Good food costs more

I am a big fan of providing a superior customer experience. When your customers have a positive experience, they are willing to pay more and are more willing to tell their friends about you. The best understanding of how the customer experience affects the pricing on a product is to take a look at restaurants. The restaurants that understand the customer experience can almost always charge more for that experience.

Think of your favorite restaurant and how busy it might be. When you show up on a Friday night, is the line extra long? Are people always raving about how great it is? When people come in from out of town are they referred there?

Around the corner from my office is a little pizza restaurant called Flatbread Community Oven. They serve authentic Neapolitan pizza. I eat there regularly. I also notice that their dining room is typically very full. In fact, when they are full with guests, you can walk around the corner to another local restaurant that has received national exposure on the Food Network and notice that other restaurant has an empty dining room.

What’s the difference? What makes one restaurant successful and the restaurant around the corner on the verge of failure?

It’s a combination of many things but they all culminate in a positive customer experience. Great food, great atmosphere and great staff all contribute to the experience of the customer. All contribute to long-term success. In fact, if the experience is superior, the pricing becomes much more flexible.

In marketing, you look at the four Ps when developing a marketing plan. Product, price, promotion and place. When you find the right mix, you have optimized the customer experience.

Just because your product costs less, it doesn’t naturally mean you’ll get more clients. And, just because you have a better product, doesn’t naturally mean that you can charge more. The mixture needs to be right.

This mixture is different for every company but one thing that goes further than anything is providing more than the customer is expecting. When you give them more than they ask for, you can never go wrong.

Consider the experience your customers are having when they do business with you. Are you giving them exactly what they want or much more? Are you even giving them the minimum of what they are paying for?