Paradox of Customer Centricity Was a Factor in Failure of SVB & First Republic Bank

This podcast is brought to you by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Well, the failures of First Republic Bank and Silicon Valley Bank still being diagnosed as to what happened. Word marketing professor Peter Fader, who's also co-founder and CEO of Analytics Firm. Theta recently did his own recap on what he thinks happened. Great to be joined by Peter right now.

这个播客由宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院赞助。嗯，关于第一共和国银行和硅谷银行的失败，研究人员仍在诊断具体发生了什么。卓越的市场营销教授彼得·费德尔，也是分析公司Theta的联合创始人兼首席执行官，最近对他认为发生的事件进行了回顾。现在很高兴能与彼得一起加入讨论。

Peter, it has been a while. Great to have you back with us. Always a pleasure to talk to you, Dan. Thanks for a few moments.

彼得，好久不见。很高兴你回到我们身边。和你交谈总是一种愉快。谢谢你抽出时间给我一些时刻。

All right. How much of a surprise was it that what occurred actually occurred to you? Well, once things started to unravel earlier this summer with other banks and First Republic's name started coming up. I guess it was a surprise to hear about them being on that kind of watch list at the very beginning because they're just such a beloved institution. But you could see some of the telltale signs with them as with some of the other banks. So not too surprising at that point.

好的。对于发生的事情实际上发生在你身上，你有多么惊讶？嗯，今年夏天早些时候其他银行的事情开始解开，第一共和国的名字开始出现。我猜一开始听到他们被列入那种监视名单上确实让人惊讶，因为他们是如此受人喜爱的机构。但你可以从他们身上看到一些迹象，就像其他一些银行一样。所以那时并不太令人惊讶。

And so the component of customer centricity, which you have written about quite a bit in your career, you say there's an element of that at play here? Yes. I've written all these books on customer centricity. And actually in the first one, the very last piece, the kind of the linchpin that pulled it all together was a concept that I call the paradox of customer centricity. And it is a bona fide paradox because much of my work on customer centricity says, hey, not all customers who create it equal. We got to figure out who the good ones are, lean into them, treat them disproportionately well. Well, here's where it becomes a paradox. If we put all of our eggs in one basket, if we say they're the only kinds of customers we want to deal with, then we become very, very vulnerable. What happens if something goes on in the marketplace? What happens if our predictions about those customers might be wrong? What happens if there's even better customers out there, but we have such blinders on that we're not even looking for them? And it's this kind of thing that happened first republic. Come on, other things. There's a lot of just issues with there, their operations and financing. But this is a big part of it that they, this idea of saying we going after one kind of customer and they didn't have sufficient diversification in the customer base.

因此，在您的职业生涯中，关于以客户为中心的组成部分，您写了很多，您说这里有一种元素起到了作用？是的。我写了所有这些关于以客户为中心的书。实际上，在第一本书中，最后一个部分，我称之为“以客户为中心的悖论”，它是一个真正的悖论，因为我关于以客户为中心的工作很大一部分都在说，嗨，不是所有创造价值的客户都是一样的。我们必须找出谁是优秀的客户，专注于他们，优待他们。但这就是悖论所在。如果我们把所有鸡蛋放在一个篮子里，如果我们说他们是我们想要合作的唯一一类客户，那么我们就会变得非常非常脆弱。如果市场上发生什么事情怎么办？如果我们对这些客户的预测可能是错误的怎么办？如果有更好的客户存在，但我们带着狭隘的视野根本没有寻找他们怎么办？这就是第一共和国发生的问题。当然，还有其他问题，他们的运营和融资方面存在很多问题。但这是其中一个重要原因，他们追求同一类客户，而且在客户群体中缺乏足够的多样性。

How frequent do you think that that's a component that is out there right now? Pretty unusual. And this is actually one of the reasons why I and others always praised first republic because they kind of knew who the best customers were and did so in a disproportionate way, but took it to an extreme. Most of the companies are hedging their bets almost too much that they're saying, you know what, if you want to deal with us, we'll deal with you because we don't really know who's best or worst. So most companies are doing it not so much from a portfolio management standpoint, but almost from being naive or afraid to start playing favorites. First republic knew who the best kinds of customers were. They knew how to orient their products, their services, their messaging, even their free bees, their giveaways, their umbrellas. And they did it very, very well, but almost too well. And obviously it hurt them in a big way.

您觉得目前市场上有多少频繁出现这种情况的组成部分？非常不寻常。这实际上是我和其他人一直称赞第一共和国的原因之一，因为他们在很大程度上知道谁是最好的客户，并且采取了不成比例的方法，甚至到了极端。大多数公司几乎太过谨慎，他们说：“你想和我们交易，我们就和你交易，因为我们真的不知道谁是最好的或最差的。”所以大多数公司这样做，不是出于投资组合管理的考虑，而是出于天真或害怕开始偏袒某方面。第一共和国知道谁是最好的客户。他们知道如何调整他们的产品、服务、信息传递，甚至是他们的赠品、赠品，以及他们的伞。他们做得非常、非常好，但几乎做得太好了。显然，这给他们带来了很大的伤害。

You said in this piece that you wrote on the Theta website about that there is a historical component to this type of activity going on. Companies like Blockbuster and Kodak and Sears are some of the ones that have kind of gone down this path in the past. Well yes, but they've done so more in terms of the products and the services that they offered that a lot of companies and maybe a classic one also mentioned the pieces is Kodak that we're good at doing a certain kind of thing. That's what we're good at. And we don't have to worry about all this other new technology popping up. We'll always be the big dog in our field. So it really was there more about what they were offering. This is a very rare case where it's something about the nature of the kinds of customers that they're doing it with. So big picture, yes, it does fit that same narrative, but it emerged in a different kind of way. And it'll be interesting to see whether there'll be more cases like it where it hinges on the customers as opposed to the offering.

你在Theta网站上写的这篇文章中提到，这种活动中有一个历史组成部分。像Blockbuster、Kodak和Sears这样的公司过去也走过这条路。是的，但是他们更多是在提供的产品和服务方面这样做的，而很多公司可能也是一个经典的例子，比如Kodak，他们擅长做某种特定的事情。这是我们擅长的领域，我们不用担心其他新技术的涌现，我们总是会在这个领域中成为头号玩家。所以他们的问题更多是关于他们所提供的东西。这是一个非常罕见的例子，其中的问题在于他们与客户的关系。所以从大局来看，它确实符合同样的故事，但是它以一种不同的方式出现。而我们是否会看到更多类似的情况，它是否更多地关键于客户而不是产品，这将非常有趣。

What's the challenge then of getting that right balance? Of having that understanding that you can have a certain level of focus on a variety of clients, but not making it too overboard for a certain level of customer. Dan Loney, that's a tremendous challenge. It really is. I wish I could say, well, you should spend 60% of your budget on the high value customers and 40% on the lesser ones. Nah. There's no rule of thumb like that.

那么，如何找到这种恰当的平衡是一个挑战呢？怎样理解，你可以对多种客户有一定程度的关注，但不要对某一类客户过分依赖。丹·洛尼，这是一个巨大的挑战。确实如此。我希望我能说，你应该把60%的预算投入到高价值客户身上，剩下的40%花在次要客户身上。唉，没有这样的经验之谈。

Part of it is that we're still early on in companies even thinking about these ideas of customer centricity. Part of it, it would depend just a great deal on just this specific nature of each and every company. So I wish I had an answer to that question. I wish I could go to a company and say, you've gone too far, but we're not really there yet. But I think a case like this is going to help us think more actively, both academically and practically about where that line should be drawn.

有一部分原因是，我们处在公司刚开始思考以客户为中心的理念的早期阶段。另一部分原因则取决于每个公司的特定性质。因此，我希望我能够回答这个问题。我希望我能够去一家公司告诉他们，你们做得太过火了，但实际上我们还没有达到那个阶段。但我认为这样的案例将帮助我们更积极地思考，在学术和实践层面上，应该在哪个界限上划定。

So take a moment and talk about, and I know we've talked about this in the past, but I think it's great to kind of go back and circle back on it, that element of customer centricity and how important it is kind of in the success of a firm these days and what it means longer term for some companies as well. Well, of course it does depend on the firm. And a lot of people look to companies like Apple, which has been a phenomenal producer of products. And that's so true. And we'll use that as their North Star, their Paragon of Goodness. I think we need to see more and more companies looking to companies that get this customer centricity thing right. And ironically, sadly, first republic was one that I and others were often putting forward as it. So we need to kind of step back a little bit and think about companies that not only are doing great things at the extreme, but are also doing so in a balanced way. And by the way, there are other examples of it. Other examples where companies were all in with one kind of customer, one kind of customer management activity. And then for different reasons, whether it's changes in the macroeconomic climate, whether it's competition, would actually eat their lunch. So it's not necessarily the first, but it is certainly highly visible in this regard.

所以请花点时间来谈谈， 我知道我们以前已经谈过这个问题，但我认为回顾一下很重要，因为客户至上在当今企业的成功和长期发展中非常重要。当然了，这取决于企业的具体情况。很多人会关注像苹果这样的公司，他们是产品制造方面的杰出代表。这一点非常正确。我们可以以此作为他们追求的目标，他们的典范。我认为我们需要看到更多的公司学习那些在客户至上方面做得很好的公司。讽刺的是，不幸的是，First Republic银行曾经被我和其他人推为典范。因此，我们需要退一步，思考那些不仅在极端情况下做出出色表现，而且在平衡方面也同样出色的公司。顺便说一句，还有其他类似的例子。有些公司全力以赴支持一种特定类型的客户管理活动，但由于不同原因，无论是宏观经济环境的变化还是竞争，结果反而吃了亏。因此，虽然这并不是第一个例子，但在这方面显而易见。

Well, in the scope of what we're talking about with First Republic and Silicon Valley Bank, a lot of people say that maybe they weren't as prepared as they needed to be when you think about something like what has happened with inflation over the last couple of years. And the fact that there could be a bank run like we saw with these two institutions as well. And also that they did not have the right people in place or didn't have in some cases anybody in place for certain oversight that they needed to do me. So that understanding of being prepared for the worst case scenario is an important component for what occurred here. No question.

好的，在我们讨论第一共和国银行和硅谷银行的范围内，很多人认为，也许在考虑到过去几年通胀情况发生的事情时，他们并没有像他们需要的那样做好准备。以及，事实上，像我们在这两家机构看到的那样，可能会发生银行挤兑。而且，他们没有安排合适的人员，或者在某些情况下没有人监管他们需要履行的职责。所以，对最坏情况的准备是发生在这里的重要组成部分。毫无疑问。

Of course, the explanations you just provided. Those are the main ones that are out there, and I am in no way diminishing the importance of them. The idea of just overall financial oversight and financial accountability, sure. That might be what brought them down more than the imbalanced nature of the customer base.

当然，你刚才给出的解释是目前为止主要的解释，我绝对不会贬低其重要性。确保整体财务监督和财务问责的想法，当然是有可能导致他们失败的原因，而不仅仅是客户群体不平衡的性质。

I'm just adding this additional dimension. And of course, there might even be some interplay between the two. It could be that by having all our eyes on one kind of customer and one narrow set of activities around them took our eyes off of both other customers and more appropriate financial management. It all might fit together.

我只是在增加这个附加维度。当然，这两者之间可能会有一些相互作用。可能是因为我们全部关注一种类型的客户和与其相关的狭窄活动，让我们忽视了其他客户和更合适的财务管理。这一切可能都是有联系的。

All right. Peter, always great to have you with us on the show. Thank you for your insight. All the best. My pleasure, Dan. Take care now. You got it. Peter Fader, who is a marketing professor here at the Wharton School. He is also a co-founder and CEO of Analytics Firm Theta.

好的，彼得，很高兴你能参加我们的节目。感谢你的见解。祝你一切顺利。我很愉快，丹。保重。没问题。彼得·费德尔，是沃顿商学院的市场营销教授，也是分析公司Theta的联合创始人兼首席执行官。