Included in their “Thought Leader” section, American Cemetery magazine features Dan Katz’s ideas about the power of creativity in marketing to create change for funeral businesses.

by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012

I got another customer satisfaction survey from my bank the other day. Another request for me to take my time to tell them how they’re doing. Once again a perfectly framed poll asking closed ended questions so that someone, somewhere can report the ‘score’.

Is customer satisfaction all that they’re striving for? Really? So, if I say I’m satisfied, then the company is OK with that and all is “good to go”? Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t satisfaction come from performance as expected? On a good day, you might exceed my expectations. If you deliver as expected, I’m neutral. Fall short and I’m dissatisfied. Be it a survey like this or leaving a waiter or waitress the customary 15%, satisfaction doesn’t equate with feeling like all went well.

Therefore, asking me if I’m satisfied is the wrong question. If you really want to know how you’re doing ask me if I am happy. Watch my behavior to see if I am happy. Listen to what I say to learn if I share my happiness with others. Because if you make me happy, I’ll be back…and I’ll bring my friends.

So, how do you make your customers happy? Look at all of the touch points that they experience with your organization related to your products and services. Look beyond the functional benefits to the emotional and social benefits that you can deliver. You see, you and all of your competitors must deliver functionality…it’s required. But premium products and services (you make or sell those, right?) that truly endure into the future deliver emotional and social benefit  — let’s call that happiness.

For example, it’s the reason we still have candles. We haven’t needed them to light up a room for a while and in fact, one could almost say that they’re functionally obsolete. But, they can deliver a romantic glow or a scent that can make you feel better and create a certain mood. They make us happy. So we still buy candles and will even pay a premium for fancy ones. A product benefit comparison chart between a candle and a light bulb would turn out badly for the candle. A customer satisfaction survey would likely go the same way — “On a scale of 1-10 is a candle better than, equal to, or worse than a light bulb.” But we still buy them for their emotional and social benefit.

To drive value for customers it’s necessary to look beyond product and service functionality to the emotional and social benefits that your company and its products can provide. There are companies in a variety of industries that make sure their customer experiences go beyond just being functional – in short, intentionally focusing on how customers feel about the experience of dealing with their company and its products, and themselves to elicit personal happiness.

So, what does one do to get beyond the commoditizing nature of functionality? Well, maybe you can:

•    Identify the type of happiness that you provide based on what the prospect or customer is looking for. Maybe it’s being flexible when the customer really needs you to be in order to get your product where and when it needs to be there…even when the ‘rules’ say differently.

•    Design your brand experience to achieve the emotional benefit that your customers want in a way that makes them happy. Look for key times when you’re dealing with customers and capitalize on them to deliver a strong emotional and social experience. A way that makes customers say “I’m really happy with how that all went.” From customer phone inquiries to tradeshows and community events to in-store experiences.

•    Measure your efforts by asking your customers very consistently throughout the interaction process to see if they are happy rather than use surveys that lean towards reporting satisfaction. Look for things that make people happy as well as asking them if they’re happy.

At the end of the day, lasting products and services provide happiness…and we know them for delivering such because they’ve been around for a long time. On the other hand, commodities provide satisfaction. To avoid being seen as a dreaded commodity, focus on designing and delivering customer experiences that provide happiness, enabling your customers to feel better about themselves and their prosperity. Because while we like to think it’s about us and our products, it’s really about the customer and their needs. So as we all know customers only care about you when they see you care about them.

In my day-to-day work, I speak and meet with a number of companies that are really good at what they do.  In fact, some are just outstanding at their specialty or niche. The problem is that too few people know about them. You practically need to trip over them to know that they exist.

Almost invariably, the VPs of Sales & Marketing for these companies voice their frustrations over the fact that while the company is good at doing what they do, they’ve not grown sales, nor increased their customer bases or product volumes, nor enhanced their brand visibility as their executive management team would have liked. In many ways, their companies end up becoming their respective industries’ dreaded “best kept secrets.” If this sounds painfully familiar, let me offer up a reason why this has happened and how to avoid this trap.

First, one needs to remember that there are two different sides to your business.  One is what I call “inside reality” and the other is “outside perception.” The “inside reality” are all the things your business does that makes it valuable to customers and gives you a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It’s all your skills, people, expertise, service, commitment to excellence, passion, and the way you conduct your business.

I’m sure that if you asked your customers why they bought from you, they could tell you something quantifiable, specific, and instantly obvious. They might point to specific benefits for doing business with you and say,  “That’s why I do business with you, that’s why I refer my friends to come here, that’s why I’m a loyal customer, that’s why I don’t mind paying a bit more for your products, that’s why I keep coming back.”

The problem then isn’t your “inside reality” but the “outside perception,” which is how prospects PERCEIVE your company, if they perceive it at all. Very commonly, there’s a fundamental disconnect between your inside reality and outside perception.

See, regardless of how good you are, or how good your “inside reality” is, your prospect isn’t going to be able to figure it out based on marketing that doesn’t address their outside perception.  Take, for example, a bank that offers personal service.  Their inside reality is they greet every customer by name, open the doors as each customer enters and leaves, and offer individual financial advice based on the customers’ specific banking needs.  We’ll also assume their current customers are genuinely impressed.  But the outside perception of non-customer prospects is that all banks are pretty much the same and all talk about personal service while most don’t deliver on the promise – and it’s not really that important to them anyway.  Once a bank starts from that outside perception as the basis of their marketing, the solutions become entirely different.  And so do the results.  But the bank that continues to market based on such inside realities, especially in a non-creative or expected manner, will remain invisible to prospects because they’ve seen it all before.

You have to start by seeing your marketing through the eyes of a jaded, disinterested prospect who thinks they know all there is to know about you, or at least about the business you’re in.

So while “best kept secrets” might be seen as good for restaurants, traffic shortcuts and travel destinations, they’re NOT great for business.  Don’t get lost in the noise.  Whether it’s online, offline or thru social media channels, wave your ‘marketing arms’ and let people know you’re there.  Because being in business and not promoting your value as you should is like winking at a cute girl (or guy) in the dark. You may know what you’re doing but she or he sure doesn’t.