Creating product differentiation is vital to success but the question is, at what cost must it be done?
A billion successful examples are scattered all over the world – which one to pick up?
How far should one go?
Is it ok to stop short of the competition?
Imagine yourself in an auction!
You’re waiting with bated breath for an item that you love to come under the hammer and right when it comes, you witness that you’re anything but lonely in liking the article. There are 10 more who have carried with a suitcase full of cash an ironclad determination to bag the product, just as willingly as you have.
They want it just as bad as you want it if not more.
What do you do?
Do you outbid everyone else at all costs, even at your detriment, or should you set a clear upper limit for yourself, before you uphold the card to make your interest in the item known to everyone in that room and, particularly, to the 10 others who are determined to make you lose, for the first time?
A smart choice perhaps is to decide well in advance a point, which you’d not cross no matter how lucrative the deal gets and how irresistible the urge to own becomes.
The world of business has undergone massive changes; profitability which used to be the only consideration in the yesterday years has now been replaced with the potential of ‘growth’. Organisations are willing to go to any length to attract eyeballs and, in turn keep users hooked to their platforms.
In such a hostile and ever-evolving environment how does one lay the CX strategy to be better than everyone else, is something that is becoming increasingly impossible to answer. Where does value come from?
Does it emanate from being unique?
Or is it a product of being swift?
Or does being first matter more than anything else?
We’re attempting to provide a framework for thinking this question through.
To my mind, customer preference should be your number one consideration!
The organisations that invest in understanding the preferences of their customers end up gaining trust and everything good to do with business outcome follows from there.
If your customers are on social media – you should be there.
If your customer wants to catch hold of you on the phone – you better be present.
If your customer is fond of chatting from the messaging app of his choice – You gotta make yourself available there too.
If email is the jam of your customer – You will need to swear by it as well.
Getting the channel right is perhaps the easiest thing to achieve. The market today is rife with omnichannel solutions, they give a simple no-code, augmentation at an easy price. Tech will not hold you back!
What follows from the conversation is perhaps the most important aspect of the business. Trust is either gained or lost, as a result of it.
Your backend processes determine the success of your customer services department more than anything else. The questions to ask of the organization there are?
What is our defect rate on released features/products?
How many times in the customer journey do these defects dot and dent the experience of the customers?
How do you measure yourself against your competitors?
Do you have a method to track and then treat the causes of repeat failures?
What are your organizational tolerances?
At what point will you abandon, something that is not working?
Once you’ve device business processes to answer these. You’ll need to make sure that you find a way to understand the education failures?
That is, to what degree does the customer perceive something to be an issue when it is not?
Have you been communicating effectively and efficiently?
Could you be clearer?
What are your brand communication strategies optimized for?
Are you after uncontrolled growth?
Or do you wish to become big responsibly?
So in a nutshell, it is about.
Being where customers prefer to meet you – Omnichannel!
Integrating customer journey in a way that no information critical to the customer experience is ever lost, completely eliminating the need for the customer to repeat – CRM
Get backend processes to get better with time, so that ultimately the quality of delivery improves.
Make sure your communication strategy is effective.
The next part of the puzzle is the competition watch!
As the old saying goes, keep your friends close and enemies closer; except in the case of modern business. The competition is not your enemy!
There is a need to evolve that outlook. Opportunities to collaborate have to be actively looked out for, and wherever that is an impossibility, co-existence must be attempted.
Remember, with the network grows the market. And when the market grows everyone in the market benefits from it!
Having said that, benchmarking is important.
Institute a robust inventive and creative survey team that watches the reaction of the customers to the changes introduced by your competition with the attention of a hawk.
Tabulates the impact.
Ascertains it is relevant to the strategy of the organisation to compete in a specific segment.
Presents the roadmap to beat the competition.
Project manages the rollout.
And then comes the final piece of the puzzle.
Measuring the effectiveness of the rollout.
There also, learning from the customer is key.
Remember, you are solving for your customer.
If they like you – you are golden!
Think about it!
Good luck!