Vous est-il déjà arrivé de vous offrir un service totalement inégalé à vos besoins, comme de vous faire vendre une expérience de piscine à ciel ouvert alors que vous avez à la fois le vertige et un mauvais nageur, ou de vous voir proposer un produit cosmétique pour un type de peau totalement différent du vôtre ? Concept connu dans le domaine de la vente, l’approche « résoudre, ne pas vendre » est la marque de fabrique des offres ciblées, personnalisées et basées sur les besoins des clients. Il peut être lié à des stratégies de désagrégation des ventes allant des options de plans et de forfaits importants dans l’industrie des télécommunications aux nuances et palettes courantes dans l’industrie de la beauté/du maquillage. « Résoudre, ne pas vendre » implique de faire correspondre les besoins spécifiques et identifiables des clients aux spécifications et à l’utilité des produits et services. Il met en toile de fond un refrain dominant dans l’industrie de la publicité d’aujourd’hui où nous voyons des marques parler de la valeur émotionnelle et fonctionnelle de leurs produits sur de fausses caractéristiques et de vagues détails techniques.

Customer intimacy, propagated by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema, draws from the reimagination of what “value” means to customers and the design of business systems that provide such value to match the needs of customers. With a broadened conception of value by customers in the digital era, customer intimacy stands out in Treacy and Wiersema’s school of thought as a value discipline that merges “detailed customer knowledge with operational flexibility” in order to meet exact, unique needs of customers. Whilst one might infer that achieving customer intimacy comes with cost implications or requires a degree of business eccentricity, it’s important to acknowledge the line that links customer intimacy to business gains. This linkage centers around its facilitation of customer loyalty and lifetime customer relationship. Using Zappos, the Amazon-owned online shoe retailer as a case study, the firm’s customer-centric culture placed the needs of customers so high that they were willing to recommend, in cases where they didn’t have the exact shoe stock customers needed, their competitors who did. With such a practice, the Zappos brands applies, in quite unconventional measure, the “solve, don’t sell » approach, which yielded them more than $1 billion in annual gross sales within a decade, a profitability they ascribe to repeat customers and word of mouth promotion.

Why should businesses adopt the “solve don’t sell” approach to their customer experience strategy? What is the case for customer loyalty spurred by this approach? Primarily, profitability and business success requires going beyond one-off sales. A first time sale is meant to lead to repeated sales which is the crux of customer experience –  to ensure that customers are satisfied and receiving the value they require to keep coming back. Thus, focus on short-term incentive at the expense of long-term profitability on the heels of customer happiness, trust and loyalty easily becomes the difference between winning and winning big. To factor in the financial implication of retention and repeat purchase, a Bain and Company report highlights that a 5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profit, using the example of the financial services industry. 

With these in mind, what then are the steps towards inculcating a business culture that favours the “solve, don’t sell” approach, a model steeped in customer intimacy? Here are four guides for businesses willing and ready to always address their customer’s specific needs and retain them for a lifetime:

1.Empower your employees to be customer-centric

Business efforts to improve customer experience are directly grounded in the strides of employees. Empowering employees to be customer-centred such that they can take ownership of situations to serve customers better, are willing to be flexible to customer needs, and are consistently operating from a standpoint of the customers’ interest goes a long way in shaping a sustainable customer experience strategy. To do this, it is important to create a culture of open communication where employees are able to share their opinions and suggestions. This goes alongside a strong feedback culture where employee growth and development is encouraged every step of the way. At the root of all these is the instilment of a customer-oriented organizational vision and value system to serve as a Northstar for employees.

2.Understand your customers and their needs

It is important to know your customers as much as possible. Understanding what they need, what they care about, how they engage with your touchpoints, and what their pain points might be goes a long way in helping you solve their problems. Data-driven decision making comes to the fore here, as consistent collection and monitoring of patterns and trends in the behaviour of customers should be the driver of product/service design and business strategy as well as iteration. 

3.Soyez clair sur la valeur que votre produit/service offre à vos clients

Having set a customer-oriented employee culture and assured in-depth understanding of customers, it is important for a business to align its communications and messaging in a way that shows their clear understanding of their value to their customers. A business should be able to concisely communicate their value-addition  – how they can help the customer, serve them, or solve specific challenges they face. This way, a customer knows what to expect from their brand from the get-go. When it is exactly what they need, then the customer relationship takes off on a smooth and seamless end.

4.Be present to add value to your customers

Pour un certain nombre de lignes de mode, les médias sociaux sont très outil efficace pour rester en contact avec les clients. Pour d’autres organisations dans des secteurs tels que le logiciel en tant que service (SaaS), le téléphone et le chat en direct pourraient constituer des canaux utiles pour être présents auprès des clients. Pour rester présent aux clients, il ne suffit pas de répondre aux questions et de les diriger vers les points de contact commerciaux. Il offre aux marques la possibilité d’affiner leur compréhension de leurs clients et de mettre en valeur cette prise de conscience dans leur interaction avec eux ou avec des causes qui leur tiennent à cœur. Selon un étude Salesforce qui a compilé les résultats de plus de 15 000 consommateurs et entreprises en 2020, à la lumière du coronavirus et de son impact sur les entreprises, 54 % des clients interrogés s’attendent à ce que les entreprises élargissent leur engagement méthodes. Cette constatation renforce l’impératif pour les entreprises de redoubler d’efforts pour rester en contact avec les clients.

In all, to adopt a solutions-oriented, customer-intimate strategy, a business must be willing to invest in the combination of employee empowerment, customer knowledge, value-addition, and steady connection. If executing these in tandem leads to a pay-off in customer loyalty, what stops your business from going all in?