Stanley Marcus, who was president and chairman of the board of Neiman Marcus, was quoted as saying:

“Consumers are statistics. Customers are people.”

I think he was telling us that great experiences need to accommodate the specific needs, wants, and aspirations of individuals — who just happen to also be customers.

My take: Unfortunately, many companies don’t seem to understand this concept. I often find that firms either lack any real understanding of their customers or they rely almost completely on analyses of their data warehouses. That’s why I often find myself telling clients…

“Your customers don’t live in spreadsheets; you need to go out and talk to them to understand who they are as people. That is, of course, unless each of your customers is really a 55% female with 2.3 kids who is 48% from a suburb and is 11% Hispanic.”

It’s not that analytics are bad (they’re actually quite helpful), but they don’t provide enough of an understanding of “people” to design and deliver great experiences. That’s why companies should use design personas — as I discussed in my previous post called “Get To Know You Customers Persona-lly”

The bottom line: Experiences need to satisfy individual people, not consumers.

This blog post was originally published by Temkin Group prior to its acquisition by Qualtrics in October 2018.