REASON FOR BEING

You understand the kinds of experiences you deliver, but does your organization know why?

The best customer experience brands are founded on a deeply ingrained sense of purpose that focuses the experiences and outcomes it delivers to delight its customers.

Understanding your Reason for Being is the key to more fulfilling relationships with customers, enthusiastic referrals, satisfied employees, supportive suppliers, and efficient operations. Focusing on promise (your promise to customers) rather than profit will help align experiences across your business and give clarity to the true value you stand to deliver to your customers.

Declarations of Mission vs. Reason for Being

The Storymining® process helps companies get to the core of their business, determining the essence of their brand and the value they provide their customers – ultimately, their Reason for Being. Unlike mission statements which declare hoped-for, broad-stroke differentiation points, the Reason for Being is a specific, achievable and authentic ideal to work towards that clarifies three things:

What is your organization here to do?
Who are your primary customers?
How will promises be kept?

By providing answers to these three questions, Storyminers’ clients can define the biggest promise their business will make to their clients, and succeed in delivering on that promise by connecting with customers on a deeper level.

Determining Your Reason for Being

Finding out what it is that customers want most from your business may not be as straightforward as many might think. Companies are often surprised to learn that the true value of their brand is not necessarily what they originally set out to deliver. Understanding and delivering on your company’s Reason for Being requires a big shift in thinking – that focuses on customer-centric experience design, which in turn drives bottom-line results.

The Storymining process digs deep to validate the real value your organization provides and understand customers’ reason for purchase. Though analytics and numbers provide some assistance in understanding trends and behaviors, the Storymining process allows a deeper look into the human component that truly exceptional experiences are built on. Leveraging insights from thorough investigation, trained observations, and actionable data, Storyminers will open your eyes to what makes your brand special, and enable you to share that story in a more compelling way.

Understanding motivations of customers comes through executive interviews with clients and staff, observations from walk-throughs, and insights gained on undercover shopper and employee scenarios. With an unbiased and undistracted eye, Storyminers provides fresh perspective on details that would otherwise go unseen.

Fueling the Promise-Making Machine

Understanding your brand’s Reason for Being will position your company for more sustainable growth and stronger long-term relationships with customers by enabling:

Efficiency: Concentrating on what your brand succeeds at doing enables tighter focus and consistent outcomes across the organization.
Agility: Shared goals and clear internal roles facilitate quicker and more diverse problem-solving from front-line employees.
Sense of purpose: Clarifying organizational objectives on a deeper level resonates with employees, encouraging new ideas to take root.
Easier management: Empowered employees eliminate bottlenecking in decision-making, keeping business moving forward.
Responsiveness: When every front-line employee knows the Reason for Being, they know the next right thing to do in most any situation.

The most evident outcome from these internal changes will be stronger customer relationships from more purposeful experience design. Shifting focus from bottom-line profit generation to value-added experience creation increases long-term loyalty and ultimately more referrals. Gaining clarity around your company’s true Reason for Being ensures decisions are made that are best and right for your customers, creating better experiences that they will be excited to share.

iPay Technologies prided themselves on providing a technically sound bill-pay service that was accurate and efficient. While this ideal was clear and succinct, it didn’t get to the core of what iPay really provided – great experiences. Through the Storymining process, it became apparent that iPay’s service was to make on-line bill paying (then a new innovation) quick, easy, and hassle-free. Also, to deliver in an exceptionally friendly way.

With a clearer understanding of their value to customers, iPay shifted their thinking and Reason for Being to encompass their key differentiator: “delivering experiences that everyone raves about”. Striving to deliver on a more holistic brand promise strengthened the vision iPay had across the organization and the relationships they were building. iPay learned that they were in the experience delivery business. They found that when they delivered a great experience, customers wanted to talk about their experiences—and that drove more business in the door.