If you create something wonderful, will it draw in consumers immediately? Not in today’s society. In order to really bring your concept to market, you’ll have to do a little more than just build the idea.
Any time a person comes into contact with your business, whether it be a consumer or another business, you are presented with a moment to leave a lasting impression. When you take the time to manage all interactions—also known as touch points—you can create positive outcomes, like closing a sale or building a valuable relationship with another business.
It’s important to view each interaction as a Moment of Truth. It’s during that single interaction that the customer will move further through the buyer’s journey or abandon the funnel altogether. The Moment of Truth concept has been around for several decades and was originally introduced by Jan Carlzon back in the 80’s.
“Any time a customer comes into contact with a business, however remote, they have an opportunity to form an impression” – Jan Carlzon
20 years later, A.G. Lafley, President and CEO of Procter & Gamble created his own version of the concept and labeled it as Moments of Truth, with the belief that there are actually three moments that shape the entire buyer’s journey:
- When the customer is looking at your product
- When the customer makes a purchase
- When the customer leaves feedback
All three of these moments interconnect with one another. The purchasing process directly impacts the feedback the customer will provide. When selling on a B2B basis, the feedback of other businesses will correlate with how many new businesses you are able to attract as customers.
In 2011, Google, came up with its own Moment of Truth—the Zero Moment of Truth, also known as ZMOT. This moment of truth takes place before a customer even knows your brand has a solution to the product or service they are searching for. Three years later, Eventricity Ltd. created yet another version calling it the Less Than Zero Moment of Truth; this is the moment in which something occurs in a person’s life and causes him or her to start shopping for a product or service. Take for example Hudson who lands a new client and needs a new piece of software to make personalized landing pages. This moment is known as the Less Than Zero Moment of truth and streamlines into the Zero Moment of Truth (Hudson starts shopping online or reaching out to peers for recommendations on which platform to choose).
If you thought the Moments of Truth were going to stop with Eventricity’s version, think again. The founder of Narvar, Amit Sharma, recently created another version and refers to it as the Actual Moment of Truth. His moment of truth version is directly related to the moment in time in which a customer buys from a company and then spans until that person receives the good or service. Sharma says there are too many brands that put forth zero effort in initiating brand recall during this Moment of Truth. Immediately after a product or service is ordered, there begins a multitude of opportunities to create branded experiences. From sending order status updates in emails to providing tracking information and even asking for feedback about the purchasing process itself, this Actual Moment of Truth gives brands the ability to connect with customers and gather valuable feedback.
The logic is that The Actual Moment of Truth is the ultimate opportunity to shape the customer’s emotional response to the entire purchasing process.
Terence Mann was able to tap into emotions of baseball community, will you be able to do the same?
I originally published this article on Advantage Business Marketing’s Blog…
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