Brandon on “The Long Wow”
by DanSneaking in last week was Brandon’s essay on The Long Wow. An excerpt:
Deep customer insights and empathetic design pave the pathway to wow moments. By diving deep into a customer’s life and closely observing their behaviors, you can wow your customer by addressing needs that they’d never be able to articulate. By immersing yourself in the customer’s wider world of emotion and culture, you can wow them by attuning the offering to practical needs and dimensions of delight that normally go unfulfilled.When a company uses empathetic design methods to create moments of wow over and over again, it bonds with customers at a level far beyond the realm of gold-colored plastic cards. OXO introduced over 50 products every year, wowing customers with purposeful improvements through the re-imagination of common culinary tools.
Few companies consistently translate rich insights from their customers’ lives into new and better offerings. The few that do can achieve a Long Wow, continuously delivering wow moments and building a true, deep loyalty that transcends traditional loyalty programs.
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October 30th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
I read the essay and really enjoyed. We are working on bringing some “wow” components to life at my work and have been struggling with ways to test this with our customers. I found the practice of letting users watch the interaction enlightening and very useful. I’m pushing for the use of this practice in our upcoming work. Great read!
November 29th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
I have an additional tangent/perspective to add to your essay. I think we need to differentiate between a product and a solution for your concept of an “offering.”
A product is developed or improved based on prior customer requirements/needs which translate into the innovation(s). However, a product capabilities/functions have a 1:1 relationship to the specific fixed needs as identified by the customer or the innovator. So the consumer’s need(s) are pre-defined based on the capability of the product. Furthermore, a product can only meet a subset of requirements/needs for subset of customers. In this case the customer loyalty is gained by the product quality, capability and function as it meets the requirements of the customer. This business case presents small risk for the vendor, because as long as they deliver what they promise and the consumer accepts what is delivered, there is little or no cause for discontent. In fact, the converse is also true, the customer only looks for/considers the product that meets their specific needs, but they are willing to compromise on their requirements during product comparisons as one product may meet more requirements than others. This is a mass market model.
A solution takes the opposite path. Solutions are developed to meet the specific needs of the customer. These needs are mapped to functional requirements which are then synthesized based on the full gamut of capabilities and components available from the vendor. This is more of an organic approach, with large risk for the vendor, because they constantly have to map their capabilities, functions and technologies in an any-to-any fashion to the requirements and needs of their customer. The risk also has two facets: (1) the vendor may not have the technology or component to amalgamate so that the solution answers the customer’s requirement; (2) the final solution may require that the customer alter or remove some specific needs/requirements from their original plan, which could cause discontent. In this case, customer loyalty is more difficult to attain and maintain, although the rewards for success are greater if the solution delivers to the full and exact requirements of the customer. This is the 21st Century consumer model.
I believe that our current market and consumer behavior is more inclined to look for solutions versus products, as I have defined the terms, because I see an overall market trend towards unique requirements, individuality and customization.
June 17th, 2008 at 4:17 am
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