A Customer’s Perception is Everything
It isn’t about what you give out, it’s about what the customer thinks they are getting.
It doesn’t really matter what you do if the customer doesn’t see it the way you do. This isn’t a license to do whatever you want, but rather, an appeal to consider a customer’s perspective.
You might believe that you are doing so much in the interest of your customers, but if they don’t see you doing it, don’t see the need for you to be doing it, or it doesn’t help the customer in some way, then you’ve wasted your time.
All too often, organizations waste valuable time and resources on tasks that they think will impress their customers. When their customers aren’t impressed, they either create stories to convince themselves that they are impressed or that their customers are too clueless to be impressed.
But what if the organization was placing its energy in the wrong place? Customers, all of them, care about themselves. They don’t care how much effort it took to create something, they don’t care how much work you’ve done or how much money you spent. They only care how it affects them.
One organization devoted so much time and energy into a back office process, a process that most customers never even knew that they did. Now, occasionally a customer, through a particular set of circumstances, would realize how much work the business was doing behind the scenes, but the organization never analyzed whether it was worth all those man-hours for a handful of customers. If the organization wanted to continue this back office process, if it truly believed that it was valuable for the organization, could an investment into a computer program provide them with the same information without the man-hours? Possibly. But they never took the time to find out because they were so enamored with the fact that they executed this process by hand, even if no customer ever knew that they did it or ever needed them to do it.
Another business took it upon itself to create end-of-year reports for its customers based on what the organization thought was valuable information. But the customers, while they appreciated the effort, didn’t find the information to be valuable. It wasn’t something that they needed or wanted. The organization didn’t truly understand their customers or their worlds. All that work, time and effort for nothing.
Sometimes an organization will need to devote time and energy to something that the customers may not be affected by directly but will ultimately be affected by indirectly. Investment in a good sales or CRM system can make a huge difference in the quality of customer service or communications, but a customer doesn’t want or need to hear how much time you’ve spent transferring information over to the new system. They are only interested in how it affects them. How it affects the products and services that they purchase. How it affects their experience with your organization.
Customers also don’t want, or need, to hear how your current system doesn’t allow for whatever it is that you claim you can’t do for them. They aren’t interested. Why should they be? They come to your organization to solve a problem – whether that problem is solved by a laptop, a vacation, a tax preparation, a roll of paper towels or a bag of dog food. Solve their problem for them. Don’t give them new ones.
Now, there are times that an organization may need to implement changes that the customer sees no need for. They may not realize that because your organization is switching to a new software program, they may have to create a new password, but that after the switch, they will have access to a wider range of products or services. Your customers weren’t present at your business meetings to discuss the change. They haven’t had the luxury of time to mentally process the change, PowerPoint presentations convincing them that the change was needed, and the like. They only see how they are affected. Understand their perspective, walk in their shoes, see the world through their eyes. Prove to them that life will be better with this change. But show them; don’t tell them.
You could be giving your customers the world, but if they don’t see it that way, then it doesn’t matter. This is true regarding all human relationships. You might believe that you are giving a friend everything – you call, you write, you bake cookies – but if they only want one thing from you – to listen – and you don’t offer that, they will not be happy.
Cruise lines do this when they print out a full page of daily activities claiming that, “there’s so much to do onboard!” But if the passengers don’t like any of the options, they don’t view it as, “there are a lot of activities but I’m just not interested,” instead, they view it as, “there is nothing to do here.”
For customers, and people in general, it is never about what you give them. It is only about what the other person thinks they are receiving. When it comes to customers, when it involves a relationship that your business needs to hold on to, their perception is everything. Not how you see things, but how they do.