Here’s an interesting definition of a customer. A customer is a person who indirectly pays your bills, vacations and hobbies and still, gives you the opportunity to better yourself. He can fire everyone in an organisation from top down, from the boss to the janitor, simply by deciding to spend his money elsewhere. Most fallen organizations got to that point unknowingly through a constant decline in customer satisfaction, poor customer engagement and eventually extremely bad experiences that spreads and opens you up faster than Google’s homepage.
In today’s transactional driven world, one of the best competitive advantages any business can have is that point where customers are treated differently. They should feel something more than a transaction, perhaps a connection, an experience, a strong stimulation they’ll be engaged and addicted to. Not a lot firms provides this.
In winning competition, you can only win through three means, cost leadership, niche focus and differentiation. In most cases cost leadership and price wars only favour large firms with economies of scale. Most times, your prices can’t be lower. In other words, “If our prices are higher, then why should they buy from us?” Well, maybe if there are a set of other Unique Selling Points, especially through superior customer relationship and experience, customers will be stuck with you.
Once upon a time, customer service used to be a department. But now, it is the competitive advantage. It is everyone, it is everything. Customer service is the service provided to customers before, during and after a transaction. Good customer service provides an experience that doesn’t just meet, but surpasses customer expectations. It produces satisfied and repeat transactions which is the bedrock for business growth.
The start of superior customer service begins before a transaction, around marketing by understanding the needs and expectation a customer. In the words of the management guru Peter Drucker, “the aim of marketing is to know, engage and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” It starts off right when we structure out our market, not just by demography, but by psychographs.
In other words common baselines for connections, between, you, the customer and their needs. Understanding customer needs and their levels of aspirations and expectations is important. There have been a lot of theories around this, but for us at Hexavia, one of the most effective models still remains the Kano model. Let me break it down at this point.
The Kano model is a theory for product development and customer satisfaction. It talks about satisfying customer’s need, but clearly states that not all customer needs are equal. Because of that, it tries to categorise and prioritise customer needs and breaks them into four touch points. From Minimum Value Proposition (MVP) to One-dimensional quality to Attractive quality and over time, based on competition and the experience of customers, that attribute will drift over time from Exciting to Performance and then to Essential. The drift is driven by customer expectations and by the level of performance from competing products.
Must-be Quality (MVP)
Simply stated, are the requirements of the customers that are taken for granted. When done well, customers are just neutral, but when done poorly, customers are very dissatisfied. Kano originally called these “Must-bes” because they are the requirements that must be included and are the price of entry into a market. An example is when you travel on a flight and meet your luggage at the carousel ready for pick up. It’s expected, so you’re unsatisfied; but if you didn’t see it you’d be dissatisfied. This can also be referred to as the MVP.
One-dimensional quality
These attributes result in satisfaction when fulfilled and dissatisfaction when not fulfilled. An example of this would be a milk package that claims to have ten percent more milk for the same price but only contains six percent; the customer will feel misled and dissatisfied.
Attractive quality
These are exceptional qualities. These attributes provide satisfaction when achieved fully, but do not cause dissatisfaction when not fulfilled. This is the point at which out-of-the-world brand promises are made. These are attributes that are silent, the ones in which companies compete on. These are attributes that are unexpected, for example, a thermometer on a package of milk showing the temperature of the milk. Since these types of attributes of quality unexpectedly delight customers, they are often unspoken.
Indifferent quality
These attributes refer to aspects that are neither good nor bad, and they do not result in either customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. For example, thickness of the wax coating on a milk carton. This might be important to the design and manufacturing of the carton, but consumers are not even aware of the distinction. It is interesting to identify these attributes in the product in order to suppress them and therefore diminish production costs.
Reverse quality
These attributes refer to a high degree of achievement resulting in dissatisfaction and to the fact that not all customers are alike. For example, some customers prefer high-tech products, while others prefer the basic model of a product and will be dissatisfied if a product has too many extra features.
People and organizations buy a product for its functional and non-tangible benefits. The functional benefits of a product within an industry and grade are usually the same. Take for example, a car, the functional benefit is transportation. But the non-tangible benefits differ; say “comfort, trust, and prestige”. This makes a brand, it makes the brand. This differentiates a Benz from a Kia. The former may be the more expensive, but still the preferred choice. That difference should be the promise, the perception and customer experience we offer.
As industries get organized and standardized, most battles for competition can only be won through non-tangible benefits. We are practically seeing this through the rating mechanisms and strategies by Uber, Bolt and the likes.
I travel a lot. While I am in a new town, I do more of Uber. And in engaging different rides, I see how extra-ordinary service doesn’t have to cost that much. I once flew into a new town and the Uber guy asked me what genre of songs I liked, he played it, plus he had different types of car chargers, a few magazines and a cold bottle of water. Now that’s not customer service, that’s exceptional service. I went offline with him and eventually used him all through my stay in that town.
Also, once upon a time, I got into Port Harcourt pretty late and all the hotels in GRA were booked. It was at the height of kidnapping and militant operations and I didn’t want to take my chances with other places. And then this hotel manager offered me a room in his house for the night. The wife also gave me a meal and in turn sold me a project. He won me over forever. And ever since I’ve referred countless businesses their way. There is always a reward for going the extra mile. Business or not, it’s nice to be nice. It always has its rewards beyond our imaginations.
When a market gets crowded and choked, go the extra mile, it’s less crowded, for most people don’t travel that far. It’s priceless in building brand equity. The secret to building a desirable brand and repeat patronage can only be delivered when we have a superior non-tangible experience from transactions. Build and broadcast through your products and services, keywords like trust, excellence, reliability, warmth, promise, we listen, we care, we support and follow up.
I look forward to helping you build an exceptional and experiential customer relationship system.
Eizu Uwaoma
