What separates good companies from great ones?
Truly exceptional companies understand that customer value is the sum total of everything they do, not just the product they sell.
What’s the sum total of what your company does? This could include anything from the level of support you offer to the terms and conditions of your contract. Here are some examples:
- When the customer calls with a question or concern about your offering, is someone there to answer the phone, and is that person friendly and helpful?
- Do you keep office hours in the same time zone as your customer?
- Do you deliver your product when you say you’re going to?
- Do you offer flexible payment terms?
- Do you alert the customer before their service agreement expires?
- Does your offering help reduce the customer’s risk?
- Do you routinely offer new capabilities that allow the customer to do new things with your product?
- Is there anything about the packaging of your product that makes life easier (or not) for the customer? (For example, do you package your product in an ultra-lightweight material that reduces shipping costs?)
- Is your product easy to set up and install?
- Is your product easy to operate?
- Is your product easy to service and maintain?
As you can see, many factors contribute to the total value of your offering. And some of these items are outside the realm of what individual sellers and marketers are responsible for on a day-to-day basis. However, the answer to each of these questions could have a direct impact on the sum total of the value you provide to a customer, and thereby affect your ability to find, create, and keep customers.
This is where many sellers and marketers fall into a trap, because they assume that customers buy from them because they have such a fantastic product. That may be true – but that’s not necessarily the main reason they buy from you. It could be, for example, they buy from you rather than a competitor because you have such a simple implementation process. If, however, your competitor improved its implementation process, you could start to lose market share and be left wondering why.
So you have to make sure that you think about all the other elements that go into the customer’s experience – from shopping, to purchasing, to ongoing maintenance, to upgrades, and beyond. If you want to cultivate long and prosperous relationships with customers, learn to think about value in the broadest sense possible. Remember, everything you do contributes to total customer value.
