The title to this article is a question. This article is full of questions related to the customer experience. I hope you take the time to read them, answer them, and if necessary, act on the answers.
Here’s a hypothetical situation. Let’s assume you are a successful business. (Okay, let’s hope that last sentence isn’t hypothetical.) Customers are buying your products and/or services. You have a good company with good people and you are doing well. The big difference is that you charge double what your closest competitor does.
That’s right, you charge twice what your competitor does, but you are still successful. You keep your old customers and continue to get new ones. (Remember, I said this was hypothetical.) Why and how could this be?
If this were the case, what are you doing that people are willing to pay twice as much for? What level of customer service are your customers receiving? How fast are the customers’ phone calls returned? How quickly are orders being fulfilled? How long do customers that are calling in for technical support have to wait on hold? I could go on and on with this line of questioning.
Maybe you are already perfect in all of the areas just mentioned. So, here is another question: What else are you going to do differently? After all, you have to earn that extra revenue, otherwise you are just like everyone else selling what you sell; basically a commodity.
The bottom line is that if you had all of that extra revenue, and more important, the margin to work with, I bet many of you who are reading this article would have some impressive answers.
Enough with the hypotheticals – the reality is that you aren’t charging double. But, if you were, and business was strong, what would be the reason?
The truth is that none of what is mentioned above would cause your price to double. As a matter of fact, it probably wouldn’t cost much more to do any of the above.
Imagine if you treated your customers as if they were paying twice as much – and giving the customer service that goes along with paying that premium price – but you were still charging a competitive rate. Not the lowest price, but not necessarily the highest price either.
So why aren’t you doing it? Why aren’t you providing that value added service, that doesn’t cost much, if anything more, to deliver?
For some of you, these questions validate your efforts. For the rest, it’s time to start answering the above questions.
