Click Image to Enlarge | A Unique Benefit-driven approach selects and improves touchpoints in a way that delivers a Unique Benefit to customers.
We know by now that leading B2B companies build customer loyalty by focusing on unique benefits—not touchpoints—as they look to enhance the customer experience. Check out MLC’s video for a quick refresher on the research behind this.
Again, we’re not saying to let your touchpoints go by the wayside. But while a touchpoint-driven approach to the experience seeks to optimize each touchpoint individually, companies with the highest levels of loyalty instead isolate the benefits their company can uniquely provide to customers. They select and improve touchpoints to ensure that customers actually perceive this benefit throughout the experience.
You may be thinking: isn’t this just differentiation?? Well, yes. Sort of. The problem is that there’s a huge disconnect between how “differentiated” we as marketers believe our experience is and how unique customers actually perceive it to be. Time and again I’ve been told by seasoned marketers that the one thing that makes their company unique is that they are trustworthy … or innovative … or reliable … or a valued partner. Of course, if EVERY company claims to be the most “trusted valuable partner who’s reliably innovative,” we’re defaulting to what essentially becomes a common benefit. Sure, customers want to work with a trustworthy supplier, but can marketers honestly believe that direct competitors don’t also want to be viewed as trustworthy?
Proximity bias, or the tendency for marketers to overestimate the uniqueness of the benefits they provide, emerged as a key failure point throughout our customer experience research. Marketers spend so much time analyzing how they differ from competitors that the slightest differences seem obvious, but customers often can’t tell the difference. From customers’ perspective, a company that “provides genuine, personal service, above and beyond what you expect” is nearly equivalent to a company that “delivers on promises while providing a personal touch”. And when it’s six of one, half dozen of the other, customers default to buying on price—something we know we want to avoid.
MLC members: check out resources and activities we’ve designed to help you refine benefits that are truly unique.
