RESOURCE EXCHANGE IN CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP

RESOURCE EXCHANGE IN CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP

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We would like to go elaborate the customer value, and for that it is necessary to now concentrate on the exchange. Resource exchange is important in order to increase the value of customer relationship. That will be important since we are thinking of exchange in wider terms than it is traditionally addressed in theories of business. We are actually thinking of exchange of resources on three different levels.

First of all we talk about customers, and the company. We talk about emotions, (feelings), knowledge, (know-how), and actions.

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This picture is important because first of all it describes the three levels of exchange. In all customer relationships you are exchanging emotions, knowledge actions. In actions there is also goods as part of the exchange.

Moment of Truth

What is important here to note is the hierarchy of these three levels; emotions are at the top because emotions guide the way you use the knowledge. So we would put the arrow describing that emotions guide the way you are using your knowledge, knowledge guides and gives us the guidelines how to act. On the company’s side we have exactly the same situation. And what happens here, this is what we call the moment of truth. That is the place where the actions from the customer side and from the company side take place and the production of the value for both the customer and the company.

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Fit between customer and company It is important to see that there is a fit between customer and company and that both know what they are doing. That is why it is important to see that the structure, that the actions are compatible with each other. It is important that we know as the customer what the company is offering, and that we as a company know what the customers needs and understand customers value creation process. It is important for customers to understand what are the basic values of the company, and what is the culture the company. It is also important for the company to understand what are the customer’s values, and what is the corporate culture of the customer in order to be able to adapt and to offer their service distant products for this situation.
 
So there are several issues we would like to point out:
All this is the place the moment of truth, daily as the service produced. In order to be able to produce complete moments of truths you need to know a lot about the customer and the customer needs to know a lot about you. Company needs to understand the customer’s emotions and values, and also the customer has to accept your values and your culture you are working. This is very important, and in the future it is even more important since the one very important notion here is that the services and products in the market place today they are very close to each other. Companies´ products are very good in quality, they are very price competitive and the customer services are much closer by their features than before.

Let us take an example, airlines are all flying the same type of aircraft, the airbuses, Boeings etc, They have all beautiful hostesses and the safety records are about the same. So it is not to differentiate in this part of the product. It is probably possible to differentiate in knowledge part so that you know a lot about your customer’s business and your customer’s situation and you can probably provide more information about what you can do for your customers.
Even that might be enough. But if you understand the values and the emotions of your customer, and if you can create a compatibility in the emotional level, (that is you feel that you can do work together with your customer), that can produce a very important way to commit customers to buy services. So this is were the future competition is taking place. We can say in a few words; the future competition will be one by using the feelings as a competition instrument.  Feelings are the ones that are going to be important in the future success of companies.
.... To be continued ....