We talk about “value” a lot in CX… but rarely do we define whose value we mean.
Michel Stevens offers a framework that cuts through the noise.
“There are three forces, and they need to be in balance. It’s about creating value… creating value for your customer, creating value for your organization and creating value for your brand.”
Most of us are pretty good at that first one. Creating customer value is table stakes in CX. And if you’ve been around CX long enough, you also learn how to tie your work to financial outcomes… value to the company.
But value to the brand? That’s the one I see ignored the most.
And I’ve been guilty of it too. I used to lump brand value in with company value… assuming if the company benefited, so did the brand. That’s not always true. Brand value is more delicate, more long-term. It’s not about this quarter’s revenue. It’s about what people associate with you three years from now.
Michel shared a story of a fine dining restaurant delivering food with a robot. Operationally, that might have created company value… faster, cheaper service. But brand value? Gone. The customer wasn’t paying for efficiency… they were paying for experience. For elegance. For warmth. A robot can’t serve that up.
What works for a fast casual brand, doesn’t immediately work for fine dining.
When we treat brand value as a nice-to-have or confuse it with profit margin, we risk damaging something much harder to rebuild than a bottom line.
Your Turn: Which of the three forces do you see most often ignored in your company?
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Listen to the complete Podcast here
Thank you to our colleague Rick Denton and CX Passport for sharing these insights.
