Customer Delight and Differentiation

We are all constantly looking for new ways to differentiate our offering. Where most of us struggle is in trying to work out where to look for sources of differentiation that matter to our customers. And here's the thing - if your customer does not care about your new three part, chromium plated reverse flange widget and its benefits, you have wasted loads of time, effort and money.

So what now? Try asking some customers about things you care about in your products and services. Ask your customers two simple questions for each of the benefits you are investigating:

1. Rate your satisfaction if the product/ service has this feature to deliver that benefit?; and
2. Rate your satisfaction if the product did not have this feature to deliver that benefit?

Ask them to answer in one of four ways:

A) Happy;
B) Neutral (This is normal);
C) Unhappy;
D) Don’t care.

Answers - my thoughts:

• Neutral to 1 & Unhappy to 2 is a basic, taken for granted feature. Omit this to your cost.
• Don't care to 1 & to 2 - not worth the investment
• Neutral to 2 and Happy to 1 - these have the potential to create differentiation - partly because your customer did not know these were needed until they were seen.
• Happy to 1 and Unhappy to 2 - these are good things to include but are unlikely to be sources of differentiation.

For a lot more cogent information on this topic, try researching the Kano Model - there is a lot on the web and it will help you to make a difference to your offer.

Good luck!