Friday, October 7, 2016

Perfection of Object vs. Perfection of Experience

Where technophiles are in control of a company, their goal is the perfection of their product – to increase the performance and efficiency of the product, to add more features and functions, and otherwise to make the product “better” by an abstract technical standard.   But a far more important question is whether the market agrees with their ideas about what makes a product more desirable.

Sometimes, the answer is “yes.”   When a significant market segment sees gas prices as burdensome and is frustrated by how slowly web pages load, there is sufficient demand for a more fuel-efficient engine and a faster internet connection and the firm that delivers this quality will attract customers.    But the market does not have an unlimited appetite for efficiency improvements – where the majority of the market is satisfied with their gas mileage and internet speed, there is no appeal for a product that is “better” than the competition in these regards.

And this is where many firms disconnect from the market – they attempt to perfect their product in ways that the market does not value, or continue to pursue a quality that the market no longer values.   Internet access is a fitting example: two decades ago it was a serious concern, but today most product offerings offer sufficient bandwidth for the consume needs, yet firms continue to advertise their network speed to a market that doesn’t feel the need for more than they have.

This is easier to witness for goods than for services because the capabilities are evident in the object, but firms who produce a service also suffer from the same issues.   Consider the way in which hotels are constantly adding additional services for guests, and the way that guests are beginning to resent paying fees for services they do not use (the “resort fee” for a workout room and a pool that the guest never visits).  In this regard, it is easier to measure customer discontent with an overly-sophisticated product that leads them to pay for capabilities they do not value when the product is a service, but it can also be seen in goods where customers reject the “high end” model that offers unattractive qualities for an additional cost.

This is to say that perfection of product is only meaningful to the market when it contributes to perfection of experience.   Where any product is enhanced in ways the customer does not value, that enhancement is an unnecessary cost and an undesirable price premium to a customer who seems no benefit in the additional sophistication.

Unfortunately, the technophiles seldom see this.  They pursue perfection of object regardless of whether it is what the market desires, and often pointedly ignore perfection of experience until it becomes a significant detriment to their revenues.   When customers switch to a simpler and less expensive alternative, it hits the providers of complex and expensive ones in the pocketbook.   Maybe they recognize this in time, or maybe they continue to pursue perfection of product and attempt to “educate” the customer as to why they ought to pay more – though most do this very poorly, failing to connect feature to benefit at all.

This may well be the reason that technology firms are so short-lived.  During the brief moment in time where the goals they are pursuing happen to coincide with the desires of the customer, they experience commercial success.  But this is entirely by coincidence, and when the market changes, the firm clings to the objectives that led to its temporary success, ignoring the signs that its interests are out of joint with those of the market.


The solution to this problem is simply one of customer awareness: considering the problem the customer is trying to solve (rather than the solution the firm provides) and asking more insightful questions to recognize not only that “X is important,” but the degree to which having “X” contributes meaningfully to the customer experience – and to stop pursuing it beyond that point.

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