One Thing You Can do to Deliver Incredible Customer Value

By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions

Photo by ROMAN ODINTSOV from Pexels

There’s one complaint I hear the most frequently in my role as a consultant is this:

Consultants are too expensive, and their engagements don’t often empower the businesses with self-sufficiency for when they leave the engagement.

No wonder businesses hesitate to hire consultants!

Consultants love a steady stream of income. But when they do this at the expense of businesses by keeping their fingers in the proverbial pie, that's not a good thing.

I’m illustrating this point because it details a need most customers and clients crave--empowerment to solve their issues and chart their journeys. They don’t want to keep hiring consultants to solve their challenges. In the end, if consultants or any business can build in self-sufficiency as a part of their products and services, they'll deliver incredible customer value!

Here are two examples of how I do this with my clients. The first one involved developing a Scrum process for a local manufacturer. The second involved creating a Voice of the Customer process for another local manufacturer. In both instances, I ensured they had all the necessary tools, procedures, and an action item list that contained all outstanding items requiring attention upon my exit.

Both projects were a resounding success, and neither client needed to call me back to help solve any challenges related to their particular projects. One CEO said he would hire me again because I empowered them to chart their destinies, which differentiated me from other consultants he had worked with in the past.
 
I’m giving you these examples because two principles apply, even if you’re not a consulting company. Here are two things you can do to build in self-sufficiency with your customers:

Ensure Everything They Need to be Successful—

During Their Buyer Journey

Your buyer journey should be a seamless experience for your customers or clients. Automated tools can ensure customer interactions happen when needed, and the right system can deliver information at the right time to the right people. Anything you can do to make this a pleasant experience for them is certainly beneficial.

After the Engagement is Over

Ensure your how-to guides or any other information they need to succeed are thorough and easy to understand. If that doesn't happen, your customer service agents could be bombarded with calls, and your customers might get frustrated in the process.
 
In the end, the whole idea is to empower your customers or clients throughout the process. When businesses can do this, they’ll deliver incredible value to their customers or clients!

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Speaking of empowerment, our Accelerate platform can deliver exceptional value to businesses through automating repetitive, manual tasks. This software tool empowers employees to engage in higher-level functions because mundane tasks no longer consume their time.

My strategic partner, Michael Cantu, and I detail this in our upcoming book, No-Nonsense Digital Transformation. It provides a step-by-step roadmap on how to prepare for and implement digital transformation initiatives in your business.

If you’re interested in learning more, click the button below!

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