Tag Archives: customer development

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American Preferences Revealed in Learnings from Odd On-line Study

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The American Association of Online Retailers reported last week that We the People actually enjoy pop-up adds! Insane you say? Perhaps not.

In a lightly attended press conference Mitch Engle, senior research designer at Nielsen, presented the findings that Americans, more than any other people group, respond favorably to online pop-up advertising.

“We took a different approach to collecting data this time around.” Engle said, “In most of these types of studies people are presented with advertising that matches their online behavior and preferences as closely as possible. For the purposes of this study we presented people with an average of ten adds that had no connection to their online behavior for every one pop-up that had a connection.”

The results were astounding.

“What we found was that, over time, people actually started to click through adds that had no connection whatsoever to what their normal online behavior had previously revealed.”

The study also showed that time of day seemed to make a difference.

“We found that at those times when regular online activity, reading blog posts, checking Pinterest boards, Tweeting etc. we’re at a lower ebb people tended to click through one off adds more frequently.”

When asked why he thought this was the case Engle had a ready answer.

“Americans are enamored with their online “communities”. Their online relationships offer a sense of control that just isn’t present in real life and so more and more people are spending more and more time in this controlled environment. This provides a real boon for advertisers because when a shopper feels that they are in control of the experience they are more likely to buy.”

Recent changes to Facebook helped accelerate and confirm results

“When Facebook went public we really had a chance to start hitting people more frequently with adds. We put them in their newsfeed, we put them in the margins more often and even started popping them up in games and other apps.”

But aren’t most of us annoyed by these pop-ups? Not according to Engle.

“The average Facebook user is in their late 30’s, has a little over 200 friends and typically uses the online platform to send private messages. That means that when they’re online checking and have nothing new to read, either in terms of status or messages they hang around to see if something “pops-up” (pun intended). At those off times of the day we can hit them with adds that are completely nonsense to them and, after an acclimation period, they’ll start to click through them. The click through to purchase rate is well over 35%”

But what about people in other countries?

“The research seems to indicate that people in other countries view their online relationships as being mush less critical to their daily lives. I’m not a social theorist, nor was that the intent of this study, but if I had to guess I’d say people in other countries tend to get out more. Going out to dinner in, say, Italy or Brazil is a five or six hour affair. In the States people are in and out.”

So what does this mean for us, the online consumer?

“Well”, said Engle, “if the shoes fits someone is going to sell it. People are buying from adds with no connection at a greater than 35% rate so we can probably expect more and broader advertising to encumber our online experiences.”

Oh great.

What do you think? Do these findings make sense to you?

Check out the full results of the study at:

Ohmygoshyoubelievedthatonaprilfoolsday.com

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The NFL and an Interesting Revelation

Somewhere along the way I think I must have missed something. It seems to me, and maybe I am wrong, that I used to be able to choose between two NFL games in the Sunday morning slot and two in the afternoon slot.

Even with the advent of Sunday Night Football I thought I still had my pick of two in the morning and two in the afternoon.

What happened to my afternoon choice?

Perhaps it is different in different markets but here in Colorado we get one game in the afternoon and it seems like it is almost always either a Cowboys game or a Giants game. Unless of course the Broncos are playing in the afternoon then we get them…but only that one.

As I started pondering this woeful dearth of afternoon football watching options during the Giants dismantling of the Saints and was struck by a startling revelation.

The NFL doesn’t care if I have choices.

You see, in almost any business providing choices means more cost. It can, and typically does mean more revenue as well but it can double or triple costs often making the additional revenues less than worthy of consideration.

Providing choice means there will be people who DON’T watch one of the games. Providing NO choice means people watch what they’re given.

My simple analysis was completed in less time than it takes for a boy named Suh to come up with an excuse for kicking someone in the groin but it did land me on a new customer type: The Addict.

Whether or not you consider yourself a football , or more particularly an NFL addict the truth is the NFL considers their customers to be addicts and I’ll provide three pieces of supporting evidence.

1. Other leagues have failed
Remember the WFL or the USFL? Who could forget the XFL? All leagues that saw the potential for an expanded football market, all failed. Even college football has a different kind of following than the NFL.

Of course this lends support to the leagues assertion that their product is unique enough that they have a corner on the professional football market…and addict fans.

2. We’ll watch anything with our teams logo on it.
NO matter what the challenge, replacement teams in the 80’s, back up who aren’t ready to play, replacement coaches, replacement refs…as long as it is our squads logo we turn out to watch.

Maybe that’s another reason people don’t watch the pro bowl…wrong uniforms.

3. Teams that sell out, always sell out.
This indicates there is no shortage of backup customers to be had if the current pool of season tickets holders and regular buyers should all suddenly contract the plague.

This steady stream availability, probably more than anything, makes the NFL comfortable with measuring out the goodies to their addicted fans.

Now of course I’m mostly being facetious here. But there is a nugget of truth buried in the midst of this madness. If we can somehow find ways to control output and build a big enough customer pool it may be possible for ANY enterprise to develop addicted customers. Mange to do THAT and you’re on the gravy train.

What do you think are the key ingredients for building a customer base that is addicted to your product or service?

 

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Social Media, Your Business, and You

I’m old enough to remember when the internet was just making the transition from quirky computer geek fad to mainstream attention grabber. Truth is I was designing web sites at the time, helping businesses figure out how they could use this newfangled tool. In those pioneering days, before you could really do ANYTHING interactive on a web site we talked about web sites as electronic billboards.

As businesses today are trying to figure out how to best leverage social media many of them are trapped in that same thinking. The “information super highway” has definitely developed some significant traffic patterns around social media lanes leading many businesses to feel that they need to put up billboards along those roadways of commerce.

The trouble is that this kind of thinking misses the point.

Allow me to share three truths then about social media, your business, and you

Truth #1: Social Media IS Social
The interesting aspect of all social media channels is that they’re designed for conversation. This is distinctly different than broadcast. The implication is that it is not sufficient to simply have a Facebook presence or a Twitter feed, you need to be willing to monitor and engage in conversation or your social media efforts will just be so much noise.

This requires effort on your part, it may even require guidelines for using social media to help employees understand what they should or shouldn’t discuss. Don’t expect long term benefit from your social media channels if all you’re using them for is another way to broadcast your message into the ether.

Truth #2: Businesses Can’t “Own” Conversation
Obviously you own your message but once the conversation starts you have less control over what is said and where the conversation leads. The corresponding truth here is that while you may start the conversation with a broadcast message there is equal chance that the conversation will be started by someone else broadcasting THEIR message about you… AND because there are so many more of them than there are of you the odds are pretty high that you won’t be starting as many conversations as they will.

The implication is that your social media efforts have to start from the position of listener more often than that of speaker and that you then must be willing to enter the conversational fray with sincerity rather than with marketing spin.

Truth #3: People Are Using Social Media to Create Their Own Brands
WHAT?!?! People have brands??! Sure they do. My favorite example is the Apple sticker that people have on the back of their car:

This isn’t just one more cute way of showing how many people are in the family that rides around in this van. It is a way of identifying this as a “Apple family”. I can honestly say that I have NEVER seen this done with a Microsoft Windows sticker or an Intel sticker or a Lenovo sticker. In fact I’ll argue that more often than not Windows people don’t admit to being Windows people until they’re in an argument with Apple people!

The fact that people are engaging in creating their own brands, and more importantly leveraging social media to create brand awareness, means that the demographics and market segmentation we used to use to figure out how to talk to people are starting to become more and more minutely defined.

The game is shifting from trying to figure out how to simply communicate a brand promise to now trying to determine how to get customers to integrate your brand into their own. Granted this isn’t as easy with some types of products or services as it is with others but thinking through how you allow people to identify their brand with yours can lead to some interesting new approaches to marketing, advertising, and social conversation.

By understanding and applying these three truths to your social media efforts you can more effectively enter into the conversation and remember, the conversation is happening whether you’re joining in it or not.

How is your organization leveraging social media today?

 

 

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Migrating to a Better Customer Experience: Four Stages

Trying to sort through all the messaging, tactics, and analytics around Customer Experience (CX) can be daunting. Where do you start trying to create a better customer journey?

  • Do you look at beefing up customer service?
  • Do you fix what’s broken?
  • Do you build on what works?
  • Do you implement new systems?

The answer to any and all of the above is: Maybe.

There are certainly numerous pathways that can take a company from where they are today to a better envisioned customer experience tomorrow but allow me to suggest four stages of development that will help not only chart those paths to success but, in the end, make them shorter as well.

Stage 1: Assessment
This first stage is where you map out your current customer journey as it exists today. You capture all the touch points a customer has with your company. You capture all the places and ways data is stored. You determine what life looks like from the perspective of the person outside your company doing business with you and from the perspective of the person inside your company trying to know something about the customer.

The assessment stage is where you start to get to some understanding of where you’ve got gaps and holes in the customer journey, of where things get clunky in dealing with you and in your dealing with them.

Stage 2: Strategy
This is the one that jazzes ME most because I am a strategy guy. After you’ve assessed the current state of affairs you begin the strategy stage by defining a better envisioned future. This not NOT, “We will fix this gap or that hole.” rather it is a statement about what the customer experience will look and feel like when you’ve created the next generation.

The strategy stage next looks at how to get from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow, or later this afternoon…we all want it faster don’t we? This includes both near and mid-term milestones and measures of success. You’re creating YOUR map to better CX.

Stage 3: Implementation
In this third stage you’re starting to implement process changes and, in some cases, system or infrastructure changes. You’re targeting the long term goal and measuring against your strategic milestones.

It is important to understand that this may be the longest of the three stages thus far. There will no doubt be immediate, near term, middle term, and longer term pieces of a implementation plan and so patience here is the key. Implementation may also result in the modification of some of those milestones you’ve created as assumptions are challenged or confirmed. You do NOT, however, want to start with implementation or it will go on forever.

Be patient, stick to the plan.

Stage 4: Change Management
If I love strategy I hate change management. It is always so tactical, practical, and nit-pickingly bothersome, but hear me in this: It is absolutely necessary.

When you start making large organization wide changes it is easy for communication as to the “why” to get lost. It’s been said that “Vision Leaks” and this is certainly true in any sort of company wide process or system change. The constancy of a good change management stage is what keeps everyone aligned with the strategic vision and marching in the same direction.

In truth change management works through all four stages but it leaps even more prominently to the forefront when you’re implementing changes that effect everyone.

Which stage have you found the most difficult when it comes to making big organizational changes?

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3 Prerequisites for Creating Better Customer Experience

Many companies are starting to come to grips with the reality that providing better customer experiences can be incredible differentiators.

That leaves them wondering where to start. Do they look at customer service metrics? Do they give away freebies to their loyal customers? Do they invest in new information systems?

All or any of the above may be required but allow me to suggest three prerequisites, three places to start before you start investing largely in reinventing CX in your organization.

1. Examine Your Processes
It is all too often the case that the connection points between sellers and buyers are owned by siloed departments within larger organizations.

Before you start budgeting for new CX systems you need to examine your end to end processes, including all the places where customers have a touch point with you. You’re looking for consistent voice, consistent messaging, and consistent knowledge of the customer.

Imagine you attend a networking event where you engage in deep conversation with someone you believe will be a potentially great business partner in the future. You spend nearly two hours talking about mutual interests, past experiences, and possible future endeavors. You make plans to meet for lunch the following week.

What would it be like if you met for lunch and this promising new connection had no recollection of your previous conversation? What if they found everything you had talked about at lunch fascinatingly new even though you had shared it all before?

Examining your processes allows you a way to discover if your customers are having an experience similar to that lunch meeting.

2. Explore Your Purpose
It’s not just processes that need to be looked at in a new light. In most organizations the purpose of the marketing group is to fill up the pipeline, the purpose of  the sales group is to bring in customers, the purpose of the support group is to keep them happy.

What would change if the purpose of all three groups was to create customers who advocated on behalf of your product? What if the objective was to create every customer as a positive reference from the first time they ever heard about your product or service?

Creating end goals that are larger than departmental goals continues the process of breaking down silos and lays the groundwork for better customer experience.

3. Empower Your People
Have you ever found yourself talking to a customer service agent who just doesn’t seem to be able to fix something simple only to find out that when they pass you to their manager the problem gets cleared up straight away?

What would happen if that front line person was empowered to solve the problem themselves rather than having to pass the call to a manager?

By empowering your people to solve problems for the customer you not only streamline process but you create an environment in which every person who connects with a customer feels like they can impact the business positively.

Taken all together it becomes apparent that customer experience starts as a cultural imperative. No matter what systems are put in place, no matter what practices are changed if the corporate cultural doesn’t support the idea of creating amazing experiences for your customers any efforts to change won’t last.

If you were to start today to look for ways to increase customer satisfaction and psotivie experience where do you think you’d encounter the biggest challenges?

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International Cycling Union: 3 EPIC Failures

This week the International Cycling Union stripped Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles as a result of their investigation into his use of performance enhancing drugs.

While I am sure they feel quite good about their pursuit of “justice” allow me to point out the ways in which this is an epic, epic failure.

1. The failed their Purpose
Professional sports organizations are in the entertainment industry. They may indeed promote healthy exercise and provide competitive outlets for a small group of elite folks but at the very core of what they do they are there to entertain. Bicycle racing is a fringe sport at best, not nearly the following of the three biggies, football, baseball and basketball, not any where close to international sports like Soccer, not even approaching NASCAR in terms of popularity, mind-share, or revenue.

The biggest thing that has happened in the world of cycling in the last decade was Lance Armstrong. He put them on the map of sport. He brought them a larger audience. He added entertainment value beyond what they could have hoped.

And this is the thanks they give him.

When you fail at your purpose you risk becoming irrelevant.

2. They failed at Parity
Of course there is an argument that says we don’t want cheaters to win. That has been the argument that has fueled the pursuit of Armstrong even though he passed all the required drug tests when he was competing. So let me ask this:

What if they found out that EVERYONE in the races was taking performance enhancing drugs? Is it really cheating then?

In an article in the New York Times, Travis Tygart, chief exec of the US anti-doping agency said, there was still more to do to clean up cycling because there were “many more details of doping that are hidden, many more doping doctors, and corrupt team directors, and the omerta has not yet been fully broken.”

If that is the admitted case why aren’t they still looking at ALL the competitor’s blood samples? You can’t hide behind fairness and parity when you only go after a select few people. There are probably hundreds of competitors who will remain on the record as Tour finishers who cheated just as badly but didn’t win.

When you fail to adhere to your own trumpeted standards you risk becoming irrelevant.

3. They failed their Patrons
I may be alone in this but as a member of the viewing public I am not happily cheering for the pursuit of pushing doping out of cycling. I only got interested in it the entertainment value of the sport because of Lance’s pursuits. I don’t care that they’ve finally “proven” he used drugs.

They’ve lost me as a customer.

Not because of the scandal’s, not because of any supposed taint on fairness, but because they taken the guy who made them all the money and tossed him under the bus in some sort of holier-than-thou crusade. They’ve put the sport ahead of the consumer. They’ve tried to reconfigure their “product” right out there in the eyes of the viewing public and in my humble opinion they’ve screwed up the product as a result.

When you fail at understanding the customer you run the risk of becoming irrelevant.

Simply put, for me as a customer, the world of professional cycling has become irrelevant once again. Lance brought them to my attention and I watched even after he finished competing but this latest round of circus performances has turned me off completely and I doubt they’ll get me back.

Where has you seen other businesses fall prey to these kinds of failures?

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Customer Communications: Where to Start

How many time have you looked at the front page of a company web site and read something almost exactly like this:

The market leader in providing innovative solutions that transform businesses. Serving more than 67% of the fortune 500.

Drives me nuts.

Too often the starting point for customer communications start with the question, “What do we want to say?”

When you start there you suddenly find yourself with all kinds of due diligence facts, historical anecdotes, feature, functions and benefits…and so do all of your competitors. As a result everyone starts sounding very much the same.

The game changes though when you start from the position of asking, “What do we want the customer to do?”

Yes, it seems quite simple, particularly if you think the answer is, we want the customer to buy. But do you really just want them to buy? Aren’t you really MORE interested in them “succeeding”?

Typically we don’t just want customers, we want satisfied customers. So the answer to the question” what do we want them to do” is, “we want them to use our product or service to solve their problem.”

Of course in order to be able to start communicating from the perspective of solving the customers problem we have to now what the problem is and how your product or service solves it. THEN you have to let the customer know that you understand the problem.

So instead of:

  • We have
  • We are
  • We provide

You start with

  • You want
  • You need
  • You can

Try this experiment:

Take any of the communications you currently use to describe what you do and set them aside. Start the piece over with a description of the problem you solve. Next throw in a few lines about how your solution is unique in terms of what it does for the customer. You only get to talk about the problem and the unique solution, NOT your organization.

Now go look at your competitors communications and see if you don’t recognize how this approach starts to make you stand out.

When was the last time you saw a company talk more about you as a customer than they do about themselves?

 

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Three Reasons to Understand the Customer Perspective

I received an email offer the other day that was attempting to persuade me towards an upgrade of a graphics software package I’ve used off and on for a couple years.

I went to the web site and discovered there were three different versions available: Basic, Advanced, and Pro. I could click on each of them, even compare them side by side, and in the end couldn’t decide which one I wanted based on anything other than price…so I bought nothing.

The trouble was that the descriptions of the packages were all written from a sales perspective, this or that attractive feature designed to entice me to buy. But when a feature is described in technical jargon, Dyspeptic Flabberhaven Interface, it sounds impressive but confusing. WHY do I need a DFI? Who knows.

A web site I have really come to appreciate and frequently use is CNET.com. CNET reviews products like cameras and laptops and home appliances but the bit I like best are the buying guides. The CNET buying guides aren’t there to help you compare Flabberhaven capability but to solve your problem.

You want to buy a digital camera? Cool. What do you want to do with it? Kids sport photography? Portraits? Landscapes? Start a business? The buying guides use a series of question to guide you toward the right model and feature set. In short, they take the customer perspective.

In my last post I suggested that the customer experience is guided by a couple of simple questions:

  • Should I explore?
  • Should I buy?
  • Should I promote?

So much of what you find on web sites these days is designed to drive right to that second question: Should I buy? Without providing anything other than a call out of feature and function to persuade a prospective buyer.

And if that seems to work why think about the customer perspective at all?

Reason #1: It says you understand the customer
As mentioned above the CNET buying guides are a great example of how to communicate an understanding of the customer. If I am looking for technology I go there first before I go to any retailer of manufacturer site BECAUSE those guides scream out…we know you.

If you can show that you know me as a customer it helps convince me that your product will meet my need.

Reason #2: It changes the way you present information
If you understand that there are a number of people coming to your web site or contacting you via phone or email that are exploring, looking to learn more about you as a possible solution to a need, you start to present information differently.

I love using churches as examples. Think of one major reason an non-attender would decide they want to go to church. Life Crisis? Return to childhood faith? Searching for meaning? Curiosity?

Go to most church web sites however and what you’ll find…well, you’ll find a mess if you look at enough of them…but what you’ll find it a list of features and functions. “We’re a welcoming community where you’ll feel right at home.” “We’re not like your parents church.” “Church for today’s generation.”

Understanding WHY people are exploring you changes the information you present. True for churches, true for purveyors of software.

Reason #3: It sets the foundation for customer loyalty
When a vendor shows from the outset that they care enough to help me explore them and assists me in buying by displaying an understanding of my need they communicate an expertise that drives me towards loyalty from my first interaction.

If you can show that you know as much about me as a perspective customer as you do about your product you build trust from the start.

This simple list doesn’t come close to uncovering all the changes in business process and strategy that a deep understanding of the customer perspective engenders but it is a good place to start. Which leads me to today’s question:

How well does your organization, business, newsletter, understand the perspective of your customers and if you understood that perspective more intimately what would you change?

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Managing Customer Experience: Two Perspectives

There is quite a lot being said, and written, about Customer Experience Management these days and it can easily be overlooked as something that only applies to a small number of specific industries: retail, services, CPG etc.

The truth is that the thought process around managing customer experiences applies to just about ANY interaction between an organization and the people who use the goods or services of that organization.

  • Non-profits like to think of these people as donors of constituents, but they ARE customers.
  • Churches like to think of these people as members but they ARE customers.
  • Youth sports organizations like to think of these people as players but they ARE customers.

I think you get the idea.

When thinking about managing a customer experience it is important to remember that there are two distinct perspectives involved, each with their own set of drivers.

Perspective #1: Inside Looking Out
This is the easy one to think through because it is the perspective of the organization that has customers.

The inside looking out perspective is generally guided by four questions that drive ever deepening levels of engagement with customers. The answers to these questions help shape the experience from the inside looking out point of view:

  • What do we Know? (General customer demographic info)
  • What do we Do? (Segmentation and campaigns)
  • What do we Suggest? (Loyalty and engagement)
  • What do we Create? (The set of experiences that drive movement)

Obviously a lot more could be said here but these four question provide the framework for developing progressively more robust customer experiences.  Using one of our less obvious “industry” choices from above:

  • Churches first need to know who is attending, even basic name address and phone number helps, but learning more about their family is even better information: kids? ages? interests?
  • Then they need to target communication that is pertinent to the attender. You wouldn’t want to send a new visitor who is a 65 yr old retiree information about nursery services on Sunday morning.
  • Once they get to know the person and their family suggesting ways to get involved, ways to feel plugged in, that are specific to them becomes important in terms of creating stickiness.
  • Thinking through how you then keep the new family coming based on multiple anchor points is important. How many churches have had the discussion about having services for everything from pre-school through high school on the same night mid-week in order to create “family time”?

Perspective #2: Outside Looking In

This perspective is often the forgotten point of view. Customers are the one “having the experience” so it is crucial to remember they are looking at it through a different set of questions:

  • Should I Explore? (Deciding if they want to know more about you)
  • Should I Buy? (Deciding if they will buy)
  • Should I Promote? (Deciding if they’ll recommend you to friends)

How about a youth soccer program this time:

  • Parents know about clubs other than the ones their kids are involved in and have to make a decision about whether or not to explore a competitors policies, costs, teams, and coaches.
  • Once they becomes educated the next decision is whether or not to have their child play for that club.
  • If the experience is a good one they can become a significant recruiting source based on what they tell other parents.

I’ll write more about how to manage these two perspectives in days to come but for now it is important to remember that they both exist and they’re both driven by different sets of questions. Understanding how your customers move through their own questions is key to bringing these two perspectives into alignment.

What do you provide that helps your customers make their three decision to explore, buy, and promote?

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When Should You Delight Customers?

Perhaps it seems like a bit of an obvious question. “You ought to delight customers ALL of the time!”

Funny thing is the research seems to go against that. You see, there are times when customers just want things to be easy. Hence, the rise in the idea of customer effort.

But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. While most folks still see customer delight as a problem solving, customer service approach, as I discussed in Customer Delight Revisited, there are plenty of opportunities to delight customers outside of trying to make up for a mistake.

But if customers want to be left alone sometimes and delighted at other times how do you know when to delight them and when to let them be?

Let me suggest a possible perspective, in terms of a siple mathmatical analogy, that you can use to determine when you ought to delight customers. If we think of customer delight as a multiplier we can start to look across any product or service offering and start to make educated guesses about where to apply effort in delighting customers. It all starts with the customers expectations.

ALL customers come to the table with a set of expectations, even if they can’t clearly articulate them. Let’s view those expectations as being characterized by four levels of effort:

  • Level 0: I expect this part of my experience to be seemless, the provider should make it effortless.
  • Level 1: I’m willing to expend some effort here
  • Level 2: I expect I will have to exert a moderate amount of effort to accomplish these kinds of tasks.
  • Level 3: I expect some faily significant effort

By way of example, paying my cell phone bill ought to be seemless. I want NO effort in interacting with the provider, however; when it comes time to configure my cell phone service I expect that I am going to exert a moderate amount of effort in determining which plan is best for me.

If we think of delight as a multiplier then where is the best opportunity for delighting the customer? Certainly not in the bill paying, the mathmatical equation, where D= delight,  would be D x 0 = 0. On the other hand if we try to delight them in the configuring service scenario we get D x 2 which yields some significant gains.

In this simple example we start to see that where a customer anticipates no effort I need to leave them alone, customer effort IS king. But, when the customer expects to do some level of work I can look for ways to surprise and delight them that will provide some pretty good returns. Some examples of the different levels of customer expectations might look something like this:

  • Level 0: bill paying, continuing service, renewing service, basic troubleshooting.
  • Level 1: Adding a service, purchasing complementary products, upsell or cross sell of products, locating a vendor web site OR locating a brick and mortar location from that web site.
  • Level 2: Configuring service, choosing from multiple product options, bundling, creating re-order templates, troubles hooting
  • Level 3: Customizing a product or service, complex configuration, design

In order to discover the best opportunities to delight your customers you can take three simple steps:

  1. Begin by mapping their experience in interacting with you from discovery to purchase, to service.
  2. Assign each step in that experience an expected level of effort. Not YOUR expectation, the customer’s expectation.
  3. Focus your efforts on the higher levels.

What ARE the steps a customers goes through in moving from discovery, through purchase, to service with your organization? Where are your highest multipliers based on expected effort?