Why don’t people give you “the time of day” when you are trying to connect with them…either through marketing or selling? Why is it they won’t read your newsletters or marketing propaganda that you send out telling them how great you are? Why is it your marketing is ineffective compared to what it might have been maybe a decade ago? Business owners and leaders are more confused today than ever before on why all this is happening…maybe you are as well.
Why is this happening?
There is one simple word we use every day in many of our conversations that is the culprit of all this change and why things aren’t working. Actually, there are two, but for now, I want to focus on just one of them. That word is TIME. Time is now the most important asset any of us have…and it’s been backed up by lots of research. Forrester studied this and came up with numbers that might shock you. They found that over 70% of the people they surveyed said “time was their most valuable asset” today. TIME.
Think about the conversations you might have throughout the day. They might include comments such as…
And the last thing we need to hear from someone is, “We all have the same number of hours in the day to get things done…blah, blah, blah.” If I hear that one more time…well you probably feel the same way. This doesn’t help solve any of the above issues…I’m as guilty of saying these as much as you might be as well. Problem not solved.
Your Customers Feel the Same Way!
Bring this back to my primary focus, Customer Obsession, and you will be able to determine if you are helping your customers SAVE time or if you are COSTING your customers more time. This is a critical distinction that often goes unnoticed by many companies. When I do some quick analysis of the interactions a company has with their customers, invariably we find that they are doing things that COST THEIR CUSTOMERS TIME.
When you cost your customers time, this is demonstrating you really don’t care about them as much as you say you do because you are wasting their number one asset, TIME. Your customers feel exactly the same way you do and they have a list very similar to the one above with respect to time. They don’t have enough of it and are trying to figure out ways to save it and not waste it. Here’s the question every leader should be asking his team…
“Are we doing things that cost our customers valuable time? And what are we doing that helps our customers save time?”
Answer these two questions (honestly)…you might be very surprised by your answers. This is a great discussion point to have with any leader in your business…regardless of their department.
TIME represents a MASSIVE Opportunity
Hopefully you have figured out by now that if you put a focus on TIME, you can create some differentiation with your customers because everyone else most likely isn’t helping them save (or at least not waste) more of their time by working with you. Figure this one out and you will be a differentiated HERO in the eyes of your customer. They will definitely feel you care much more about them when you help them get back more of their most valuable asset of TIME.
When I help companies develop their “totally awesome customer experience” this is a paramount factor in creating a Customer Experience Map™. If the new “map” doesn’t end up helping their customers save or not waste more time with us then it isn’t achieving what it needs to accomplish. TIME is a critical component to “creating and delivering a totally awesome customer experience.”
Here’s an easy exercise you can start to do in your leadership team meetings. Pick one part of your customer experience interaction with your customer. Maybe it’s as simple as an “incoming phone call” or an “initial meeting” or some other interaction. Once you have one identified, start by asking yourself, “Does the way we deliver this specific experience help save our customers time or is it costing them more time when they are interacting with us?”
Next, create a list of the parts of the experience you feel are costing your customers time by interacting with you. Create a second list of those things you are doing as part of the experience that are helping save your customers time. Compare the two lists. The goal should be to look at ways to eliminate the first column and add more things to the second column. It’s harder than you think to move things from one column to the next.
While this might be a “spot fix” for you, it is a healthy place to start. The ultimate fix would be to completely redefine your customer experiences (do the mapping) so that the entire experience is focused not just on making them feel incredible but it also helps them feel like you are doing everything you can to save them time, or make better use of their time. This is the desired state for your customers.
What to do next…
You can start doing some of this analysis today on your customer experiences where you interact wit hour customers. Whether you use me to help you figure this out, do the exercises and identify what is going on inside your own company with your own experiences…it’s a great starting point.
If you ever have any questions about this or any other aspect of what it’s like to be Customer Obsessed or how you can do this type of analysis, just ask and I’ll be happy to answer them. Or if you want to understand how to do this in more detail and how you could move your company to becoming more Customer Obsessed, I’d be happy to meet with you (complimentary of course) to discuss it further for your own particular situation. Hopefully you found this helpful…if so, I think it’s our responsibility as fellow business owners (and leaders) to share this with others we think could benefit from it…please help them out and share this with them.
I hope you decide to take advantage of the massive opportunity that awaits you and you make a strategic decision this year to become Customer Obsessed. It will put you on a completely differentiated path so you can be known as a company that is memorable, remarkable, incredibly helpful, someone who delivers an unbelievable customer experience, and someone who keeps their promises 100% of the time. That would be awesome!
