If you want to command a premium price for a commodity good, you MUST have a differentiated experience wrapped around that product offering.
It doesn’t matter whether that offering is a cruise, a car, a house, a bottle of wine, or a cup of coffee.
The experience is what customers will remember and what will drive their preference for your product in a crowded market.
To do this, you need the following things:
✔ A workforce that is empowered, engaged, and passionate about your brand.
✔ A mastery of 5-star service, and, yes, this applies to every business. Not just luxury.
✔ A defined set of Signature Brand experiences that you are known for, and are delivered to every customer, every time.
✔ A set of WOW experience models that are operationalized and designed to scale (locally, regionally, and globally).
Where do companies get this wrong?
❌ Failure to invest in employee experience and empowerment.
❌ Service based on old-fashioned principles that are not reflective of modern consumers.
❌ Lack of discipline to deliver 5-Star service in every customer interaction.
❌ “Signature” experiences that are not really experiences at all. Lacking in creativity, execution, and uniqueness to the brand.
❌ Failure to understand or deliver a modern WOW experience. Customer expectations of WOW have moved on, and many companies are still clinging to outdated WOW practices.
❌ Lack of consistency in delivery of WOW moments. WOW moments don’t have to cost anything, but your employees do have to deliver them at scale, consistently to your customers.
Companies tell me all the time that they are “Customer-Centric” in all they do. But ironically, executives and employees don’t get to decide this at all.
Customers do.
And with rapidly changing customer expectations around what defines a great experience, some companies are still resting on their laurels. They believe that what they are delivering today - because it was validated yesterday – is customer experience excellence.
Leading-edge companies are hungry to innovate, dialed into the expectations of modern consumers, and charting a path to where their customers want to be - not where they have been.