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3 Opportunities You Are Missing to Provide Value

17 Feb

Why Are People Trying to Provide “Value” by Asking What Others Want?3 Opportunities You Are Missing to Provide Value

Value-making seems to be a full time profession for many people. Everywhere you go there is somebody insisting that they are trying to provide value for their customers, their clients, their company. But what is the value they are trying to provide? People don’t seem to know. Why do I think they don’t know? Because they’re sending out too many surveys. They are constantly talking about value and constantly asking others about value, but they never define value. They value value, but don’t know what it is!?!

Value Is Generic

Value is really a generic catch-all phrase. It’s non-specific. It doesn’t tell me anything about what you do, what you think you should do, or what you want to do. Instead, you sound like everybody else when you talk about value. Do you really need a survey to tell you that people value great customer service? Or timely delivery? Or competitive prices? No, these things are generally a given, though some people will value one more than the other. These values are also generic. Most organizations have these very same values and make promises based on these values.

Problem 1: Organizations Don’t Really Listen

I don’t think people are really listening to the answers their customers, clients, or partners might be giving them about what they value. They’re not listening because the things being said aren’t direct answers. Instead, the answers exist in other interactions.

3 Opportunities to Listen and Provide Value to Customers

  1. For example, when I call any type of customer service line, I expect to get my question answered quickly and professionally. And everybody, including me, thinks their question is unique. No one believes their question is exactly the same as someone else’s question. So why is it so rare to get a real person on the line when you call customer service? Clearly these organizations don’t care about what I really want. But I bet I’ll get a follow-up survey asking me how the phone call went. Instead of this survey, why not have a real conversation with me when I call? Why not listen?
  2. When I’m checking out in a physical store, why doesn’t the cashier listen to what I have to say about my shopping experience?
  3. When I check out online, why doesn’t someone call me to help me through when I’m having trouble? Imagine that level of service.

Problem 2: Value Doesn’t Easily Scale

But these ideas are somewhat of a pipedream because these things many people value don’t easily scale. Amazon can’t scale that level of service to call any customer having trouble checking out online. They’ve already attempted to solve that problem with one-click shopping. Facebook can’t call you when you encounter a log-in issue. Target isn’t suddenly going to have their cashiers strike up a conversation about my shopping experience. Why? It wouldn’t scale well. The utility company, cable company, and so many others aren’t going to get rid of their artificial intelligence operators (standing by, but no real problem-solving skills). It doesn’t scale well.

4 Ways to Scale Value

First, listen in all the interactions you might have with a customer. Don’t have the interaction and then send a survey as a proxy for listening. If you send the survey after the fact, I don’t think you were ever really listening in the first place. Second, be proactive in problem areas. How can you help a customer solve a problem before he/she calls you? Call them first instead. Third, think of every other way you can listen without surveys and pursue those listening opportunities first. Fourth, give all employees the ability and authority to act immediately on whatever they are hearing from customers. Addressing issues after the fact (discovering them through a survey) is hardly ever as good as responding in the moment.

Conclusion: Value People

People want to be valued. Don’t wait to define your values based on surveys. Start first with valuing your customers as people.Constantly act on expected values by listening during conversations and solving problems proactively. If you do these things, you may find that you can say “You’re welcome” more often as customers thank you for your value-based based interactions.

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Do You Want to Commit? Put Your Money Where You Want Your Time to Go

4 May

Do You Want to Commit-Put Your Money Where You Want Your TIme to GOWe often use money as a way to force ourselves to commit. This is evident in many areas: monthly gym membership fees vs. home exercise equipment or routines; free online college courses (The Truth About MOOCs: Only 10% Of Students Actually Finish Them) vs. paying for a college course; buying a book (we really want to read it) vs. checking it out from the library (maybe I’ll get around to reading it).

Is is that we are bored (The dirty little secret of online learning: Students are bored and dropping out) or is it that people have a hard time committing without putting their money where they want their time to go?

The basic concept behind these examples is loss aversion.People hate to lose what they have or lose money they’ve invested, whether in the stock market or in a gym membership.

Think about the sales of so many apps. What is the benefit to the user to pay for an app as opposed to using it for free? I think many times we buy an app only after we justify to ourselves that we will actually use it. The small amount of money involved-say $1 to $5-can also be enough to help us keep that commitment, at least initially. Once we feel like we “got our money’s worth”, the chances of dropping the commitment increase.

Think about many purchases you make and how they reflect your commitment.

You buy a new pair of running shoes because you want to strengthen your commitment to start or get back into your training routine

You buy a gardening book because you really want to start that backyard garden.

You purchase a magazine subscription because you really want to keep up on your topic of choice (ex. photography, economics).

You buy a set of 10 yoga lessons to make sure you show up every week.

For many of these ideas there are free or less costly options available. You may really need a good pair of running shoes to protect your feet, but why not check the gardening book out from the library? Or why not read all the articles on your topic of interest that are available for free on the internet? Why not buy that yoga DVD that costs a tenth of the cost of lessons?

I’m not saying one alternative is better than another. Spending money on the rights things is a great investment. It does help us commit and reach our goals. I’m saying that understanding why and how our purchases affect our commitment allows us to make better commitments and spend our money more wisely.

We may also benefit by recognizing that a monetary commitment can lull us into a sense of progression. We think we made progress on a goal because we put up money. But buying running shoes is different that actually running three times a week. Buying a set of yoga classes is different than showing up every week even when things get busy.

It is better to think through all of the things involved in keeping some commitment you want to make. Besides the money involved, do you really have the time? If you don’t have or won’t make the time, that monetary investment probably isn’t worth it. Money cannot substitute for time, although I think at times we would like it to. It is often easier to put up the money than to put up the time.

My suggestion: carve out and commit to the time investment. Then, evaluate and utilize the monetary investment to best reinforce your time commitment.

It can pay (pun intended) to figure out ways to best use our money as commitment strategy.

Tell us in the comments what ways you use money to make commitments stick.

Note: There are other clever examples of using this concept to make commitments stick.

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