Thursday, October 9, 2014
Why Do Customers Choose You?
Two marketing professors asked this question of more than 2000 senior executives from around the world over a four-year period, surveying business leaders in industries that ranged from packaged goods, retailing, and airlines, to construction, chemicals, and packaging. Specifically, they wanted to know what factors accounted for each company’s competitive success. For what reasons do customers choose them over their immediate competitors?
Before reading further, take a few seconds to think about how you would answer this question, with respect to your own company. Why do customers choose you?
What these two marketing professors discovered in their fairly comprehensive survey was that nearly everyone answered this open-ended question in similar terms, providing a remarkable level of agreement across all different industries. Almost all the executives polled reported that the primary factor behind customers choosing their company over their competitors had to do with the individual relationships and interactions that their customers had with them – in short, the researchers suggest, what mattered most were things like “trust, confidence and strength of relationships, as well as…convenience, ease of doing business and support...”
Perhaps you, too, named similar factors.
It should be obvious from this that trust and customer relationships are by far the most powerful drivers of any company’s competitive triumph over other its immediate competitors -- that is, other companies offering similar products and services. At least in the opinions of the vast majority of senior business executives, customers choose to do business with their company, in preference to their competitors, not usually on account of price, or even product quality, but usually as a result of their relationship with and trust of the organization, or of some people within the organization.
Part of the professors’ survey, however, also polled these executives to ask them which kinds of tasks they spent most of their time and energy on. Again, before you read further, ask yourself this additional question: Over just the last couple of weeks, what tasks at your own business have consumed most of your time and effort?
What the researchers found in their survey was that a majority of executives spent far more time and energy trying to improve and perfect their products and technologies, rather than their customer relationships. The tasks that commanded their attention and consumed most of their time, in short, had much less to do with competitive success.
They concluded that customer-based innovations and customer-focused processes would be a far better subject for executive attention, because these activities can create results that “are less easily replicated by competitors, and thus offer a more certain basis of sustainable competitive advantage.”
So in your own work, if in fact you do face a similar situation, one strategy for raising your level of competitive success in your own business category would be to make a conscious effort now to allocate just a bit more work, each week, to strengthening the relationships you have with your customers. At least once or twice a week, try to think of some service, or product feature, or convenience, that you could deliver to some or all of your customers to make their own customer experiences more attractive to them.
Usually, what will please a customer the most are features and services that make the customer experience more and more frictionless. They want an experience, in other words, that is reliable, relevant, valuable and trustable. So take some time this week to think about how you can increase the reliability of your product or service, or the relevance of your communication or offer to individual customers, or your value-for-money equation, or your trustability.
From a competitive standpoint, this will definitely be time well spent.
History of Kanniya hot water wells
It says that King Ravana stuck the earth with his sword in several spots and several fountains sprang from these points. The water was hot and this was the beginning of these hot water springs.
The entrance is a part of a Buddhist monastery and Bhikkhus used it as a part of their complex.
There are some old ruins scattered over the area. Most of the historical artefacts were destroyed in the war time. The name 'Kanniya' came from Kal = stone; niya = land
There are seven wells in a square shape. Wells are only 3-4 feet deep and you can clearly see the bottom.
People are not allowed to use soap at the wells. The temperature is considerably high but vary from one spring to another.
Wells run out of water, when 10-15 buckets of water are taken out. So, people move from one well to another, in search of water.
Seven Wells
The wells are not deep. There are some other building in the premises. There is a Hindu temple close by.
UNTAMED MIND LEADS TO DISASTER
The mind of man can be compared to an invincible enemy grown extremely powerful be-cause of his own negligence. It is a field that yields a bumper harvest of the ills of the transmigratory life. Having become turbulent because of man's indifference, the mind cannot be controlled and it will lead him to ruin or cause irreparable damage. Emphasis is laid on curbing the vagaries of the mind because it generates desires, infatuation and sufferings. The mind, when attached to the sense objects, causes misery and when it is kept pure, liberation could be achieved. Many liken it to a burglar seated within a man, ready to blunt or rob his faculties. One of the best examples of how the mind works is that of a humble worker who has put in a number of years of service in a big factory. One day he conceals a manufactured product and his act escapes the attention of the watchmen. He repeats it as he has not been caught. As days pass, he is emboldened to lift a number of objects, without the sentries being aware of his misdeed. The practice continues and he commits the theft on a large scale. Even after new guards are posted, he continues with his stealing habit.
The mind, when allowed to go astray be-cause of man's indifference or negligence or connivance, turns insolent, refusing to obey when a crucial situation arises. The only way to sub-due its arrogance is to use the "arrow of service "to God and to the spiritual guide (Guru). The graces of the Divine will be available through the meditation of the spiritual mentor. The master who leads an aspirant to God should be treated as God him-self, revered and his advice followed as he provides enlightenment. He should not be considered as an ordinary person. With his help, mind, the villain, can be quelled. The formula of seeking the guidance of the teacher and submitting oneself before god to curb the mind forms part of a dissertation given by (Jada)Bharatha to a king, who initially thought that he was a madcap. Bharatha's detailed account of the phenomenal nature of the world, the working of the mind and allied topics provide a proper per-spective of life. God alone is unaffected by the concept of time, dimension and space, whereas the ordinary human being undergoes changes and even the world goes through alterations. Like the body which is subject to decay, the universe undergoes various processes of change and thus both can be stated to be impermanent. The ultimate truth is called by the sages"Bhagavan" possessor of all Divine majesties.
In the Brihan-naradiya Purana it is said that in Kali-yuga (the present yuga, or age), when people in general are short-lived, slow in spiritual realization and always disturbed by various anxieties, the best means of spiritual realization is chanting the holy name of the Lord.
harer nama harer nama
harer namaiva kevalam
kalau nasty eva nasty eva
nasty eva gatir anyatha [Adi 17.21]
"In this age of quarrel and hypocrisy the only means of deliverance is chanting the holy name of the Lord. There is no other way. There is no other way. There is no other way."
The mind, when allowed to go astray be-cause of man's indifference or negligence or connivance, turns insolent, refusing to obey when a crucial situation arises. The only way to sub-due its arrogance is to use the "arrow of service "to God and to the spiritual guide (Guru). The graces of the Divine will be available through the meditation of the spiritual mentor. The master who leads an aspirant to God should be treated as God him-self, revered and his advice followed as he provides enlightenment. He should not be considered as an ordinary person. With his help, mind, the villain, can be quelled. The formula of seeking the guidance of the teacher and submitting oneself before god to curb the mind forms part of a dissertation given by (Jada)Bharatha to a king, who initially thought that he was a madcap. Bharatha's detailed account of the phenomenal nature of the world, the working of the mind and allied topics provide a proper per-spective of life. God alone is unaffected by the concept of time, dimension and space, whereas the ordinary human being undergoes changes and even the world goes through alterations. Like the body which is subject to decay, the universe undergoes various processes of change and thus both can be stated to be impermanent. The ultimate truth is called by the sages"Bhagavan" possessor of all Divine majesties.
In the Brihan-naradiya Purana it is said that in Kali-yuga (the present yuga, or age), when people in general are short-lived, slow in spiritual realization and always disturbed by various anxieties, the best means of spiritual realization is chanting the holy name of the Lord.
harer nama harer nama
harer namaiva kevalam
kalau nasty eva nasty eva
nasty eva gatir anyatha [Adi 17.21]
"In this age of quarrel and hypocrisy the only means of deliverance is chanting the holy name of the Lord. There is no other way. There is no other way. There is no other way."
Two Americans, a German win 2014 Nobel prize for chemistry (super-resolved fluorescence microscopy)
Two US and one German scientist win Nobels for opening a window into the nanoworld with their development of ‘super-resolved fluorescence microscopy’
Eric Betzig, of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and William E Moerner, of Stanford University, in the US and Stefan W Hell, of the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, Germany, won for circumventing limitations on optical microscopy.
The Nobel assembly, which awards the prize, said: “For a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Helped by fluorescent molecules, the Nobel laureates in chemistry 2014 ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their groundbreaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension.”
Eric Betzig, of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and William E Moerner, of Stanford University, in the US and Stefan W Hell, of the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, Germany, won for circumventing limitations on optical microscopy.
The Nobel assembly, which awards the prize, said: “For a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Helped by fluorescent molecules, the Nobel laureates in chemistry 2014 ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their groundbreaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension.”
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