Product Improvement: Being good at what matters

Ok…sure, I’ll concede. Whatever business you are in- you are probably delivering a fine product or service. I’ll take your word that customers like you and I’m sure you work hard and do good work- whatever you do. But I’m also pretty sure you equate product improvement with “quality”; a nice haircut, a nice photograph, a nice toilet repair, a nice 1040 form.

Quality is important- maybe most important- but quality alone is rarely enough to make an impression in a crowded, disloyal marketplace.There are countless criteria that a customer might value that fall outside the “quality” categorization and more and more in-line with the “improvement” I am referring to here. For example:

-- That haircut might have been nice, but the customer may not come back because
she had to wait 45 minutes to get it.
-- That photograph would have been much better appreciated if it had been bigger or
come mounted or in a frame.
-- The toilet repair was well done but the experience would have been “improved” if
there weren’t grease stains all over the bathroom.
-- And that 1040 seems right but the customer is wondering why you took the
appropriate papers but didn’t ask any follow-up questions to try and find more
deductions.

Improvement is truly in the eye of the customer. In the examples above (from the top), improvement from the customer perspective means speed and convenience, value and flexibility, reliability and customization. These are only a few of the criteria that join “quality” in the lexicon of product improvement.

If you refer back to the revenue branch of our profit tree, you can see that the significance of improving your product or service is among the key drivers to increasing your sales volume. Why product improvement is special is that it is a key driver for increasing your market share- or the percentage of the market that does business with you or your competitors. Compared to other options for improving market share (increasing your promotional spending or expanding your distribution network, for example) product improvement can often be the least costly and most certain option.

A quick glance at some big name examples and you’ll see what I mean. Toyota improved its products not by turning them into Bentley’s, but by making them more “reliable”. Apple improves its products so frequently that it often disrupts its own businesses before competitors can by introducing new, “faster”, “sexier”, more “convenient” and more “customizable” products every 18 months. By the time competitors were ready with a product to compete with the first iPhone, Apple launched a new and improved version with built in GPS and other new features that blunts other offerings.

So expand your mind and your perspective. Even if you have a quality product or service (and you should ask your customers to be sure) that doesn’t mean that you don’t have ample opportunity to “improve” in all the areas that count the most.