2024 CX Trend Number 3 - Deliver Me Value

Hi and welcome to Talking Points with me, Jason S. Bradshaw. It is so great that you're taking time out of your day to watch this episode live or of course to catch up on the replay. This week I've been sharing with you the the trends, the customer experience trends that are going to help businesses break have breakthrough success in 2024. Now there are five of them and so far we've been through two. Today we'll get to number three. The first one was know who I am. Genuinely take the time to show your customers that in small ways and big ways, you know who they are. It starts by using their name and then progresses to customizing the way that we communicate with our customers. Hotels get this right some of the time. Great hotels get it right all the time. You know, when you have those preferences of which room type you like and where you like to be in the hotel and things like that. Well, the great hotels get it right every time. Most hotels though, don't. And it's not because the technology doesn't exist. It's because they don't have that intentional focus on delivering a level of service and an experience that demonstrates that they take the time to know who the customer is and they're just not asking questions for the sake of it. Now in that example, I'm using hotels, but it applies in every single business, right down to the small local store. In fact, if you're a small business, I think you have a competitive advantage over your over everyone else in your industry because you have the ability to build rapport quickly one to one with your local customers, something large corporations often struggle with now. So trend number one, we talked about it on, on day one was know who I am. Trend number two was all about being easy to do business with. And I shared with you that Amazon is a great example here. They patented the one click technology where you can buy now and it automatically bills, ships, etc, the item that you're looking at now. The challenge I gave to you was based on my own experience. How can you go through the customer journey and find those points of friction, those steps that take a little bit longer than they should do, or perhaps those steps that don't even need to exist anymore? How can we find those and remove them or reduce them so we make it as easy as possible for the customers to achieve success? Now in a podcast recently on Chats with Jason, I interviewed this wonderful person who was talking about breaking down, hacking the bureaucracy and she shared this story of where a government agency was taking a foster agency was taking 12 months to process a foster applicant. And during it, she stepped through each of the phases of the application. And she got to this point where there was a team member filling out a form and in a carbon form so it was duplicated, and then posting it to the dmv. So the department of motor vehicles, who then would take a number of months to process it, and then they would send it back in the mail. Now, all of this time was wasted time. The foster, the possible foster parents couldn't progress in their application. Children were being left in the system. Now, when she got to this, this team member that was filling out this manual form, she said, oh, the dmv. If only they could get with the times and use computers, do it electronically. So she then went to the dmv, found the individual or the department that receives these paper forms, and guess what they said? They said, if only the foster agency could get with the times and use electronic communication. Now, as soon as those two are connected and they moved to electronic communications because of course, they were both using it, what happened? Well, they compressed the time frame of exchanging the essential data from months to moments, and that had a significant difference on the lives of young children in the foster system so desperately wanting to have a place to call home. Now, that is just one example of how organizations can make it easy for customers to achieve success. I'm sure just like in every business I've worked in, in your business, there's some way that you could make it a little bit easier for your customers to have success. Now, that's trend number one. And trend number two, know who I am and deliver, know who I am and be easy to do business with. Now, trend number three, which we're all about today, is deliver me value. Now, let's just say you sell a bottle of soda and it's 500mil 16oz, and you decide to offer 600mils or 17oz. They're not direct conversions. They're just examples for no additional cost. That is a form of delivering more value to the customer. However, that's not what I'm talking about, because in that scenario, you're still very much transaction based, still exchanging a commodity, whether it be a physical good or a service, for a point of cash, and setting a price point for that. When I say deliver me value, deliver the customer value, I'm talking about maximizing the opportunity for them to enjoy the product or service that they've got from you, Maximizing the opportunity for you to build a relationship with your customer and maximizing the VA the opportunity therefore, for repeat and referral business. So let's just say you sell motor vehicles and this is a tip that came from a previous place that I worked. But you buy a motor vehicle, it's the middle of summer, it's a hundred degrees out, really, really hot. When you park your car, your steering wheel gets really, really hot. But when you're parking your car, if you turn your steering wheel all the way to the right and lock it as far as it possibly can, what does that do? Well, it doesn't stop the steering wheel getting hot because of course there's steering wheel still in the sun or exposed to the sun. But when you go to drive, you have to unlock the steering wheel and put it back into its normal position. And that part of the steering wheel that you'll be holding hasn't been in the sun, so it's cooler. Now that just seems like a little trivial hint, right? Or a tip. But that's about delivering value to the customer. It's creating a real reason to talk to the customer. It's a pain point. You're giving them a solution for it, so you're delivering them value and, and in the process continuing to create a connection between you and the customer. Another organization I was had the pleasure of doing some work with just last year. They had a range of camping and outdoor products. And those products where we provided educational, instructional, support, post purchase were loved by customers, recommended by customers. And then those products that we just treated as a blind transaction, well, that's how customers treated it as well. Delivering the customer value is about helping the customer experience every joy and success possible. Every joy and success expected and unexpected. You see, quite often when we buy something, we buy it to solve a problem, but that product or service may actually be able to do more. And if we can help our customers experience that, that is a way of delivering more value to them. So that's trend number three, deliver me value. So number one was know who I am. Number two was be easy. Number three, deliver me value. Tomorrow, going to be dropping trend number four and trend number five. But the only way you'll get to see and hear trend number five is to subscribe to my newsletter, Talking Points with Jason. It comes out roughly every fortnight. There's been a few little hiccups here and there, but once a fortnight on average, and it's delivered straight into your inbox. If you go to Jason sbrechel.com, you can sign up for the newsletter there. Or if it's more convenient for you. Just follow me on LinkedIn and you can subscribe to the new newsletter there. So that's Jason Sbrocher.com or Jason Sbrocher on LinkedIn. Whatever's easiest for you. So, until next time we speak, I wish you great success.