From just about every book, presentation, training, or blog, the topic of creating a customer experience is discussed. Most times, the word ‘innovation’ is used in conjunction with the subject which tends to scare people to the point they find it easier to maintain the status quo. The simple fact is that while innovation is at the forefront in the minds of most executives, the work – and real change – required to drive innovation is far beyond the capabilities and comfort zone of most organizations.
A much better – and realistic approach – is to make smaller, incremental changes that drive loyalty and, therefore, revenue and profitability. In other words, by making a series of seemingly small improvements to your existing products, services, and experiences over time, you improve your ability to compete in the marketplace.
This is something every organization can do if they have the right framework in place and, more importantly, a passion to both listen and learn from their clients. Looking outside the promotional products industry, it’s easy to find examples of the magic of making incremental changes with Amazon and Zappos being the obvious customer experience leaders. They both display a relentless focus on their customers to the point where they have a systematic approach to making the customer experience better one touchpoint at a time. Over time, those small experiences – frictionless returns, free two-day shipping, etc. – create a loyalty that borders on fanaticism.
By following an approach to ongoing, incremental improvements, any organization can build a client-driven system which will align internal assets such as people, processes, technology and data that are solely focused delivering an unassailable customer experience. While innovation and disruption are sexy, the one step at a time, incremental innovation is far easier to achieve and more economically predictable than radical disruption.
The promotional products industry is highly competitive and one of the true differentiators is the quality of the client experience. Your target audience will continue to demand more as their expectations for positive client experiences increase due to encounters with companies like Zappos and Amazon. In today’s marketplace, the ability to incrementally improve the experience you deliver to your clients will enable you to more effectively compete for the hearts, minds, and wallets of your target audience.
Bill has over 17 years working in executive leadership positions at leading promotional products distributorships. In 2014, he launched brandivate – the first executive outsourcing company solely focused on helping small and medium sized-promotional products enterprises responsibly grow their business. A featured speaker at numerous industry events, a serial creator of content marketing, president of the Promotional Products Association of the Mid-South (PPAMS), and PromoKitchen chef, Bill has extensive experience coaching sales teams, creating successful marketing campaigns, developing operational policies and procedures, creating and developing winning RFP responses, and presenting winning promotional products solutions to Fortune 500 clients. He can be reached at bill@brandivatemarketing.com