Customer Involvement

Involve Your Customer Not all sellers of goods and services want the same degree of involvement with their customers. But the successful ones want as much as possible.

Routine Decisions Some buying decisions are routine and automatic. The more familiar the customer is with the product, the less involvement there is. It's almost like you're married to the product and after a long period of time you take your spouse for granted. It may feel comfy if your product is at this level, this means that your product has become or is becoming a commodity in the mind of the consumer. Commodities are products that compete based mostly on price. Margins are low when you're selling a commodity. And if your clients buy your product or service "automatically" then what could be future clients of yours are buying your competitor's products out of habit too. Winning them over will not be so easy – unless you offer a cheaper price. Buyers who routinely buy usually have little involvement with the product.

Impulsive Decisions Some buying decisions are impulsive. The sellers of impulse products are able to create a quick, strong involvement with you, their customer. This involvement only needs to last until you have purchased the product. Companies who sell soft drinks spend huge sums of money setting the stage so that when you happen to walk past a kiosk, that involvement seed suddenly bursts into full bloom. More than 90% of the price you pay goes towards the product's marketing budget: the involvement that the marketer wants you to have with their product.

Contrast this level of involvement when buying a bottle of cola with what happens when you walk past that kiosk and come to your senses and instead buy a bottle of mineral water. You probably don't have much loyalty to a particular brand of water because your involvement is low. There is a huge variety of soft drinks available, but a very small number of them take the lion's share of the market. It takes a massive investment to create that involvement with a soft drink – an impulse buy. If you can do it cheaply, you'll be ahead of the game because your clients will be willing to hand over oodles of cash for very little extra investment on your part.

Complex Decisions Some buying decisions are more complicated and require the buyer to carefully scrutinize the product or consider the decision making process. Buying a car fits into this category, as do most services that we purchase. We think that because we're putting so much attention into making the right decision that we're able to be objective. Is this really true? Remember when you bought your first car, how much research you did? Think of all the test driving you insisted on, and how you looked carefully at all the sales brochures you brought home and read from beginning to end. At the end of the "decision making process" you probably thought to yourself: this is the most confusing purchase you've ever made. And then finally you went and bought the car that was either the sexiest, or the most reasonable, or fit the image you're trying to present.

Even when we are making complicated buying decisions, our final choice rests far more on the involvement we have with the product than we care to admit. The manufacturers of cars know this very well. That's why they spend so much on advertising – when you are engaged with the image of the car, all you need is the bare minimum of information to substantiate your decision. The real reason you bought your brand of car is because of the involvement the manufacturer created for you with the money they spent on advertising.

Involvement Doesn't End Just because you've handed over your cash doesn't mean the service providers should let the involvement end. Some do, but the smart ones don't. We all know how powerful word of mouth is; there is no better marketing tool than a satisfied customer. Having happy customers talk about their newfound happiness really motivates additional customers to buy. By keeping buyers involved, manufacturers are ensuring that they spread the word.

Buyer's remorse is the feeling you get that you could have gotten a better deal. Most people get this feeling immediately after handing over a huge sum of cash for a major purchase. Manufacturers know that this is a huge opportunity to leverage their involvement. When you feel weakest about the buying decision, and are looking for reasons to justify handing over a huge sum, suddenly your mind comes back to the relationship you have with the product. There are two alternatives: to feel good about the purchase, or to feel bad. Feeling bad is not a happy option. So your mind decides to be upbeat, and with all the weight of the money you've just spent, you enthusiastically support the decision and begin to try and convince others to do the same.

If we can create a level of involvement between our customer and our product or service, we can leverage the benefit of using people's emotions to help them decide to buy from us. They'll do the rest!