商场也搞恋爱心理战

    这些经验教训不仅适用于个人，对组织来说也讲得通。2011年下半年出现了多起备受关注的企业与消费者之间的权力斗争。其中，美国银行和电信巨头威力众曾宣布将新增收费项目，而在线影碟租赁公司Netflix则计划分拆DVD邮件租赁业务，但这些决定都很快就被迫取消。

    你可能会觉得，如果某些公司的产品转换成本较高（举例而言，更换开户行颇为麻烦，提前终止手机合约则需要缴纳违约金），又或者某些公司的服务备受欢迎，那它们在和顾客打交道的时候就掌握了王牌。可是，上述例子似乎告诉我们，权力的平衡正朝着有益于消费者的方向倾斜，而且这种趋势似乎正在加速。

    随着社交网络日趋重要，消费者互相学习以及动员形成一个更大组织的能力有了几何级的提升。随着消费者之间相互关系紧密程度的提高，消费者彼此之间的联系对消费者与企业这对关系形成了一种补充。

    因此，企业的最低兴趣方权力开始有所削弱，因为它掌握的不再是一系列彼此孤立的客户关系（它在这种关系中占据着优势地位），而是必须要与彼此联系的客户所组成的网络相抗衡，后者越来越有能力自诩为一个群体。

    毫无疑问，Netflix的商业分析师预计，其宣布分拆方案（后于去年10月宣布放弃该计划）后，将会引发顾客的不满，但这种不满规模较小，处于可以接受的范围之内。但他们没有意识到，这种负面的顾客反馈将会通过新闻报道和网络社区的讨论持续发酵，截至第三季度末，已有总计80万顾客离开，对Netflix的品牌形象造成了难以估量的损害（截至第四季度末，该公司又重新赢回了61万用户）。美国银行的例子也颇为相似，过去此事可能只是个别消费者的抗议，很容易遭到忽略，可默里•克拉契波尔在社交运动平台change.org网站上发布的请愿书很快就获得了超过30万人的签名，使美国银行无法置之不理。

    要在这一全新世界中做到游刃有余，企业及其经理人必须表现出倾听的诚意和乐意，且程度要与多数人际关系中人们所期待的水平相仿。不过，在今天这个新的时代取得成功并没有放之四海而皆准的秘诀，Facebook在其网站上推出新元素和服务的经历就具体体现了这种“最低兴趣”的聚合所具有的威力，比如其时间轴（Timeline）虽然引发了一些隐私方面的担忧，但仍得以成功推出，而新闻推送（News Feed）的最初版本却遭到了猛烈批评，使马克•扎克伯格不得不公开道歉。

    正如同健康的个人关系需要不断检视与维护，企业与顾客之间关系的新范式也越来越强调权力的平衡及不同群体之间就重要议题所展开的对话，以及结果、反响出乎意料时重新考虑事情的意愿。爱情若想长久，离不开耐心、努力，以及抛开权力之争的游戏、展开真诚对话的意愿，企业与顾客之间的关系也是如此。

    杰凡•苏是一位管理与人力资源咨询师，还是哈佛商学院（Harvard Business School）的助理研究员。托马斯•德隆是哈佛商学院管理与组织行为学教授，他著有《自由飞翔：化对未知的恐惧为成功的助推剂》（Flying Without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success）一书。

    译者：小宇

    These lessons hold true not just for individuals but for entire organizations as well. The latter half of 2011 was marked by several highly publicized power struggles between corporations and consumers, with the quick reversal of imposed fees by Bank of America and Verizon and Netflix's (NFLX) intended spin-off of its DVD-by-mail service.

    While you might assume that companies whose products impose high switching costs (e.g., the inconvenience of changing banks, or the early termination fees for breaking a cell phone contract) or whose services were wildly popular would hold the trump card in their relationships with customers. Yet these examples seem to demonstrate that the tide of power is turning in consumers' favor, and that the trend may be accelerating.

    Amid the increased prominence of social media, consumers' ability to learn from each other and to mobilize as a larger group has increased exponentially. Through this increased connectivity, consumers complement their relationships with companies by adding relationships with each other.

    So, the company's power of least interest has grown weaker, as it no longer manages a set of isolated customer relationships where it holds a power position, but instead must confront a web of connected players that are increasingly capable of asserting themselves as a group.

    Netflix's business analysts no doubt predicted that there would be some small, but acceptable, level of customer attrition after its Qwikster spinoff announcement (a plan it abandoned in October), but it failed to gauge how the negative customer reaction would continue to compound itself via news coverage and online community discussion until customer departures totaled 800,000 by the end of the third quarter, delivering untold damage to the Netflix brand (the company has since gained 610,000 subscribers as of the end of the four quarter). And what would have been an easily ignorable smattering of customer complaints in the past was brought together by Molly Klatchpole's petition on change.org into a 300,000-signature-strong force that Bank of America could not disregard.

    Navigating this new world certainly requires managers and companies to exhibit the same kind of honesty and willingness to listen as is expected in most personal relationships. But there is no single recipe for success in this new world. Facebook's journey in introducing new attributes and services to its site embodies the perils and promise of this aggregated power of "least interest", ranging from the successful roll out of Timeline despite some privacy concerns to Mark Zuckerberg's public mea culpa over the initial version of News Feed.

    Just as healthy individual relationships require constant monitoring and care, the new paradigm for company and customer relationships values greater symmetry of power and dialogue between groups over issues that matter, and the willingness to reconsider things when results or reactions are not as expected. Like any love affair you want to last, it requires patient, hard work and the willingness to put power games aside to have real conversations.

    Jevan Soo is a management and human capital consultant, and a research associate at Harvard Business School. Thomas J. DeLong is a management and organizational behavior professor at Harvard Business School and author of Flying Without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success.