How Your Customer’s Experience Becomes Your Company’s Brand

by Vince Skolny via @GrowDemand

If customers are willing to buy more of what they want at higher prices (and they are), the question begging to be asked is how do we get them to want our stuff?

The answer to that question is differentiation. It’s from where you get your Monopoly Power.

How It Works

Price becomes the deciding factor only when a customer perceives all else to be equal. Whether things are actually equal is irrelevant: If the customer does not know what the differentiations are, the customer cannot make a buying decision based on them. That’s obvious; yet marketing communications’ primary job, delineating those differentiations, is rarely done. That is the source of price competition.

It is your customer’s tastes and preferences, rooted in their expectations of doing business with or without you, that drive demand and, therefore, willingness to pay more. Or not. Those expectations depend on knowledge of the differentiations.

Sans known differentiation, all similar products are commodities, interchangeable goods that sell for the lowest price. That leads to price competition which drives your profit to zero.

Value Is Experiential

Of course, value can be inherent to a product, but value is ultimately experiential. As we discussed a few weeks ago, people will pay more for Ruth’s Chris than for Ponderosa, in part, because while they are technically substitute goods and competitors, they are not finally not offering the same product. Ruth’s steaks are objectively superior. All things being equal, we would pay more for them.

But, customers would not pay Ruth’s Chris prices for a Ponderosa experience even if Ponderosa sold Ruth’s Chris quality steaks.

Once we have our customer service systems and procedures in place and humming alongside the product it sells, supports, and services, we can add customer experience to the equation.

To drive demand, customer service must be comprehensive. Because everything is a brand experience that will ultimately decide demand for being your customer, your customers’ experience must frame every aspect of your Marketing Process. From reaching out to prospective customers, through converting them to paying customers, transforming them into repeat users, and nurturing them into our loyal community of regular customers, their experience will ultimately determine your success.

And that is their experience as they actually value it. Not as you think they should value it.

Utility and the Marketing Perspective

The key is to stop thinking about value.

Crazy? Not at all. Claims of value lead to obnoxious ideas like “educating” your customers. And they lead to those vacuous value claims that destroy, don’t create demand. You need to learn to think in terms of utility.

Simply defined, utility is your customer’s sense of happiness and well-being. In the Marketing Process, it is your customer’s sense of being better off for having been your customer.

Thinking in terms of utility, rather than “value” requires a Marketing Perspective, which is essentially seeing the world as your customer experiences it.

When you do that, you can begin creating experiences with and for them. 
 
Consider arriving at a new business for the first time. A weedy, litter-strewn lot is poor customer experience. If you have employees collecting carts, stocking displays, or otherwise working outside the building, not greeting an arriving customer is poor customer experience. Above all, dirty rest rooms are the sine qua non of poor customer experience.
 
Likewise, how your sales teams, wait staffs, register clerks, custodians, and management treat customers are each part and parcel of customer experience, regardless of whether they have an actual Customer Service role. Together, every single engagement with a customer frames their expectations of doing business with us and creates preferences for or against being our customer.

Those preferences are your brand.

A Golden Opportunity

We can fail to differentiate, which will lead to price competition. We can differentiate ourselves negatively by being rude or disinterested. Or, we can differentiate ourselves positively, creating the preferences that drive demand and eliminates price competition.

And note well: The experience applies to your customers’ technical experiences with your company, through your website, your apps, and your social media accounts. (Perhaps even more so. Not many will leave your business because the lot is weedy or get back in their vehicle and drive off because an employee in the lot didn’t greet them. Most will leave your business if your website is slow to load, not mobile friendly, or because your social media account does not respond to them.)
 
Customer service, much less customer experience, is almost universally poor to indifferent. That makes creating customer experience, built on flawless customer service then extended to the comprehensive experience of being your customer, a golden opportunity.

Next week I will explain both why (and despite all the railing I do about it) price competition is actually a myth and the reality of cheap bastards. And I will also let you in on a marketing secret. Follow me here or on twitter, so you don’t miss it.