Cheaper? Chunkier? Chocolatier? (Learnings from A Milkshake) Team, I hope you will appreciate our discussion on offset printing and Matternet (pizza delivery cost) from this article. There is no one right answer in all circumstances.... One company was trying to ramp up the sales of their milkshakes. The company had spent months studying the issue. They had brought customers in who fit the profile of the quintessential milkshake consumer and peppered them with questions: “Can you tell us how we can improve our milkshake so you’d buy more of them? Do you want it chocolatier? Cheaper? Chunkier?” The company would take all this feedback, then go off and improve the milkshake on those dimensions. They worked and worked on making the milkshake better as a result—but these improvements had no impact on sales or profits whatsoever. The company was stumped. My colleague Bob Moesta then offered to bring a completely different perspective to the milkshake problem: “I wonder what job arises in people’s lives that causes them to come to this restaurant to ‘hire’ a milkshake?” That was an interesting way to think about the problem. So they stood in a restaurant hours on end, taking very careful data: What time did people buy these milkshakes? What were they wearing? Were they alone? Did they buy other food with it? Did they eat it in the restaurant or drive off with it? Surprisingly, it turned out that nearly half of the milkshakes were sold in the early morning. The people who bought those morning milkshakes were almost always alone; it was the only thing they bought; and almost all of them got in a car and drove off with it. To figure out what job they were hiring that milkshake to do, we came back another morning and stood outside the restaurant so that we could confront these folks as they left, milkshake in hand. As they emerged and, in language that they could understand, we essentially asked each of them, “Excuse me. Can you help me understand what job you are trying to do with that milkshake?” When they’d struggle to answer this question, we’d help them by asking, “Well, think about the last time you were in this same situation, needing to get the same job done—but you didn’t come here to hire that milkshake. What did you hire?” The answers were enlightening: Bananas. Doughnuts. Bagels. Candy bars. But the milkshake was clearly their favorite. As we put all the answers together, it became clear that the early-morning customers all had the same job to do: they had a long and boring ride to work. They needed something to do while driving to keep the commute interesting. They weren’t really hungry yet, but they knew that in a couple of hours, they’d face a midmorning stomach rumbling. “What else do I hire to do this job?” one mused. “I hire bananas sometimes. But take my word for it: don’t do bananas. They are gone too quickly—and you’ll be hungry again by midmorning.” Some people complained that doughnuts were too crumbly and left their fingers sticky, making a mess on their clothes and the steering wheel as they tried to eat and drive. A common complaint about hiring bagels for this job was that they were dry and tasteless—forcing people to drive their cars with their knees while they spread cream cheese and jam on the bagels. Another commuter used our language and confessed, “One time I hired a Snickers bar. But I felt so guilty about eating candy for breakfast that I never did it again.” But a milkshake? It was the best of the lot. It took a long time to finish a thick milkshake with that thin straw. And it was substantial enough to ward off the looming midmorning hunger attack. One commuter effused, “This milkshake. It is so thick! It easily takes me twenty minutes to suck it up through that little straw. Who cares what the ingredients are—I don’t. All I know is that I’m full all morning. And it fits right here in my cup holder”—as he held up his empty hand. It turns out that the milkshake does the job better than any of the competitors—which, in the customers’ minds, are not just milkshakes from other chains but bananas, bagels, doughnuts, breakfast bars, smoothies, coffee, and so on. That was a breakthrough insight for the fast-food chain—but the breakthroughs were not over yet. We discovered that in the afternoon and evening, the same product was hired for a fundamentally different job. Instead of commuters, the people who were coming in to buy milkshakes in the afternoon and evening were typically fathers—fathers who had had to say “no” to their children about any number of things all week long. No new toy. No, they can’t stay up late. No, they can’t have a puppy. I recognized that I had been one of those dads, more times than I could remember, and I had the same job to do when I was in that situation. I’d been looking for something innocuous to which I could say “yes,” to make me feel like a kind and loving father. So I’m standing there in line with my son and I order my meal. Then my son Spencer orders his meal—and he pauses to look up at me like only a son can, and asks, “Dad, can I have a milkshake, too?” And the moment has arrived when I can say “yes” to my son and feel good about myself. I reach down, put my hand on his shoulder, and say, “Of course, Spence, you can have a milkshake.” Turns out, the milkshakes didn’t do that particular job at all well. When we watched those father-son tables, the dads, like me, finished their meal first. The son would then finish his. And then he would pick up that thick milkshake—and it took Dads didn’t hire the milkshake to keep their son entertained for a long time; they hired it to be nice. They’d patiently wait while their son struggled to make progress on the shake. But after a while, they’d grow impatient. “Look, son, I’m sorry, but we don’t have all night ...” They’d clean up their table and the milkshake would get thrown away half finished. If our fast-food chain asked me, “So, Clay ... how can we improve the milkshake so that you’ll buy more of them? Thicker? Sweeter? Bigger?” I wouldn’t know what to say, because I hire it for two fundamentally different jobs. Then, when they averaged up the responses of the key forty-five- to sixty-five-year-old demographic segment that has the highest proclivity to buy milkshakes, it would guide them to develop a one-size-fits-none product that doesn’t do either job well. On the other hand, if you understand that there are two different jobs that the milkshake is being hired to do, it becomes obvious how to improve the shake. The morning job needs a more viscous milkshake, which takes even longer to suck up. You might add in chunks of fruit—but not to make it healthy, because that’s not the reason it’s being hired. It’s being hired by morning customers to keep their commute interesting. The unexpected pieces of fruit would do just that. And, finally, you’d wheel the dispensing machine out from behind the counter to the front, and install a prepaid swipe-card, so that commuters could run in, gas up, and go— and never get caught in a line. The afternoon make-me-feel-good-about-being-a-parent job is fundamentally different. Maybe the afternoon milkshake should come in half sizes; be less thick so it could be finished more quickly; and so on. There is no one right answer for all circumstances. You have to start by understanding the job the customer is trying to have done. him forever to suck it up that thin little straw. - How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen
Posted on: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 19:21:47 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015