Change the Customer Experience

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Examine your customer’s total experience with a view towards changing or enhancing it. Identify simple ways you can improve your customer’s experience dramatically rather than accepting the status quo for your industry. The tool to use here is the consumption chain analysis that will help you identify where opportunities are available to enhance your customer’s experience.

Customers really don’t care what you sell. Instead, they want to buy products and services that will help them solve their problems or get things done. If you can develop deep insights into what customers do care about and why, then you can do more of whatever generates the need for consuming something you have to sell.

The key tool to use in changing the customer experience is consumption chain analysis. The consumption chain is the linked set of activities that customers engage in to get their needs met. Visualize that consumption chain and then set a goal to capture the most important steps the customer goes through. For example, the consumption chain for purchasing music is:

Awareness of need: Hear a new song on the radio, or learn your favorite artist has a new song out.

Search for alternatives: Go to a store and browse the racks or listen of listen to a friend’s copy.

Make a selection: Select a CD that may have 10-12 songs on it, including the one you really want.

Purchase: Go to the checkout and pay for the CD and take it home with you right away.

Use: Play the CD in the music player of your choice.

The consumption chain is the linked series of events that describe the customer’s total experience. This chain will come together differently for individual customers, even within the same industry. Once you understand the consumption chain your customers go through, you can ask yourself:

How well are we doing at improving the customer’s total consumption experience?

Are there some links in this chain customers would prefer to do without?

Are there specific and original ways we can serve the customer better?

At there things we’re currently offering that customers don’t value?

How can we dramatically change something about the way the chain currently works to our commercial advantage?

Is there any low-hanging fruit we should capture? That is, are there any obvious quick hits we could take advantage of to improve things for our customers and generate more profits for us?

Strategic Move 1 Reconstruct the consumption chain and build an alternative chain that you dominate.

You can replace the existing value chain with one that offers a dramatically different experience for the customer. Amazon.com has changed the book buying experience by using customer referrals to create awareness, by making it easy to buy a book for a friend, by allowing customers to resell used books and by making payment easy.

Strategic Move 2 Digitize to combine links or replace links in the existing consumption chain

Use digital technology to change the way both you and your customers do business. For example, CarsDirect.com makes it possible for customers to do research to do research on new car purchases online. Buyers can then complete the entire purchase transaction online, meaning CarsDirect.com doesn’t need to maintain a physical inventory of cars–a very expensive reality for most car dealers.

Strategic Move 3 Make some links in the existing consumption chain smarter.

A “smarter” link will have added attributes that convey more information or provide more capabilities to the customer. Value is added because customers are able to do more for themselves. For example, ExxonMobil’s Speedpass lets customers buy gas and other sundry items without having to swipe a credit card or sing anything. This saves time for the customer.

Strategic Move 4 Eliminate some of the time delays currently present in the consumption chain

Many customers will pay a little more for any product that saves them time. Armaranth Wireless has developed software that allows restaurant patrons to order drinks and appetizers before they have even been seated. This not only saves time for the customer but also allows restaurants to serve more customers thus increasing revenues.

Strategic Move 5 Monopolize a trigger event that resides within the existing consumption chain

If you correctly identify all the triggers in the consumption chain and then find ways to either monopolize those events or be the first to notice when they occur, you effectively lock out your competition. For example, Otis in the United States and Kone in Europe developed devices that provide early warning when an elevator was about to require a maintenance call. That means these companies can arrive on site and offer to prevent the problem before their competitors are even aware a demand exists. Similarly, a manufacturer of specialized golf cleats trains golf pros and the people who maintain the changing facilities and organize caddies at the larger golf courses on the benefits of their cleats that both improve grip and minimize damage to the greens. These two groups of people have access to the customer right at the critical moment where they are about to make a purchase decision. By owning this link in the chain, this manufacturer has been able to grow revenues appreciably while others in the same industry have little or no growth.