Product and Service differentiation from other offerings is becoming increasingly difficult than ever before.
Competition is fierce and product differences are reducing; to win customers through reduced pricing is common route taken by companies.

Customer behaviour has become more hybrids and is looking for bargains in marketplace. It is buyers’ market and they are aware of their power leading to higher expectations and sensitive to perceptions.

Nowadays, it is really difficult to differentiate a product or service by traditional categories like price, quality, functionality etc. This when perception management become extremely crucial to win customers and improve customer satisfaction.

We do come across this term ‘Customer Perception’ and ‘Customer expectation’ quite often. It is also true that appropriate change in customer perception is crucial.

Now, let us take a situation to take understand perception.

If we fill two mugs filled with same coffee and we, present it to different people asking them to let us know the difference in these two coffees, the coffee drinker would come up with comments regarding differences in these two coffees even though both them are same. The key reason to this situation is that the coffee drinker’s perception got changed when it was presented to them saying there is some difference in the two coffees presented.
Actually, even though perception and expectation are different, they are related and ideally both should nearly be identical. Also, as we all know project success or customer satisfaction is achieved when customer expectations are met or exceeded. Thus it becomes imperative that stakeholder and customer perceptions and expectations are understood. Actually, service provider should also know his perception which would facilitate satisfaction. Comprehensive market research is needed for this.

Perception Management should be continual improvement process and with objective to make it a close match with customer expectations. This could be one of the key differentiators in fierce competitive market to win new customer and customer satisfaction. Market research can provide good pointers to make
this happen. Benefits would be huge, in terms of improved service quality and customer satisfaction which would in turn reduce cost and time along with better service and product quality that would give customer confidence and help in wining new business.

So, improving customer perception is key to success and let’s make it a habit which can really give excellent benefits and customer satisfaction.