Episode #104: We Give Added Value. No You Don’t!

The chocolate on the pillow, the fruit bowl or the wine bottle and glasses in your hotel room are often cited as examples of good service, adding extra value to the client. We may be doing something similar in our business, from our side for free, that we imagine is adding extra value to the buyer. The idea is cute but the thinking is a bit fuzzy. I am on a diet, so I don’t appreciate the chocolate. I don’t drink, so I can’t enjoy the wine. Perhaps I have an allergy to certain fruit, so I can’t eat the fruit provided.

Value is perceived value and also is only value when it corresponds with the interests and desires of the buyer. There is the rub. We need to know more about our buyer rather than just shotgun the possibilities. We need to laser beam around their interests. In the hotel example, we have to book and often we do this on-line. Our preferences could be plumbed right then. Or we have to turn up and go through a check-in process. Our desires could be plumbed then and there. Yes, it takes away the surprise factor, but an unhelpful surprise isn’t adding very much value is it?

The secret is how can we know our buyers better, so that we can surprise them or at least delight them? Today, there is so much information floating around about us on the internet. I have a Facebook account (in fact I have two), a LinkedIn account, an Instagram account and a Twitter account. If you take a look at my Instagram account, I often post photos of empty wine bottle’s labels and few short comments about what I thought of that particular wine. So you could not only anticipate that I like wine, you could even provide me with one of my favourites.

My LinkedIn account has my profile and also over 1460 blogs, each with a Bio that talks about what I have done in my career and a bit about my background. You would know that I do traditional Shitoryu Karate, so I have an interest in martial arts. The hotel may have some martial arts themed movies in their line up. A small note in my room pointing this out would be a simple, but nice touch and may get me to buy the movie. “Welcome Greg, there is a great Jackie Chan movie playing in our movie lineup, which you may enjoy to watch while you stay here with us. If there is anything else we can do to make your stay a truly great one, please let me know. Jan (ext. 4077)”. Now that is not hard to do, but it only works if you bother to know something about me.

Now to be fair, it is always easier to point out the shortcomings of other suppliers than our own. Hotels do their thing and we have our own clients and customers to serve. What can we do for them? The great book “Moments Of Truth” by Jan Carlzon, describes how he went through all the touch point that SAS Airlines had with their customers. He and his team looked for ways to make sure at each touch point the experience was excellent. We all need to be doing the same.

I have an open office plan layout, so I sit amongst the troops. My desk is easy to find, it is the one with all the papers piled high upon it! Anyway, I can hear my team on the phone. Sometimes I can hear that the quality of the staff’s voice toward the client isn’t friendly enough. They sound very “business like” but I want them to do better than that. I want them to sound happy, upbeat and friendly, even if none of those things apply in reality on that day. It doesn’t matter if you kicked your toe this morning, you have to come across to the client as a positive, helpful friendly person. This is especially so if the client is not sounding like any of those things themselves.

Another pet peeve of mine is when I call companies. The style in Japan is to only say the company name and not your own name. So I call the number, ask for Suzuki san and get “This is Suzuki”. How do I feel? Am I really happy I got Suzuki san on the first go? No. I feel guilty and bad because I didn't recognize Suzuki san’s voice. I teach my staff to always answer the phone by stating the company name and then their own name and do it in a friendly voice. This eliminates any potential embarrassment to the client of not remembering our voice when they call us and starts the conversation off on a positive note. What is the cost of this? Nothing. However, we have to be thinking about these things in the first place and in a busy life we can get stuck in doing things in a certain way without any time taken for reflection.

In a few days we will be having an internal systems audit. We have many, many systems in our company, but we have not really looked at them altogether in total, with a mind to making them more efficient or more client friendly. I am sure when you look at your own business, you will realise “wow, we have a lot of procedures around here”. Are they the best procedures, does technology now allow some of these to be automated, how is the client’s impression of your company as a result of being on the receiving end of these procedures?

So break down the touch points with your buyers and look at where can you make this interaction more efficient and more friendly. We accumulate systems without thinking about them as a whole. By the way, as the boss, it is always a good practice to call yourself and see how it feels to a client when they call. How do your staff stack up on making that great first impression. By exploring the details, we can come up with improvements for certain. Once we get to that point then we can start brainstorming how we can add additional value to the buyer and exceed their expectations.