You hear it all the time, “you should buy this product it’s really great and does what it is supposed to do.” And everyone gets excited and thinks you have a winner. And you might…for now.
The problem with having the greatest product or service is that there is someone else out there close on your heels ready to offer a better product or service…and probably at a lower price. This is the commodity world we live in today and it is only going to get more competitive and difficult to hold a top position with any product or service in the future.
It is incredibly difficult these days to be either “first to market” or “best product/service” when we have global competition facing everyone today. No longer is it someone in “your backyard” you have to worry about…it’s someone several continents away that could wipe out your market share in an instant.
Most companies rely on TRUST…working hard to get a customer to “trust your product or service” as a way of leading or capturing a market. If someone trusts your product/service, your odds they will purchase this again or recommend your product goes up…this is a good thing. For example, you come out with a really great widget that everyone seems to love and is very helpful to them. They like it and it meets their needs…maybe something they have never used before. The product works as described and so they “trust the widget”…and they might buy more…and they might tell their friends.
Contrast this with “EXPERIENCE TRUST” which focuses on earning the trust of your customers for the “experience you deliver” to them every time they interact with you. This level of trust is earned…based on more than one interaction with your company. When you have Experience Trust your customers are buying from you because of the experience you give them and how you treat them and how you make them feel before, during, and after every purchase (or in between when they aren’t purchasing).
This Trust is NOT RELATED TO YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE…you can swap out products or services as you feel best supports what your customer personas need/want…they “trust the experience” not the products or services you provide. This is a significantly different level of trust.
“PRODUCT/SERVICE TRUST” to me is the “hare” in the race of the tortoise or the hare fable. It is a game of speed…first to market, best product/service in the market at a given time, and a race to always be on top of this heap of competitors. It is more of a continual sprint to stay in front…much like the Hare did in the fable. But like in the fable, it is tough to keep up this level of sprinting…eventually you just run out of steam…your product/service can’t keep up and stay in the front runner position…so you go to sleep for a bit (like in the fable).
“EXPERIENCE TRUST” is the “tortoise in the fabled story. It is a game of consistency and perseverance, not speed. In this situation you are focused on “building over time” consistently and for long periods of time rather than short bursts. You might not have the leading edge or front running product/service at the time…but you still have great products and services. What you have that causes attention is how you treat your customers…the experience you deliver to them…day in and day out. This builds over time. The customer sees it, feels it, and appreciates it more and more because your competition doesn’t offer this level of experience to your customers. This might not shoot you into the front runner position immediately but it allows you to build momentum to a point where your perseverance wins the race.
“PRODUCT/SERVICE TRUST” can also be thought of as the “short tail” (no relation to a fable about the hare) with regard to longer term trust. It is considered a short tail because it is more of a “burst” and sprint than a marathon of consistency and perseverance. You get quick benefits that fade fast (relative to your particular product/service) because there is a new, improved, better, faster, cheaper product coming hot on your heels. You win…but for short periods of time…until you can come up with something even better or cheaper that the customer wants.
“EXPERIENCE TRUST” is thought of as the “long tail” because over time, it actually builds up instead of decreasing. You get more and more value over longer periods of time than you do over shorter periods of time. Your customers learn to love you even more tomorrow than they did today because the see the consistency and continued focus on giving them an incredibly awesome and remarkable experience. This builds and builds and continues to build well into the future…giving you a much longer term relationship that is hard to break apart.
You can win with both strategies…but it’s important to realize which one you are truly deploying so you can build the proper processes and infrastructure around this strategy. All too often I see “Hare companies” that pretend they are “tortoises”. This means they are really product/service driven by all their processes and the way they operate but they think they are in the customer experience business and have an awesome experience. They don’t.
What they have is a “great experience”…just like most of their competitors. It isn’t differentiated, unique, or something that causes the customer to say, “WOW, I love this experience more than any of your competitors.” This makes it great…not awesome and remarkable. And if you have read anything I have previously written, you know that without being awesome and remarkable you can’t be memorable and if you aren’t memorable, YOU DON’T GET TALKED ABOUT.
This is the primary difference between the two strategies. The “Product/Service Trust” gets talked about only in regard to the particular product/service you are offering AND only as long as it is the front runner in features and/or price. The “Experience Trust” gets talked about continuously because it is delivered in a consistent manner, day after day, is irrespective of the product/service and delivers a remarkable and memorable event. The Hare and the Tortoise…we know who won the race.
