Did you ever ask yourself why customers buy with you and not with you competitors? If this question is asked to managers then most of them will answer that they threat their customers in a special way that results in an increased involvement of customers in services and products. This is contradictory with recent research which shows that companies invest in the development and efficiency improvement of products. The improvement of the relationship with the customer gets less attention. New products and services often do not succeed or become hardly profitable. When a product turns out to be successful, in no time it is copied by the competitors, and the ability to differentiate has vanished. Understanding how customers use a product or service is even important as offering better products against lower prices.
Innovation during contact with customers and the way in which the relationship with the customer is developed can result in a much bigger competitive advantage. Understanding and becoming part of the business processes of the customer results in the opportunity to deliver high value services. Innovative services are hard to copy because the competition doesn’t know how the service provider delivers the service.
Work by the hour
A technical installation company that used to work on the basis of ‘work by hour’ now does the total maintenance and control of a whole building for a fixed amount a year. Through this not only the annual cost for the customer has decreased but also the customer has less risk because the maintenance is done by specialists. The risk that the customer is confronted with high costs afterwards will decrease. Several years ago the same customer would have asked for every task prices with different technical service providers. The order, of course, would go to the service provider with the lowest price.
Sour milk
A supplier of cooling installations for supermarkets is monitoring constantly the temperature of the installations. This is possible because of the telemetry systems in the installations which put through data to a central emergency centre with the supplier. When there is deviation with the established parameters an alarm goes and automatically a field engineer is send to the relevant location. The field engineer will fix or reset the installation. The manager of the supermarket doesn’t have to think about anything and can focus on more important issues. There are great economic interests for the supermarkets and they are willing to pay more for better and faster service. Sour milk and melted ice will cost customers. The risk and the cost of failure are now minimized. Because of the intense cooperation between supermarket and supplier in the business processes and systems, the supermarket will not switch from supplier very fast.
These are examples of excellent situations: reduced risk and costs for the customer and healthy profits and the ability to differentiate for the supplier. It sounds easy but this is not the case. Which are the next steps and how can you reach this situation?
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