The other day I bought an iPad.
The entire experience from walking in to walking out took about five minutes. I wasn’t that surprised. In the past two months, I’ve been involved in the purchase of four products at an Apple store. All four experiences combined have taken less than thirty minutes.
For other people, the experience at the Apple store may take considerably longer. I watched as the sales people patiently worked with customers who were unfamiliar with Apple products, weren’t sure about their needs or had questions about how to use their new products. The sales people didn’t rush the customer and appeared to have all the time in the world for them.
For me, the Apple store provided incredible value. I had a need and they were able to get it resolved incredibly fast and effectively. Conversely, for those people who needed more time, the Apple store also provided value.
The true “genius” of the Apple store doesn’t lie in the tech support people. It’s the sales people. Apple sales people provide value by understanding and adapting the experience to the needs of their customer. They don’t put everyone through the same process. They skip steps that aren’t necessary and add steps that are.
As organizations continue to scrutinize costs, everyone wants to show that they are adding value. This is especially true for internal, non-customer facing departments.
While such an attitude is productive, it can backfire. In their quest for “Trusted Advisor” status, people sometimes confuse adding value with doing more stuff. As a result, they wind up over complicating processes or slowing them down.
For example, in one company, to get a new budget account set up through finance, executives had to have a one-on-one consultation with an analyst from the Finance department. However, the consultation wasn’t focused on quickly and effectively getting the executive up and running.
The analysts walked the executive through a long process of defining the business case for the new budget account, an audit of current accounts to determine if it would be better to use one of them, and finally a discussion of budget targets for that account.
Ninety-percent of the time, after this discussion, the account that the executive originally wanted was set up, just as the executive requested it. The only difference is that it took an extra two to three hours of the executive’s time.
Perhaps two to three hours doesn’t seem like a major inconvenience. However, sometimes those consultative processes can add days or even weeks to the process of meeting the customer’s need without actually improving upon the original request.
Whether business-facing or customer-facing, the best way to add value is to help someone fulfill his or her needs in the most efficient and effective way. In some cases that might mean clarifying that need or helping the customer think through their solution. In other cases, it means helping break down the barriers to the customer having his or her need met.
You don’t always have to “improve” the solution in order to add value. Sometimes, just getting out of the way is the best thing you can do for your customer.
