Customers at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Usually when I start my CRM course, we first think of consumers as those that the students making up the class can most identify with.  One assignment that has been ongoing for the last 5 years is attending and observing consumers at the annual Coffee and Chocofest.  This was not overlooked this year, however, as timing would have it my former student, Hira Wajahat Malik, was returning to Zagreb and came into the class (11 Feb 2016) to talk about her customer.  This customer was in stark contrast to coffee addicts and chocoholics the new group of students would soon engage with but represented the Bottom of the Pyramid.

I posed to the students a question: "Do you think you will ever have to understand a new customer in a new market?" Well, ofcourse I expected them to quickly answer yes but this opened them to unfamiliar territory that Hira would expose them to over the next hour and into a week long homework assignment.  The classroom went from just a few people familiar with the "BoP" term to 30 plus students diving deep into related issues --- what organizations and enterprises address customers at the Bottom of the Pyramid and how?.

Hira had spent a semester back in 2010 at ZSEM as part of an exchange program between her school in Pakistan and ours here in Croatia (www.zsem.hr). She took my Entrepreneurship course and worked on a business plan on developing a solar energy company.  To every teacher's dream, she is working on a related business today and was in Europe to participate on a training and partnership exploration.  She captured students by the way she matter of factly talked about how over 60% of the 220 million people living in Pakistan is off grid.  But her view of the Bottom of the Pyramid showed people living with mobile phones without access to electricity and sanitation but with desire for quality products and less means to demand them.  Her solution was to illustrate the isolated areas that would need more alternative energy solutions like solar energy and bringing different payment options to make it more affordable.

The students then had the challenge to find other organizations addressing Bottom of the Pyramid issues and document this with a video or article link.  The assignment took anywhere from 30 seconds to 60 minutes as the students later revealed.  The issues they found were related to health, hygene, access to water, women's issues, preserving cultural heritage, economic development.  We had a total of 30 out of 32 students engage with this optional task. We also then challenged students to prepare a creative presentation of their short research with little guidance and a lot of freedom.  Again this was optional and we got 6 assignments as a result.  The 20% of the students that were willing, able and interested in pursuing this last task included poems, collages, comparitive presentations on prezi.  In a future blog post update we will cluster the research the students around customer profiles, themes and locations and begin to profile their work here as some will develop them into full business cases for a graded element of the course.

Guest Lecturer, Hira Wajahat Malik, Teaching Assistant, Nina Alvir and students

 working in the class.

CRM - Who is the Customer? #Learner

Customer Relationship Management is celebrating with me as a course I have taught for 10 years at ZSEM!  This semester started off with only half the class showing up on Day 1 but what a blessing to have 19 enthusiastic students and a large capacity room to play in.  Yes, play is part of our learning process.  But learn we did.  This post is a recap of the class for the other half that did not make it and for those who did to reflect on the experience.

We started class with a question...Are you satisfied with the room setup?  The traditional classroom style focuses attention on the professor and the front of the class where all students are in neat rows facing forward.  Tradition should be questioned in my book.  So if we have enough space and movable chairs why not shake things up.  I broke the class up into 3 groups of 6-7 and then they went about coming up with ways to rearrange the furniture and space to maximize learning goals they set.  This is how I say hello, let's move.

The logic is that we should use every opportunity to improve and know how to manage change that is in our control.  For those three hours each week we control the space and should use it to our advantage.  Its not simply about being on automatic pilot.  I do not want zombie students who just take their seats each week sitting in the same place waiting for me to spoon feed information.  I love to construct how we learn and customize what we learn to the industries students find appealling.  Right now, education is a common platform.  Understanding how to create and reimagine the learning environment can be taught by a power point presentation but it can also be experienced by getting up and making it happen.

The results of our experiment were fascinating and I could write a whole research paper on it but instead I will give you a peek into what happened in pictures:

Team 1. Chose to line up the tables face to face in a board room style.  They felt it would give maximum eye contact and balance of power but they had to negotiate around the setup of another team and battle a pole and unruly electrical wires.

The end result for  Team 1. was they added a podium, created signage, laid out folders and took their best shot to capture a setup that would foster debate and discussion.  On the other hand if they removed the podium it would be a great setup for some speed dating.

Team 2. Tried to experiment with engineering a triangle as all teams had the additional challenge of having enough seats so that everyone in the class that day could be seated in the work space. A pole in the classroom also restricted views and would leave some members feeling isolated.

The final result for Team 2. was demonstrated as a teacher or trainer could enter into the middle of the open triangle to move about and interact freely with the participants.  However, the team themselves after sitting in their creation felt that it was too rigid and preferred the space that Team 3 created.

And like Goldie Locks and the three bears....Team 3. seemed to be just right... a multi-level circle where everyone had enough personal space around them but could clearly see everyone and felt comfortable to share freely and openly in this configuration.

There are numerous articles on learning environments and I have written in this blog before on different setups used at conferences to achieve different results.  We will continue this dialog in future class sessions.  If anyone wants to read ahead if you are focused on customers as learners, conference goers, trainees, etc. Here is a quick reading list to get you started...

1. Bob Pearlman - New Learning Environments for 21st Century Skills
2. Lawson Reed Wulsin, Jr. - Classroom Design - Literature Review
3. Jessica Lieber - 5 Ways Classroom Design Can Improve What We Learn and Who Learns It  

Contribute some of your own ideas to the comments below and thanks for visiting.