Time Well Spent is More than a Set of Survey Questions

Chapter Five: Principle 4—Value is in Time Spent

Dear Friends,

This is the final post for chapter 5. Hooray! I’d encourage you to go back and read the whole chapter here. Chapter 6 starts soon.

Time Well Spent is More than a Set of Survey Questions

While the TWS metric will help a company focus on meaningful, long-term value creation, the concept behind the metric is more important than the metric. Companies create long term value for the customers when they understand the value of the time they create with their customers. For way too long companies have trusted the ‘loyalty’ myth. They believe that loyalty is the key to long term growth. But, I will say it again (and probably again in the future), loyalty is the byproduct of time well saved, time well spent, or time well invested.

Stop measuring the byproduct and start measuring the product! People have an abundance of choice and a scarcity of time. They want the most value for their time.

There are other data sources and models for measuring time well saved/spent/invested. Job-to-be-done data often resides in the tools companies create. The greater the frequency with which the customer uses a tool, the more likely it is that the tool gets the job done. Companies can understand more about how customer needs change when their situation changes by including contextual data about weather, time of day, events, connections, productivity scores, and much more. Contextual data will help you understand the situation and adjust the experience to customer needs.

Engagement data can be captured from smart rings, smart watches, and other bio feedback tools. And the results can be spectacular! Paul Zak, a neuroscientist, who recently spoke to Aransas Savas and me on the Experience Strategy podcast  is doing amazing things with biometric data, helping companies pinpoint the exact time that most customers are highly engaged with the experience. Someone is going to say, yeah, but we don’t capture biometric data. To which I say, why not?

Set up a panel of real customers and ship them an Oura ring. Then track their activity in real time. Study the difference between first encounters with your experience and subsequent encounters. How does the level of engagement change? These inputs will help you know how to refresh the experience and what elements make the experience meaningful over time.

When it comes to studying time value, consider Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore’s approach. In their article on time well spent, they share a formula for how to assess the monetary value for time that customers give to companies. And here is their point of view and formula:

Customers aren’t stupid. Time is money, as Ben Franklin famously quipped. Wasting their time detracts from the overall value provided. As a result, they will demand a lesser price to make up for supplying wasted time. In effect, this effectively compensates customers for the time wasted in the form of a discounted price. It’s the cost paid by companies for wasting customer time.

In contrast, when customers save time over what they can get elsewhere (or do for themselves), they come to value such offerings more highly – and pay in kind. Whether selling commodities, goods, services, or experiences, think of it as:

Money charged = Functionality provided + Net value of time

Time wasted has a negative value, time well saved is essentially at zero, and time well spent has a positive value.

Thus, you identify how much time the customer spends with your company, determine how of that time is wasted, saved, or time well spent. That creates the net value of time. Add the net value to the functionality provided to get the economic value that you’ve created for the customer.

The Final Principal is, Of Course, Time

I shared earlier in this chapter different techniques that companies can use to create more meaningful value in their experiences. I’ve described why companies need to focus on customer time, drawing a distinction between convenience and time well saved, spent, or invested.

If you think about the first three principles in experience strategy—growth through situational markets, compel through a point of view, and get the whole job done—you can see the importance of time value for each one. In fact, the experience strategists should be the time value guru.

Situational markets are about understanding the unique requirements of situations and keeping the company focused on growth opportunities. The greatest opportunity for growth come from understanding the situational needs of individuals and creating time well saved/spent/invested solutions to support those needs.

Having a point of view about the near future needs of customers helps the company to proactively work to ensure that channel strategy evolves, brand strategy evolves, innovation evolves—every aspect of the customer experience evolves toward a customer-centered goal. Time does not stand still. People change. As people experience new technologies, their expectations change as well. A point of view helps the company to think about how time will be spent in the future.

Getting the whole job done for the customer is also about time value. People don’t want to waste their time with solutions that don’t support the whole job. Remember there are different ways to think about the whole job—by job category, a systems view, based on genius level, and channel strategy—but regardless of how you look at the whole job, the long term purpose should be the same: to create time value for the customer.

To be continue …

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