Warning phrases. Things dangerously well-established businesses say in the digital era which demand challenge.

Success breeds complacency; familiarity breeds contempt. Clayton M. Christensen in The Innovator’s Dilemma lays out brilliantly how good management and great firms can be brought down by new technologies and wrong thinking. If you hear the following phrases then stop and reconsider. If they sound cynical it is because customers are fickle.

This is a collection of rebuttal arguments we've respectfully offered clients when we have met over-comfort with the current position, and sometimes a lack of imagination about what the future might look like. Clients expect challenge and a stretch to their thinking, and when it is offered their view often quickly shifts. We hope to offer some of that value here.

Thinking about customers…

#1       “We know our customers. We've got the research.”

Do you really understand what your customers really, really want? Or do you just understand what they want from the products and services they take from you today? What about those who aren’t customers? What do they really want from products and services you don’t sell?

#2       “Our customers don’t work that way.”

Why do we think our customers won’t change their behaviors if presented with a better offer? Take them with you. Offer them a better way of doing what you do before someone else does. Drive change in their behavior while you still can.

#3       “Customers want a choice of channels.”

They don’t. Customer seek solutions. When they express channel preferences they are just describing the channels that work best for them. Digital channels can be made measurably better for the customer for just about everything.

Advice: Obsess about customer need. Observe don’t just listen. They have more ways to meet their needs than ever. Take a step back. What is the higher order, more fundamental need of the customer and marketplace? Use your assets to meet that need…

Thinking about assets…

#4       “Our (new) competitors don’t have our [asset].”

Maybe they don’t need it? Maybe if they can’t possibly afford it they will have to find a way to trade without it – or to find a group of profitable, perhaps lower-margin customers, for whom it’s not necessary?

#5       “Our customers like talking to us.”

Maybe they do. But do our expensive human-to-human interactions really add-value or could we now do it better digitally? Would we build in as much human cost if we were starting again? Are we overvaluing the ‘as-is’? See: Mourn the death of analogue businesses; don’t listen to their customers. Nostalgia isn't an insight.

#6       “We know how this industry works.”

Experience in your sector is a good thing. Assuming industry custom and practice won’t change is a bad thing. New entrants tend to worry less about the status quo and more about how to solve the needs of a sub-set of customers.

Advice: Exploit your assets. Established businesses have customers, people, brands, data, suppliers, processes and systems that new entrants would kill for, so make them count. Don’t overstate them; your new competitors won’t look like you and will find ways to make your assets irrelevant. Your asset is valuable if you use it to differentiate, not just be different.

Thinking out about how we sit in the marketplace…

#7       “This is about making us more efficient.”

Digitizing what you already do to reduce customer friction and operating cost is part of the answer. What new, uniquely digital, service can you now offer that would have been impossible before?

#8       “That’s true for consumers not business.”

Every trait of the digital consumer is true of the business user. Google says we expect to “Work the way we live.” Mobile-first. Willing to try new things. Expecting high-levels of convenience and control.

#9       “Not everything can be digitized.”

This is probably true but well-established successful businesses are the worst at self-justifying why people and physical channels are secret assets while they forever try to hack costs from them. Start by assuming everything can be digitized. What you do can be replaced by software – automated, faster and cheaper.

Advice: Believe the trends. Digital trends are easy to observe and agree with. And then to ignore and rationalize why they don’t apply to you. Digital is changing and disrupting every industry. No one is immune. Do not convince yourself that your sector is different or your ‘as-is’ is invincible.