Although the concept of delivering customer value has moved beyond just product quality and customer service satisfaction, many business owners and executive leaders continue to focus on what consumers often view as the bare minimum. The issue with this approach isn’t the emphasis on executing the basics well; it’s that what constitutes "the basics" has evolved.
The changing psychology of value
Business owners and executive leaders are well aware of the fact that customer value has evolved into a dynamic psychology of product, experience, ethics, personalization, and innovation. This psychology of value centers on how people perceive and assess worth, influenced by emotions, social context, personal biases, and cognitive shortcuts - which can make value perception subjective and variable. Although a fascinating subject, in the real business world, meeting such expectations can look daunting.
Simplification rules
Successful business owners and executive leaders share a strong ability to break down and simplify complex decisions and processes. In ensuring that they deliver on promised customer value, they tend to focus on familiar and proven areas where they excel. However, this approach often leads to an unintended consequence: a gradual and unnoticed decline in the value being delivered.
In strategic discussions with these leaders, I offer two key pieces of advice: (a) Keep on focusing on what you know you do well, and (b) apply that same mindset and approach across a broader mechanism for delivering value—while ensuring that you never over-promise and under-deliver. But what do I mean by that?
Getting it right
Product: Your product and its ability to deliver trusted and relevant value is a non-negotiable kingpin of your value-creation strategy. Its ability to deliver such value can be tied to product features and functions, which in turn is interrelated with customer insight. You cannot fail to deliver a quality product.
Ethics: Having personal ethics is non-negotiable. However, modern consumers see ethics as a much broader subject than just your values - it’s also about your perceived stance on societal and social themes. Only commit to such broader ethics if you truly live it, or steer clear - but don’t try an approach of “ethics washing”.
Innovation: Don’t confuse technology adoption and large investments as the only driver of innovation. Most innovations are incremental - and are driven by an approach and mindset of creative problem-solving. Consumers are getting used to seeing incremental improvements and adjustments in how value is created for and delivered to them. Don’t fall behind with incremental innovations - falling behind will be far more expensive and disruptive than staying (you don’t have to be ahead) with the curve.
Customer Experience: Customer experience extends far beyond good customer service - and has been developed specifically around human-digital interfaces, i.e. how easy is it for customers to get their desired job done using any of your digital interfaces. Before making any assumptions that your customer experience is good or even stellar, go through the experience that your business or organization offers as a ghost customer. You might learn s few things that you were not aware of, and that need fixing.
Personalization: From a human nature perspective, there is nothing that means more to a customer than a personal touch or recognition in their engagements with your business or organization. Such initiatives are generally easy to implement. However, product and customer experience personalization depends primarily on the available technology and resources. Customers either prefer a simplified approach to personalization - or a comprehensive experience.
