On my flight, I couldn’t help but notice a kid playing on a phone, an easy distraction that gives some peace and quiet to the long-drawn parents! How easily, in such small a period of time, has the luxury become so insignificant a necessity!
This is a precarious circle of ‘WANT’. When a new service or a product is launched, like the cordless or mobile, just the mere ability to get hold of one, makes the customers ‘ecstatic’. The more the players that jump in the market for the product, the harder it is to maintain ‘ecstatic’ customer experience.
The ‘WANT’ quickly transitions to a basic ‘expectation’. The features and applications that one provided, over the other, became the new ‘WANT’. That over the time transitioned to the ‘WANT’ for a megapixel camera to reverse camera to Smart app creation tools and so on... The ‘Want for an ecstatic customer’ still eludes all industries.
So, what does this mean for services or product support? What is customer satisfaction? Is there one yard-stick to measure it? Is this even a constant?
With an exposure to a wide customer base now and prior, I have seen and heard customers applauding at times and fuming at others, for the support they receive, be it product or services support. Efforts to fix the ‘damage’ or keep-up the effort are closely flowed by the management.
While this does work, in the short term, but is this a sustainable satisfaction?
Well, some of the companies could stay afloat with just this, partly due to their first-mover advantage (AWS) or because they are a big shark in the ocean or they are cross-selling their products, which binds their customers.
Where it fails to yield, is for the companies that are emerging or budding, or deal with a service that is too readily available in the market. These measures can not lead to 'sustained' satisfaction. The companies need to create a differentiator for themselves. A differentiator in their support!
IMO, they need to look beyond their everyday operations, their survey responses; and invest in ideas and actions that set them apart from their competitors. This does not mean they should no more care about these measures. It just means customers have grown ‘immune’ to this. This is no more an ‘X-factor’ but has become a minimal expectation which you ought to deliver.
But, how do they create a differentiator? What is that edge that they can provide? And would that be worth the ROI?
This, I believe, is the trickiest call for any service provider now.
So, here’s a little parallel.
There was a grocer around the corner. It had barely been a few months when a popular, established grocery store opened right in its vicinity. The grocer, given his capacity, could not compete with the range and the choices provided by the store. Since his livelihood depended on his store, he didn’t want to give-up, not just yet. He needed to create this ‘differentiator’ to stay in the market.
So, he reinvented himself. He was a keen observer and very sociable. He knew people had often come looking for things that belonged together, for their recipes or based on their needs.
So he made a small change –
He sold the same stuff but pre-arranged them in boxes, grouping them by the recipes, by the frequency, by ‘neighbourhood’. He labelled the recipes and placed the boxes under them. It needed him to look beyond traditional ‘grocery store’ ways, invest more time in and may be investing to hire a help.
Result? People who had no time to look around and gather the items (working folks or senior citizens), loved it. The newbies who had no idea what ingredients go in a given recipe, loved it. He had created a ‘differentiator’ for himself. He gave an incentive for people to choose him, for the same cost!!
What was the most important thing he had, beyond his keen observation and necessity? It was the fact that ‘He knew what his Customer’s need too well’.
I could not have been a bigger fan of AI than I am today. There is an abundance of data that companies have, with respect to their customers. There is so much they can do to set themselves apart, so much to play around with when you have eyes beyond the day-to-day operations.
So, there isn’t one yard-stick, as a matter of fact, there isn’t one height to compare. The ‘want’ grows exponentially and the only way to not sink would be to ride the wave, continually. It’s a precarious circle of ‘WANT’!
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