VeraSage

What is Value Pricing? Part 5

Brendon Harrex - 08/25/2006

We have now established some of the key points regarding value pricing—they are as follows:

• The purpose of a business is to create value for its customers.
  
• Value is customer dependent—subjective and external to the organisation.
  
• Pricing based on value created—motivates us to provide higher value services to our customers.
  
• Value pricing forces us to segment our customers and differentiate our service offerings.

Value pricing forces us to focus on the total customer experience. While I was on holiday, I read the attached article in the Waikato Times. This simple example of differing service levels between two car dealers highlights how powerful a customer’s total experience is in determining their loyalty and willingness to refer other business to Ward Wilson. The experience our customers have when dealing with us is more important than on time delivery or technical quality alone (although these factors do contribute towards the customer experience).

The customer experience is obviously a very subjective matter, however it is very important. We should also note that customers will judge their experience with Ward Wilson, not just based on their experience of service from accounting firms, but from any business, e.g. the customer in the attached article will have raised experience expectations because of the way car dealer B treated him.
The experience our customers have is influenced by factors such as:

• Our friendliness on the telephone.
  
• The way we dress.
  
• Our conversational skills.
  
• The level of advice we give.
  
• The things we remember about our clients’ business, family etc.

Focussing on these things as well as providing excellent technical quality, allows us to create a “wow experience.” Often customers do not expect this from their accountant, however as Keith Hitchcock points out in the attached article, “wow’ is what we must do.

Have a great “wow” week!