Part of the difficulty with trying to figure out how to get one up over your business competitors is that you’re all likely using the same tools. Many of you are going to have access to the same pool of resources and knowledge with the help of community support, and knowing what’s worked for other brands like yours in the recent past will be guiding your hands.
If then, you can’t hope to gain an advantage through using different technology to your competitors, perhaps your best bet is to think about how you’re using it. Namly, using it in a more effective manner that makes a bigger splash with your shared audience.
Expertise and Fine Details
The technology in question might not even be one that directly relates to your product or service. Instead, it might be linked to your digital platforms – your websites or your apps. API gateways are a good example of what many different businesses might be using here, and that means that getting ahead of the game might mean researching Insomnia vs. Postman and gaining an understanding of which would better fit your needs and your specific business. These finer details will be noticed by your customers, and if you can be shown as exuding a more professional use of technology even outside of your primary area, that might be enough to win over the trust of the consumer.
Exercise Restraint
In this technological arms race, it can always feel as though bigger equals better. This is simply not true, and the quality of your technological use will always come down to how it’s used. In that regard, you might find that you’re able to look at your various competitors and the service that they’re offering audiences – is it too cluttered?
If you feel as though you can identify some opportunity for streamlining, you might be able to factor that into your marketing. This not only identifies something about your brand that can draw them over (namely that you’re offering a more straightforward and stress-free service) but it also hints at weaknesses in your competitors’ service, weaknesses that they might have to then work to address.
The customer experience incorporates much more than the service that you’re providing, and even if customers feel as though the product or service of your competitor is superior, they might still opt for your brand instead if they find it less confusing and more convenient. Apps, for instance, are convenient, but if you can only access your services through the app, you might be alienating a portion of your audience.
Give Customers Choice
It makes sense to put even more of this experience in the hands of the customer. It might be that if they need to log into an account in order to access your services, for instance, they don’t strictly have to create a fresh account – instead, they might log in with Google or Facebook.
Equally, if a customer is looking for a way to leave feedback, having multiple ways to do so might make the experience a more pleasant one, potentially softening the blow of whatever complaint brought them here in the first place. Customer feedback is an incredibly valuable resource, and so being able to collect it by email, phone, online form, webchat, or any other means can increase your chances of getting that in the first place.
This choice might extend over to how they engage with your brand as mentioned previously – as while apps are important for offering a bespoke customer experience, not everyone will want to download that, so making it mandatory could be detrimental.
