they are accepting comments on their posts, positive and negative. That's at least one important step towards "getting it right".