The
Battle For Coca-Cola
Rages
On.
Ain't
Nothing Like
The Real Thing, Maybe.
I
Don't Mean To Say
I Told You So, But...
Are
Consumers Smarter
Then We Are?.
The
Four Great Myths
Of Global Branding.
Mr
Bevis Butts Heads
At Mitsubishi
The
Best Laid Plans
Of Mice And Men.
Dare
to Be Great:
The Mad Genius of "The Matrix"
Mitsubishi's
New Marketing Boss
Out
Of The Frying Pan.
Concept Is Stronger Than Fact.
Value
Perception In A World
Gone Mad With "Cool"
The
Future of Advertising
The
Brand
THE
SECRET
TO OUR SUCESS.
The
truth is MadisonAveNew.com
has been picking up readers like a house on fire. We actually owe it
to a suite of six web marketing tools.
If you would like to know
more, give them a click. Yeah, we get a kick if you buy them.
Here they are:
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Value Perception In A World Gone Mad With "Cool" What an easy trap we fall into when we promote our favorite features and benefits of our client's products rather than those that our various markets believe fill their unmet wants needs or desires. It's so easy to lead with what we think is "cool," rather than what customer's believe is esential. We tell ourselves it's all about "competitive edge."
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Of course, we should know better. It doesn't really matter what product attributes we consider to be "hot," "cool" or "must have" valueable. Our customer's Perception of Value is based upon their own unique set of criteria. They look at the value provided in a variety of ways, the least of which are "new" or "improved". The five most prevelent Motivation Components in the Preception of Value are: |
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I just wondered. With all the stuff you have on your plate, why do you still bother to write this column every week? - Jessica.G, Boston I don't. Voice recognition software is wonderful. I just phone it in. -HW |
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1. Quality Are you improving your product or service in a consistantly meaningful way? Consumers are looking for compelling improvments in a product's core offering. Quality is the first and most important component of value. The appropriate levels of product/service quality earns you the "street cred" to show up as a player in the marketplace. Quality has become a lot more than simply how well a product or service works or lasts. It's those "moments of truth." that make up the most effective criteria in defining quality. A moment of truth, as first defined by Jan Carlzon of SAS, is any defining interaction that the customer has with your business. A moment of truth may occur when an rental car presents you with a full ashtray. It all boils down to that moment that a customer experiences a positive/negative impression when interacting with a given brand, product or service offering. If you want to influence the perception of value to your customers, first be aware of the fact that every point of contact is a potential moment of truth. If that moment is not positive, your perception of Value will not be positive, no matter how creative your advertising, or public spirited your company. No matter how "now" McDonald's tries to be with their advertising, the minute I get rubberized Chicken Selects, flat Coke amd dead fries, I'm outta there and they are dropped from the drive-through list. 2. Service /Support This goes a lot farther than just customer service. Every business component that supports the promise to service what you sell impacts your perception of value. Ensure that the customer receives exactly what the company has committed itself to deliver-- if not, value perception will drop like a stone. . Service support includes defined customer satisfaction levels, order cycle reliability, team commitment to customer expectations, an empowered contact team, a systematic recovery process and bullet-proof warranties. Service support is the extension of your commitment to the customer beyond the quality of your core product offering. Does your entire organization work together as a team? What lines of communication have you established in your organization? Every person in every department of your company must understand and contribute to the value the customer buys. If you are a product manager, you have to be the voice of the customer for your product. You have to look for opportunities to thrill your customers, after a problem has occurred. or you risk losing them forever, at the end of the product cycle. Service support is only as good as your warranty. If a high-quality product has a warranty which the company and its dealer organization are committed to stand behind, then trust and value are added to the sale of that product. When Sky Dayton was running Earthlink and his fellow Scientologists were manning Tech Support, the 22 sites they hosted for us were always running at five 9's reliability. Sky sold out and the new owners moved Tech Support to Bangladore and wait times went up by 30 to 45 minutes. Now only three of my sites are hosted by Earthlink. their costs went down, my frustrations went up. Net, net? Bye, bye. 3. Customer relationships Your customers will make it very clear who they like doing business with. Professional and likable "personalities" who have direct customer contact are the front line of Value Perception. Customer Touch Points play a crutial role in the interpretation of organizational value for the customer. The challenge is to improve customer contact criteria every single day. My classic "97 Corvette has cost me 50% of the purchase price in things gone wrong. Service charges that average $1,500 a pop over the life of the car thus far.I absolutely Hate the Chevrolet division for selling me such a piece of shit. I love driving the car. and I have nothing but praise for my dealership Service Department that has gone way above the call of duty to fight my battles at the Zone and Regional level. I would never in life buy another chevrolet or General Motors product. But when that dealership opened a Toyota franchise, i went right out and bought a 4-Runner. 4. Delivery To satisfy or exceed customer expectations as they relate to delivery depends entirely upon right time, right price, right source/destination, right condition, right quantity, right mode, right product and right packaging.. How your organization improves and differentiates itself from the competition is most impacted by these "last mile" considerations. Amazon sells two of my books but I won't buy a book from them. They lost a book I ordered and refused to replace it. Case closed. I buy from BN.com. Barnes and Noble doesn't carry either of my books, but when they say it will be there on Thursday, they mean what they say. 5. Investment Your customers must believe that they are getting a compelling return on their investment when they do business with you. That investment in quality, service support, delivery and customer contact must contribute to their perceptions of everything that constitutes a good value, for them to communicate it as such to those within their sphere of influence. and there is no stronger influence on the perception of value than the endorsement of a satisfied customer. I'm sorry. I just love my Apple computers. All six of them that have been prematurly made obsolete by changes in the operating system nobody really asked for ( yep, there's another one on the way in June) Why, because they look so cool ( Yeah, "cool" worked on me) and the Apple Stores are like a Holy place. And Steve Jobs didn't cave in to Scully ( even though he did to Bill Gates). So there are exceptions to every rule. But then, that is what keeps it interesting.
Stay Tuned.
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