Emotional attachment to your services
In this post I want to link three research conclusions (Tekes, Forrester, Tiger).
How can we translate the conclusions in a effective way to design excellent experience strategies?
Let’s start with some quotes from Tekes, Forrester and Tiger.
Tekes
This research emphasise strong service value propositions, with a focus on the goals, expectations and emotional benefits for the customer. For example:
- manage complexity- Allow client to focus on its core competencies
- Provide a service that directly contributes to increasing client’s productivity- Client sees service provided as empowering its business operations with enhanced productivity
- Increase transparency into client’s operations – Allow client to react to changes faster through greater visibility
- Provide tools that remove or minimize uncertainty in client’s operations- Empower client to
make decisions with more confidence
- Create stickiness and engagement with client by providing multilayered services- Present vision of potential relationship growth
- Provide solutions that help clients empower their customers, Know that service provider
sees downstream to the end-user’sneeds
- Create a directional proposition that marries a fragmented information supply chain – Connects stakeholders together in venues not previously possible
After the eras of the Commodity Economy, the Manufacturing Economy, the Service Economy and the Information Economy, we have now entered the era of the Dream Economy.The key to success in the Dream Economy is an in-depth and holistic understanding of people. It’s not only about meeting people’s practical needs, but also about meeting their aspirations and providing a positive emotional experience.
The Four Pleasures
The Four Pleasures is a framework that was developed by Canadian anthropologist Lionel Tiger (Tiger 1992). Tiger looked at societies all over the world and analysed the different types of positive or ‘pleasurable’ experiences that people can have.
He concluded that, for all people, there four broad categories of positive experiences that we can have – he calls these the Four Pleasures. They are as follows.
Physio-Pleasure. This is to do with the body and the senses. It includes pleasures associated with touch, taste and smell, as well as feelings of sensual pleasure. It also includes pleasures associated with physical enablement, such as being able to perform physical tasks.
Psycho-Pleasure. Pleasures associated with the mind such as being able to understand things and positive emotional states. Mental challenges come into this category as do things that people find interesting.
Socio-Pleasure. This is to do with relationships, both in the concrete and abstract sense. Concrete relationships are those with specific people, such as friends, family, co-workers, neighbours and loved ones. Abstract ones are concerned with our relationship with society as a whole, such as our social status, image and memberships of social groups.
Ideo-Pleasure. These include our tastes, values and aspirations. Tastes are to do with our preferences – what colours we like best, what kinds of music and art we like for example. Values are to do with our moral belief system and our sense of right and wrong. Meanwhile, our aspirations are to do with our sense of who we want to be and the self-image of ourselves that we want to have.
To understand people deeply and holistically we need to know what is important to them with respect to all four of these dimensions. This knowledge can enable us to give people positive experiences, enhance the quality of people’s lives and help them to fulfil their dreams.
[source Pat Jordan]
Forrester research
Forrester’s research uncovered five distinct customer experience strategies that companies use to disrupt an industry: ultrasimplification, online infusion, service infusion, service amplification, and value repositioning. While these strategies may not make sense for all firms or all industries, every company should expect at least one of these approaches to challenge the status quo in their industry.
- 1. Ultrasimplicity: stripping away features to better meet the needs of customers. Companies often compete with each other by squeezing new features into their offerings. Over time, this process of “continuous enhancement” can lead to products and services with more capabilities than most customers need. So there’s an opportunity to develop a simplified version of existing offerings. [examples: ING Direct and JetBlue]
- 2. Online infusion: integrating online features into core offerings. The number of US households with broadband more than doubled in the last few years – growing from 20 million in 2003 to almost 45 million in 2005. The increasing willingness of consumers to do things online has outpaced most companies’ online efforts. That’s why there’s an opportunity to disrupt the status quo by designing offerings that natively incorporate online capabilities as part of the core product definition. [examples: Netflix and Disney Mobile]
- 3. Service infusion: integrating service features into core offerings. Companies often think of service independently of the products that they deliver. But customer needs are best met with a strong combination of both. That’s why firms can create a distinct advantage when they blend together product and service offerings. [examples: iPod/iTunes and Panasonic Plasma Concierge program]
- 4. Service amplification: investing in distinctly high levels of service. For many companies, “human” service is viewed as pure cost – putting service capabilities on the chopping block whenever they face cost pressures. With this relentless marketplace squeeze on services, firms can differentiate themselves by bucking the trend and making a significant investment in raising their service levels. [examples: Mandarin Oriental hotels and The Container Store]
- 5. Value repositioning: offering a radically different value proposition. One of the things that Starbucks’ success has taught us is that coffee shops don’t have to compete based solely on their coffee. When companies take a closer at a targeted set of customers, they’ll often find an opportunity to appeal to a different, less obvious set of needs and desires. [examples: Starbucks and Umpqua Bank]
[Source: “Five Disruptive Customer Experience Strategies,” Forrester Research, Inc., December 2, 2006]
There are some relevant similarities and differnces between the studies.
- Much attention for the dreams, emotions, feelings, life of the customer. Solutions/ new services must be meaningful for the life of customers. The focus is not the product or additional services but the customer, the life of customers. How can we help the customer to manage the complexity of life, is an example of this broader perspective.
- Service innovation is a great opportunity to give customers a great experience. The studies show us that the sky is the limit. Service innovation (customer interaction, service concept, process, new value propositions in the network etc.) can give you a system thinking perspective how you reconnect your services to the world of your customers. Organisations must have a a clear view on (unique) customer insights
- Customer insights: organisations must adopt new ways to investigate customers. The new methods are available, like ethnographic study, observing customers, foto-study, user diaries, storyboards, service metaphors, social probes. Organisations must stop to copy customer insights from each other. New market leaders, service cahmions will introduce new services based on new, unique insights.
-
The study of Forrester emphasise on “breaking the status quo”, other studies refer to the comfort zone of customers. Can you bring services closer to the things customers already “accepted and çontrol” and how can you make it easier for you customer. “big” innovations bring insecurities working with/ consume the new, innovative services.
Service innovation is booming!
Discussion
How can we discover new ways to create services that positively engage consumers’ attitudes and values, and create high degrees of satisfaction.
I start this discussion with my point of view:
-Much attention for the dreams, emotions, feelings, life of the customer. Solutions/ new services must be meaningful for the life of customers. The focus is not the product or additional services but the customer, the life of customers. How can we help the customer to manage the complexity of life, is an example of this broader perspective.
-Service innovation is a great opportunity to give customers a great experience. The studies show us that the sky is the limit. Service innovation (customer interaction, service concept, process, new value propositions in the network etc.) can give you a system thinking perspective how you reconnect your services to the world of your customers. Organisations must have a a clear view on (unique) customer insights.
-Customer insights: organisations must adopt new ways to investigate customers. The new methods are available, like ethnographic study, observing customers, foto-study, user diaries, storyboards, service metaphors, social probes. Organisations must stop to copy customer insights from each other. New market leaders, service champions will introduce new services based on new, unique insights.
-Study of Forrester emphasise on “breaking the status quo”, other studies refer to the comfort zone of customers. Can you bring services closer to the things customers already “accepted and çontrol” and how can you make it easier for you customer. “big” innovations bring insecurities working with/ consume the new, innovative services.
What are your points?
