WOW Services – the way to win in this marketplace
It used to be that the company with the better product won. Then came the age when the company with the better message about the product won.
Very few companies still win with on the basis of having a better product. Apple is probably one of the few that can still achieve that. Their products are cool and we buy them because coolness used to get us better mates.
Most companies can no longer win that way. Coming out with products that have new features no longer gives us a sustainable competitive advantage – either users don’t care, or if they do, competition catches up in no time.
It’s also much harder to differentiate your offering based on the story you might craft about it – as customers and prospects are now increasingly owning that story.
But so – how do companies win today?
The way companies win these days is by delivering services on top of their products that make customers go WOW. The reason why exceptional service is the new competitive differentiator is not just because it’s easier for competitors to catch up product-wise, but because the news about exceptional service travels fast in the networks that matter – peer and friend networks where the buying decisions are increasingly being made. When people recommend products to friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, they do not focus on the features, functions and benefits the way many marketers have been trained to do – they focus on the overall experience of adopting the solution, and the exceptional qualities of that “whole” offering.
So if you are like most companies and operate in a market where it is really hard to differentiate based on the product alone, you got to focus your attention on WOW service offerings.
What do you think? I would appreciate your input and feedback.
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March 24th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Francois:
You know I am usually on board with your POV on these things – but not this time.
I think that the seminal book about this subject is “The Discipline of Market Leaders”
The key hypothesis of this book is that all companies have to choose 1 of 3 possible core competencies in order to succeed.
Operational Excellence (FedEx, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s)
Customer Intimacy (Amazon, Four-Seasons, USAA, Zappos)
Product (Apple, Oakley, Nike)
I believe that while service has become more important today (table stakes, if you will) as a long-term competitive differentiator companies still have to choose which core discipline they are going to follow, and there are different paths to success.
I think service has a lot of momentum right now in the SM space, but is no more or less important than it ever was.
Tom O’Brien
MotiveQuest LLC
March 24th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
[...] WOW Services – the way to win in this marketplace [...]
March 25th, 2010 at 10:31 am
Hi Tom,
Thanks for engaging. I too believed that, and I am convinced that the demise of some big companies like DEC were due to the mix of products and services. But for a majority of companies it is no longer possible to differentiate yourself on product, and so I believe that there has to be something else to wow you and make you retell the experience. Virgin America and JetBlue have to be as much operationally savvy as other airlines, but it is their WOW service that lifts them out of being commodities. All the ones that you listed in the customer intimacy column differentiate themselves from the other intimacy players by delivering wow service. And even Apple and Nike, through their retail operations and also through their packaging add wow service to the product, which makes them even more memorable.
Do I tell friends the story about how Amazon downloads my book to my kindle in an instant? No. Do I tell the story that when I buy a book that I already own, the system tells me that? Or than when my friend’s daughter’s Kindle had clearly been abused to the point of not working anymore, they exchanged without questioning what lead to the product no longer working? You bet…
When we buy a product, we have expectations, and when those expectations are met, we don’t notice. It is human nature to detect deltas from the norm – good or bad. And when we see them, we have the urge to tell others. Since service has traditionally been abominable in so many markets (airlines, telephone companies, computer manufacturers, etc.) it’s easy to wow the customer and lift your offering out of the world of commodities.
Maybe I am mixing up two things…
March 24th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
New blog post: WOW Services – the way to win in this marketplace http://bit.ly/cx1r8V
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
March 24th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
WOW Services – the way to win in this marketplace: http://url4.eu/1yxvy
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March 24th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
More on service as killer app… RT @fgossieaux: New blog post: WOW Services – the way to win in this marketplace http://bit.ly/cx1r8V
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
March 24th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
RT @fgossieaux WOW Services – the way to win in this marketplace http://bit.ly/bUOOMZ (Finally I disagree with him!)
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March 24th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
WOW Services – the way to win in this marketplace:
It used to be that the company with the better product w… http://bit.ly/bN5Flg
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March 25th, 2010 at 10:04 am
The “WOW Services” factor is a lost ART. http://bit.ly/9eT8OI
This comment was originally posted on Twitter