How to Design a Customer-Centric Offering

I was trying to renew my Nevis driver’s license this week. In the past, you’d go down to the police station, give them your expired license, your valid US driver’s license, and $250. The officer would disappear into a back room, and return some unknown time later with your new license.

That was in the past. They’ve “improved” the licensing system by putting it online.

I’m sure it works very well for people with permanent licenses. But since I learned to drive in the US, I only qualify for a temporary license.

That’s where their new system breaks down.

Serving yourself

When I went to the website to renew my license, I was asked to logon. I needed to enter my logon id and password.

There was no information on how to get a logon if you didn’t have it. No way to be reminded of it if you’d forgotten. Was it the same logon I’d used to pay my property taxes last June? There wasn’t even any option to get to a person who could help.

If I didn’t have the information they needed to process my license renewal, they didn’t want to help me.

This makes sense in the short run. You don’t want to get half-way through a lengthy process, only to discover you won’t be able to complete it.

But in the long run, it’s misguided. I have to deal with the government if I want to be able to drive. It doesn’t matter how difficult they make the process, I’ll figure out a way to get through it.

But most businesses don’t have that luxury.

If you make it too difficult for your customers, they’ll buy from someone else.

Serving your competitors

Also this week, I was part of an interesting discussion of collaboration over on LinkedIn. The idea is that by helping our competitors, we can help ourselves.

I’m not saying to help the people who do the exact same thing as you get your clients. That would be crazy.

But there are people ahead of you and behind you on the curve. A client might be too big for you, but perfect for the person ahead of you. A client might be too small for you, but perfect for the person behind you.

There are also people who are in the same general space as you, but who are not direct competition. They’re competition in the same way that books are competition to Netflix — both are options for someone looking to relax and unwind.

By doing podcasts together or jointly authoring articles, you’ll be able to help potential customers not quite ready for your offering. They’ll remember you as someone who helped them. And you will get in front of your competitor’s audience, as well as giving your audience an opportunity to learn about them.

In the end, it not only helps both of you, it helps your customers.

Serving the customer

Obviously, you want to deliver goods and services that help your customers. That’s the whole point of being in business, after all.

But what about the sales funnel? The intake process? The options you give them for purchasing?

All of these touch points are places where things can break down. Where your desire for streamlining what you need from the process can overwhelm what makes the process easier for them.

Here are some possible ways to make your interactions more customer-centric:

1. Empathize with your customers
   Use their language and address their pain points, yes. But also understand how this interaction fits into their life. When I paid my US taxes in April, I was required to use my cell phone to confirm my identity. But they’d realized that people might have started the process from a computer, and made the transition between devices seamless.

2. Align with your customers’ objectives
   They’re not consuming your information or buying your services because that is their end goal. They’re doing so because they think it will get them to the end goal they envision. If their goal is to reduce stress in their life, they won’t buy your stress-reduction program if the ordering process is too stressful.

3. Empower customers to overcome challenges
   When I was trying to renew my driver’s license, a simple contact form or phone number would have helped immensely. Earlier in the week, I’d struggled to log onto a bank website. It gave me options for recovering my userid, resetting the password, and, when it saw my IP address was out of the country, a direct-dial phone number to call for assistance.

4. Align with your customer’s values
   If you’re marketing a religion-based coaching program, you won’t sell to many atheists. If you put that information up front, you’ll build a bond with the people who are your target market and won’t annoy the ones who aren’t. A chart of “this is for you if…” vs. “this is not for you if…” can help your ideal customers self-select to work with you.

5. Build long-term relationships
   Don’t focus so much on the sale that you forget to nurture your customers after they buy from you. Make them part of your community. Cherish their input. If you can keep them involved, they will buy more of your products. And they will move from being customers to being raving fans.

Top 3 Blocks Dissolved This Week

There were no blocks dissolved this week. My house is undergoing construction renovations to have new roof beams added to support 2 tons of solar panels. I couldn’t hold customer calls in that environment.

Look at me being all customer-centric and aligning with their objectives!

The main article this week talks about service. Who are you serving? How are you serving? What does it even mean to serve?

I thought it rounded out the concept well to include this quote from The Event Usher’s Handbook. We’re all familiar with ushers, whether they’re directing us to our ticketed seats in an auditorium, finding an empty pew in a church, or escorting the mother of the bride down the aisle.

This quote reminds us that serving is not the same as being servile. Something that all-too-many people forget when dealing with waitstaff or customer service representatives.

Serving someone else does not make you a door mat. It does not give them license or permission to take advantage of you.

It is simply an acknowledgement that you have skills or knowledge that could help another person, and you would like to have the opportunity to help. If they’re not receptive or nice to work with, you have the right to withdraw your help.

Helping someone should always make you feel better, not worse!

To your service!

Jennifer Dunne, Caribbean Compassion Coaching