What a London traffic scheme teaches us about customer pain

Common Knowledge

Everyone knows that you must understand customer pain. Most people know that avoiding pain is twice as powerful a motivation as seeking pleasure. Hence all marketing and sales teaching starts with defining customer pain.

Here's a link to a 5-step process you can use.

If you sit in a room with likeminded colleagues you’ll quickly reach consensus on customer pain. If one of you has worked in an industry before, almost inevitably their experience will shape the outcome. This is called Consensus Bias – we like quick results we all agree on.

You may test your thesis with one or two friendly clients. They agree and your consensus is reinforced. But what motivates innovators of your product is rarely what gets it to the majority.

Customer pain is something you must keep reassessing and testing in the market. The cardinal sin is to project your view of pain onto customers.

Lessons from a London Traffic Scheme.

Wandsworth Bridge dissects a meander in the River Thames in west London and the air quality around it is among the worst in Europe. A traffic scheme on the north side of the bridge taxes drivers from outside the area and has led to 60% falls in vehicles cutting through side streets.

This is a success for the council, which followed a 5-step process to arrive at taxing as the solution to the pain of nitrogen oxide pollution from traffic:

1.  London’s population is rising

2.  More people work from home

3.  Deliveries to those homes are rising

4.  76% of drivers use Sat Navs and hence take standard routes

5.  90% of traffic through South Fulham is from outside of the borough.

Residents applaud the scheme even though it crushes local businesses. The streets where they live are quieter and they’re free to drive to shops further away.

But is the right customer served and has their pain been relieved?

Who is the customer for roads?

The right solution depends on identifying the appropriate customer and their pain:

1. Drivers: the scheme fails because they must drive further to get anywhere.

2. People: a failure because the extra miles means more pollution elsewhere.

3. Residents: a win as even electric vehicles are taxed under the scheme.

The easy consensus around controversial policies is to push the problem onto someone else.

Applying this to your business

Local politics may seem a world away from business. But when we define customer pain and set about building products to address it, we must ensure we are dealing with the right issue.

At OTAS Technologies we built analytics to optimise trading costs and make firms more efficient. Our beta clients loved it (and funded us).

When we pushed beyond these clients we found many large firms cared more about the volume of trading than its cost. In a simple fix, sales worked with engineers to create alerts that customers tailor to their trading strategy. The product adapted to a new customer pain.

At GIST Impact we were one of several companies solving the pain of low quality Environmental, Social and Governmental (ESG) metrics. But while the method was better, the outcome was much the same and investors rarely bit. Hence the providers pivot to supplying regulatory reporting tools.

The lesson is keep reworking your assumptions and testing with a wider audience. This way you overcome any consensus bias.

What to do next

Nitrogen oxide pollution from traffic is down 90% in the 30 years since catalytic converter legislation, according to Public Health England. The air pollution menace is fine particles (PM 2.5) of which only 12% comes from the roads in my London borough.

By assuming a problem (NOx) and a cause (traffic) the local government designed a solution (taxes) that increases air pollution across West London. The UK government is now investigating these schemes after a backlash from the wider electorate.

When we all know to solve for customer pain and it still exists, then we’re addressing the wrong pain. Most likely that’s a result of Consensus Bias.

I'm Simon Maughan and I write ‘The Profit Elevator’ as a guide for smaller businesses to accelerate growth.

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