CUSTOMERS.COM® RESEARCH FROM THE PATRICIA SEYBOLD GROUP
When Something Is Wrong, Are You Really Making It Right for Customers?
Identifying and Measuring the
Key Moments of Truth in Break/Fix Customer Scenario® Patterns
By Ronni T. Marshak, May 15, 2008
NETTING IT OUT
Customer Scenarios® fall into patterns. Based on running hundreds of customer co-design sessions with thousands of customers, we’ve noticed that customers in a particular context tend to want the same things. It‘s valuable to know these patterns ahead of time so that you’ll know what kinds of customer metrics and operational metrics to elicit. Then you can focus your co-design activities on the real secret sauce: how to differentiate the experience, products, and services you offer to help customers reach their goals.
In the typical “break/fix” scenario, it is practically universal that the customer has three key things that she wants:
- I want to know what’s wrong
- I want it fixed
- I don’t want it to happen again
These are the customer’s Moments of Truth; if you don’t address these issues crisply, you risk losing your customer forever.
While understanding the moments of truth is valuable, your real leverage
comes from knowing how to measure and improve what matters to customers.
How does the customer determine if a moment of truth has been successfully
met? How do you measure if your company is successfully meeting your
customers’ metrics? How can you monitor and improve your organization’s performance in addressing each moment of truth? How can you identify and measure what business opportunities might emerge?
Customers’ moment of truth metrics are typically, though not exclusively, measured in terms of elapsed time for the customer, number of customer steps, amount of customer effort required, and customer’s money (often in that order of importance).
Once you’ve identified your customers’ moments of truth and the related metrics, based on the customer context, there are a series of next steps to take in any scenario:
- Determine what your company ideally should do to anticipate and/or alleviate the customers’ concerns and successfully address their moments of truth
- Identify processes, policies, and resources that must be put in place
- Estimate the costs and benefits of investing in changes
- Prioritize and implement changes based on their probable impact on the value of your customer franchise
The Customer Lifecycle
© 2008 Patricia Seybold Group
Illustration 1. The customer lifecycle begins with customers looking for solutions and continues to their planning for the next product/service solution that they need, leading, again, to the exploration phase. Most customer scenarios span two or three of the phases. The break/fix scenario addressed in this report addresses the use and manage/maintain phases of the cycle.
A TYPICAL “BREAK/FIX” CUSTOMER SCENARIO
Similar for Products and Services, B2B and B2C
No matter what business you are in, or what type of products or services you use, things break. Equipment doesn’t work, unexpected results show up, information isn’t received on time, billing goes awry, and on and on. Although there are uncountable variations on this theme, it all comes down to this: something is broken and I want it fixed!
After facilitating hundreds of customer co-design sessions where there
is a break/fix scenario, we can pretty much anticipate what moments of
truth will emerge. Although there are always variations on a theme (based
on specific customer type, specific service or product line, industry,
and context), basically, there are three key moments of truth in every
break/fix scenario, as shown in Illustration 2:
• I want to know what’s wrong
• I want it fixed
• I don’t want it to happen again
Moments of Truth in Break/Fix Scenarios
© 2008 Patricia Seybold Group
Illustration 2. In almost all break/fix scenarios, whether for products or services, or B2B or B2C, there are three key moments of truth.
Moments of Truth in Break/Fix
CONDITIONS OF SATISFACTION FOR MOMENTS OF TRUTH. Although
these moments of truth are virtually universal in this type of scenario,
sometimes they are expressed in a slightly different way depending on
the Conditions of Satisfaction for the customer. Conditions of satisfaction
are things that have to happen in my specific context and scenario to
make me happy; sometimes they are expressed as emotions (how I feel about
what’s happening). In a break/fix scenario, each moment of truth is often
clarified through one of these conditions of satisfaction (download
the PDF to see Illustration 3). These conditions of satisfaction aren’t universal
in the pattern, but variations of the following often emerge in a break/fix
scenario:
• Moment of Truth: I want to know what’s wrong.
Condition of Satisfaction: I want reassurance it isn’t my fault.
• Moment of Truth: I want it fixed.
Condition of Satisfaction: I want to know how to fix it/or
prevent it if it ever happens again, and/or I want a replacement or
remedy while the item is being fixed or the problem is being resolved.
• Moment of Truth: I don’t want it to happen again.
Condition of Satisfaction: I want compensation for my down-time/efforts/agitation.
Types of Customer Scenarios
Understanding your customers’ scenarios—what they are trying to accomplish and how they ideally want to reach their goals—is critical to making it easy for them. There are several types of Customer Scenarios:
• Customer Lifecycle Scenarios. There are Customer Scenarios that are closely connected to customers’ discovery, acquisition, and use of your products to fulfill a need they have—we call these customer lifecycle scenarios.
• Event-Triggered Scenarios. There are also Customer Scenarios that relate to life events or business events that customers need to deal with. For consumers, these might include buying a new home, retiring, welcoming a new baby into the family, sending a child off to college. For business people, these scenarios may include things like launching a new product, opening a new branch, or downsizing the business.
• Outcome-Based Scenarios. Some scenarios are focused on a specific outcome, such as loosing 20 pounds, getting a promotion, or increasing your revenues by 20 percent while retaining or improving your current profit margins.
Customer Lifecycle Scenarios
In a perfect world, your customers remain loyal to you throughout their life time, always looking to you for the next generation of products and services in your area that fulfills their needs. In reality, customers, both business and consumer, can be fickle and picky, changing providers as soon as something better, sexier, and/or cheaper comes along. The key to keeping customers happy and loyal is to make it so easy for them to do business with you and achieve their goals throughout their entire lifecycle of selecting, purchasing, and consuming or using your products and services (see Illustration 2) that the thought of defecting never enters their minds.
Recurring Scenario Patterns
Customer Scenario patterns recur over and over again across lots of different products and industries. Unlike a specific Customer Scenario for a particular customer in a particular context, a Customer Scenario pattern is a high-level outline or template that emerges from many different actual context- and customer-segment-specific scenarios.
Each Customer Scenario pattern consists of:
1. The types of steps that customers who find themselves in a similar role and context will typically want to take, and the key points within the scenario that matter most to customers: customers’ “Moments of Truth.”
2. The metrics by which customers will determine if the particular moment of truth has been met successfully.
3. The types of responses that suppliers and partners find will best address these top priority customers’ needs and how your organization measures your customers’ successful achievement of their key needs.
4. The metrics by which you measure the business opportunities resulting from customers achieving their goals.
Unpacking Customers’ Moments of Truth
Once customers have mapped out their ideal scenario, we ask them to show us the points in the scenario that are the most critical for a successful experience and a successful outcome. We ask, “What are the moments of truth for you in this scenario? What are the points at which you would abandon this scenario? What are the showstoppers for you in this situation?” The customer team will step back and look at the entire scenario, and, usually within a minute or two, they quickly agree on three to five critical steps in the scenario that really make a difference to their ability to complete the scenario successfully. They identify these moments of truth and “unpack” them for us by describing what needs to happen in order for them to feel well taken care of and able to complete the scenario.
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