Transcripts
In this episode of Live with The Pricing Lady, I sit down with
Speaker:Ghislane Arifine and we talk all about customer experience and how it
Speaker:relates to pricing in your business.
Speaker:Sit back, relax and enjoy the episode.
Speaker:Hello and welcome to Live with The Pricing Lady.
Speaker:I'm Janene Liston, your hostess.
Speaker:Today, I am so excited to have a very special guest with us here.
Speaker:Her name is Ghizlane Arifine.
Speaker:Welcome, Ghizlane.
Speaker:Thank you, Janene.
Speaker:Thanks for having me.
Speaker:This is new for our listeners.
Speaker:Before I get into our rapid fire questions, I just
Speaker:want to set the tone here.
Speaker:In 2024, we are going to be having themes each month.
Speaker:This month, we are starting with the topic of the customer.
Speaker:Now, if you follow me, you know, I am always saying pricing is rooted in a
Speaker:deep understanding of the customer.
Speaker:That's where price setting starts or understanding what prices to have starts.
Speaker:That's why I wanted to bring Ghizlane here today with us because she is an
Speaker:expert in the customer experience.
Speaker:But she'll tell us more about that in a moment.
Speaker:I wanted to set the stage for our conversation today.
Speaker:So Ghizlane, why don't we go ahead and start by where are
Speaker:you joining us from today?
Speaker:I'm from Zurich, Switzerland.
Speaker:Excellent.
Speaker:And what would you describe as your superpower?
Speaker:What I would describe as my superpower, I think it's being multi
Speaker:passionate person, so I'm passionate.
Speaker:Many different things.
Speaker:So basically I love customer experience.
Speaker:As you can see, I'm into technology.
Speaker:I'm into art.
Speaker:I think it's a super power because it gives me the possibility to
Speaker:address challenges, problems in life from different angles, in different
Speaker:ways, and with a lot of creativity.
Speaker:Oh, I love that.
Speaker:Excellent.
Speaker:I'm also a person who has a lot of different hobbies and things I
Speaker:enjoy and it makes life exciting.
Speaker:That's for sure.
Speaker:What's one thing you'd like to share with us that most people don't know about you?
Speaker:Oh, I think what most people don't know about me is that I studied fashion design.
Speaker:It was a long time ago.
Speaker:When I was a teenager, so I was in high school and my mom enrolled me
Speaker:in that school of fashion design, which is offering evening classes.
Speaker:I think she wanted to keep me busy in the evenings after school,
Speaker:but I think it was very useful.
Speaker:I could express my creativity and I'm still, it's still a hobby for me.
Speaker:I love actually customizing and styling outfits for me and for my friends.
Speaker:Oh, that's excellent.
Speaker:It's so funny how we can have so many different facets, isn't it?
Speaker:Why don't you share with us about what you do and how you
Speaker:came to start your business?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I always worked actually in corporate in academia.
Speaker:I always had this I had a dual career as lecturer but also as a researcher and
Speaker:customer experiencing UX user experience, worked for couple of companies the
Speaker:last year more big corporations and i always had a freelance site where
Speaker:I did some projects here and there.
Speaker:And I'm basically doing the same thing this year.
Speaker:The only difference is that I'm working with my sister who is,
Speaker:probably she's watching me now.
Speaker:She's a digital marketing expert.
Speaker:And we had a couple of conversations this year.
Speaker:We realized that we can create synergies in our services.
Speaker:Me bringing the customer experience, she's bringing the digital marketing.
Speaker:We decided to join forces.
Speaker:We want to actually bring those areas together in order to offer to businesses,
Speaker:small businesses, solopreneurs, this knowledge and tools on how they
Speaker:can enhance, they optimize their customer experience and use this area,
Speaker:leveraging it to design and implement successful marketing strategies.
Speaker:Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker:I mean, yeah, as someone who just,
Speaker:I appreciate businesses who are so customer centric and focused.
Speaker:You know, this like tugs up my heartstrings to hear about
Speaker:what you guys are doing.
Speaker:So, , I love it.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:It takes a lot of time though to an effort to educate small
Speaker:businesses to be customer centered.
Speaker:The difference between us, what we are doing and between when with a classic
Speaker:and traditional digital marketing consultancy or agency is that we will
Speaker:be delivering marketing content, but making sure that it's consistent, will
Speaker:align on the messaging, on the branding throughout the customer journey and
Speaker:across all the channels basically that the customer will be using.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Super interesting.
Speaker:I'm sure, you guys are going to really enjoy this conversation.
Speaker:Why don't we start by talking about what is customer or user experience?
Speaker:What are we talking about here?
Speaker:Customer experience or user experience.
Speaker:We talk about the customer because this is the person who purchases
Speaker:the product or the service and user is the one who is using, sometimes
Speaker:they're not the same people, right?
Speaker:And they have different journeys, you know, to define customer experience.
Speaker:It's simply the sum of interactions that a customer would have with a
Speaker:company business throughout the journey.
Speaker:So we're talking about the phase of discovery, contacting
Speaker:the company to understand what the, what they're offering.
Speaker:I'm searching for information to the purchase process where I
Speaker:would make the decision to buy.
Speaker:And going through the post purchase, which is more about the usage of the
Speaker:service of the product and goes beyond that to probably loyalty, advocacy, I
Speaker:would recommend, etc. And this is true.
Speaker:All the channels that business would be using.
Speaker:So we're talking about website interaction on the phone, apps.
Speaker:We're talking about store.
Speaker:If it's a retail business, The idea of customer experience management
Speaker:is that we make the journey or the experience as seamless as possible.
Speaker:As employable as possible because we know positive experiences lead
Speaker:to repeat purchase, to loyalty and definitely to financial outcomes,
Speaker:to positive financial outcomes.
Speaker:Thank you so much for bringing up that difference between customer and user.
Speaker:It's one that a lot of people don't necessarily, take the
Speaker:time to think about that.
Speaker:There's often a difference between who's going to be using your
Speaker:product, service, or software and the person who's making the purchase.
Speaker:And a lot of businesses there, those can be two different people.
Speaker:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker:And they're both important.
Speaker:Yes, they are both important.
Speaker:In a pricing context, we're usually focused on the customer, the
Speaker:person who's making the purchase.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:And I think the pricing anyway is something that is relevant from
Speaker:the beginning of the journey to the end, because we talked before
Speaker:about the purchase decision and the pricing as a factor is a big factor.
Speaker:And after the purchase, we talk about the value for money.
Speaker:So we talk about what do you get for the price you're paying?
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:How in your experience or in your observations does customer
Speaker:experience, assuming that it does, how does it impact value perception?
Speaker:Probably I would like to clarify the value perception because I
Speaker:think there's a lot of confusion.
Speaker:People understand it in different ways.
Speaker:Value perception is something that the customer estimates.
Speaker:I am estimating if the service I'm receiving worth
Speaker:the price I am paying, right?
Speaker:This is all about the perceived value.
Speaker:Now the thing with the value is that it's a lot of components in it.
Speaker:It could be that I am thinking of the functional value, the product
Speaker:is solving a problem for me, right?
Speaker:This is a solution.
Speaker:So it's, I can think of the emotional value it creates for me.
Speaker:Notions.
Speaker:I love using this product.
Speaker:You can think of Apple, for example, of Tesla, and we can
Speaker:talk also about social value.
Speaker:There are many, many dimensions of value.
Speaker:Basically, this is where the product would be helping you to belong to a
Speaker:community or to have a status, right?
Speaker:All these factors would create the overall perceived value
Speaker:that the customer would build.
Speaker:And it's very subjective.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So when we relate it now to the customer experience.
Speaker:The way you're perceiving or estimating this value is based on how you
Speaker:experience the product and the service.
Speaker:It can be, what means experiencing means probably the quality of the interaction.
Speaker:If you're going to an online retailer, you want to buy, I don't know,
Speaker:product on the eShop and you have very seamless user friendly website.
Speaker:You don't have frictions in your purchase process.
Speaker:So this is a great customer experience and definitely will associate a
Speaker:higher value to the to the product itself and to the brand overall.
Speaker:The same if you have, let's say you buy a product and you have a problem
Speaker:with it and you call the company and they're solving immediately the problem.
Speaker:This is something that creates a positive experience because it
Speaker:goes beyond the product, right?
Speaker:Personalization.
Speaker:There are many, many areas that would create this positive
Speaker:experience will impact the way you're perceiving the value.
Speaker:Basically good experiences will lead to higher perceived value.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:So I'm, I'm curious about one thing.
Speaker:Because recently I've been, you know, doing a lot of research.
Speaker:I have an episode coming out next week on pricing trends and whatever.
Speaker:And one of the things I was looking at was, what is happening
Speaker:in terms of what customers want.
Speaker:And what I saw repeatedly in many places is people are, you know, in
Speaker:part, because people are in a sense, they have less money to spend,
Speaker:but things are more expensive.
Speaker:So they're buying fewer things or being more discerning with their
Speaker:purchases that the personal experience.
Speaker:is actually becoming more important as we go into this year.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:When you have like a personalized experience and pretty, an outstanding
Speaker:one, it will justify premium price.
Speaker:So why?
Speaker:Because people associate the price they're paying to tangible elements, so
Speaker:to the product or the service itself, but also intangible factors like trusting
Speaker:the company, just liking the brand.
Speaker:I like the brand and they would be willing to pay for it.
Speaker:Even sometimes The service fails or when you have issues, they're more willing to
Speaker:even forgive the company because they are very much loyal and they would justify
Speaker:this premium prices that they're paying.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, it's something that I've seen more and more myself.
Speaker:But I have to say it was something a lot of people from what I was
Speaker:reading online or really leaning into this year or think is going to be
Speaker:even more important going forward.
Speaker:That's makes this conversation even that much more important.
Speaker:What are the risks for small businesses when it comes to this
Speaker:topic of customer experience?
Speaker:Many, many risks for small businesses because the point with small businesses
Speaker:is that they need to be agile.
Speaker:As a small business, you need to go through such a journey, changing your
Speaker:business models, changing pricing models, and you need to navigate
Speaker:this and along the way, you need to be able still to deliver to the
Speaker:customer and meet the expectations.
Speaker:It makes it very, very challenging.
Speaker:So in terms of pricing, I would think of.
Speaker:If a small business doesn't consider the target audience and
Speaker:what they value, definitely you create a mismatch of pricing.
Speaker:For example you would have either too high price for the customer.
Speaker:The customer would perceive basically your product as overpriced.
Speaker:This is too expensive for what it is.
Speaker:And with all the information we have available, it's very easy
Speaker:that the customer is running away and going somewhere else, right?
Speaker:Or you underprice.
Speaker:And it goes too low that the customer would be skeptical because you think
Speaker:this is so too cheap for what it is.
Speaker:So, that must be some problem with your site.
Speaker:This is the mind of the customer actually.
Speaker:The standard customer would always associate the quality to the price.
Speaker:So if it's high, I mean, high price means it's good quality.
Speaker:If it's low price means maybe it's too low.
Speaker:It's a bit tricky, you know?
Speaker:It's strange.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So this big, big challenge, I think for, for solar project.
Speaker:Yeah, sorry.
Speaker:I think it, it's funny that you say that because on the one hand, most people
Speaker:when it comes to pricing their offer, you know, they have this mentality,
Speaker:the lowest price already always wins.
Speaker:It's kind of sitting in the back of their head.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And yet at the same time, they will turn their nose at something that's too
Speaker:cheap and seems too good to be true.
Speaker:So , you know, it's, it's kind of a funny, a funny, what do you wanna call it?
Speaker:Like those two concepts or, or thought processes are at
Speaker:odds with each other, right.
Speaker:I think that's really important.
Speaker:No, it's not true.
Speaker:The lowest price does not usually win.
Speaker:It depends on the market.
Speaker:If you're in a market where the value that the customer is looking for is
Speaker:the lowest price, then it's different.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:The other thing I think it would be remiss not to mention here, at least in my
Speaker:experience is that one of the big risks is that you develop the wrong solution.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I think sometimes also, if we talk about the pricing, like specifically
Speaker:really setting up a pricing strategy, what I see most of the time, like the
Speaker:biggest mistakes, entrepreneurs and small businesses do is that they set up
Speaker:a pricing from the internal perspective.
Speaker:They look at the cost.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I have a bit of margin and that's fine.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:All good.
Speaker:I have my pricing set there.
Speaker:The problem is they forget to ask customers how much they are willing
Speaker:to pay for their service, which needs to happen before the launch, right?
Speaker:So it's kind of customer research side of things where you be simply
Speaker:ask customers or potential customers.
Speaker:Are you willing to pay that price for that service or how much can you
Speaker:afford for that based on your budget?
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Simple questions, which makes actually, your price become a bit more realistic
Speaker:kind of, if this is not done, it leads to basically overpricing.
Speaker:And then at the end, you, nobody buys.
Speaker:And then there is a profitability challenge here.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Oh, that's a very good point.
Speaker:So what are the best methods that you find are available to be able to understand?
Speaker:Customers better for these small businesses.
Speaker:So from the, as a SIGs professional, so we work with a really a bench of
Speaker:methodologies, it will depend on the type of the business on the target
Speaker:audience, what they prefer as methods.
Speaker:If we take an example of, I mean, the most common one are surveys, right?
Speaker:We talk a lot about surveys.
Speaker:There is a lot of debate.
Speaker:Is it a good methodology?
Speaker:People cannot answer surveys anymore.
Speaker:That's too much and so on, but I believe it's used in the right way.
Speaker:You can get good insights, use the right channel, sending it at the
Speaker:right time to the right audience.
Speaker:When the right direction, you can get good insights that helps you actually
Speaker:understand how they perceive the price and how they perceive the value.
Speaker:It's basically asking questions, as we said about affordability,
Speaker:about value for money.
Speaker:About if they were purchasing again or not, etc. I would think of other
Speaker:methodologies like interviews.
Speaker:We would go more into deep dive with a limited number of people.
Speaker:Solopreneurs, most of the time they use check in sessions.
Speaker:Make sure you interact with your customers regularly What's happening, really a
Speaker:session dedicated just for feedback And integrated into journey obviously And I
Speaker:can think in terms of, if we focus only on pricing insights I always say we need
Speaker:to look into what the customer thinks and what the customer does because might
Speaker:think something and do something else.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:That's one of the challenges with pricing.
Speaker:People, most of the time, don't understand why they, do or don't buy something.
Speaker:A lot of the purchases that we make are done on a subconscious level.
Speaker:I always joke with people, why do you use cost to set your prices when it
Speaker:doesn't matter to the customer and they say, well, what do you mean?
Speaker:It doesn't matter.
Speaker:I said, well, when you bought an apple last time, did you stand
Speaker:there with your calculator open on your phone and calculate how much
Speaker:it costs the farmer to produce it?
Speaker:And.
Speaker:The whole value chain and they were like no!
Speaker:And I said great!
Speaker:Cause what it costs them doesn't influence your decision to buy,
Speaker:you know, or to pay for the Apple.
Speaker:So, you have to.
Speaker:Look at things in the right way.
Speaker:So I think that customers, a lot of time, we don't know why we purchased
Speaker:this over that until some of us ask some, someone asks us the question.
Speaker:And even then sometimes it's not real clear, more importantly, until you
Speaker:actually have to part with your money.
Speaker:You know, as a person answering the question, it can be difficult to really.
Speaker:I lost you for a second.
Speaker:Sorry, Janene.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Well, I see you freezing there.
Speaker:Yeah, no problem.
Speaker:What I was saying is that, you know, until you have to take your money out
Speaker:of your pocket and actually part with it, you don't really know if you're
Speaker:going, what you'd be willing to pay.
Speaker:You can make a guess, but you don't actually know.
Speaker:But there are methodologies out there to help get at that.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I think, you know, better than me, we talk about value based pricing, right?
Speaker:So a customer wants to know what is the end outcome of something that he buys.
Speaker:Let's say, a product, I don't know.
Speaker:I always give examples with e commerce because I like e commerce.
Speaker:If someone is selling let's say beauty products,
Speaker:It's very important to educate the customer about the value, explaining
Speaker:the ingredients, why it's beneficial, what is the outcome of it, because then
Speaker:it gets clear in the customer's mind.
Speaker:He knows what to expect and he's willing to pay the price
Speaker:and there are no bad surprises.
Speaker:Yeah, this is more like the perception.
Speaker:Let's say the psyche side of customer, but we have the behavior because at
Speaker:the end of the day, we want to know if they buy, they don't buy, numbers talk.
Speaker:So what, what we do in terms of methodology is just back
Speaker:to your, to your question.
Speaker:So when you have a large customer database, we work a lot with
Speaker:models like, I don't know if you're familiar with RFM model.
Speaker:It's in few words is like you look at how recent your customer has purchased,
Speaker:what is the volume of the purchase over a period and how frequently he purchases.
Speaker:So basically it gives you the possibility.
Speaker:If you do the analytics right, to score these and see what is the
Speaker:highly valued customers, and you can target them with premium prices.
Speaker:This is the work of the CX team, for example, or the CX advice.
Speaker:We would be looking into the behavior of customers, purchase
Speaker:patterns, highly valued.
Speaker:We will target them with premium offerings, the ones who didn't buy
Speaker:since a long time, for example, but they're somehow buying
Speaker:regularly to a certain extent.
Speaker:We will target them with discount because it makes more sense to bring them back.
Speaker:With the bundling opportunities, we would look at the basket.
Speaker:What are the products they put together more often?
Speaker:There is a lot that comes from the customer in terms of behavior that you
Speaker:leverage for your pricing strategies.
Speaker:Right, right.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Before I start wrapping it up, I have one more question for you.
Speaker:A lot of the people who listen to this show are, say, in the very
Speaker:early stages of their business.
Speaker:So let's say if we think of startups, for example,
Speaker:What are the best or what differences because you're a lot of what you're
Speaker:talking about is you're talking about looking at historical information, how
Speaker:people have already behaved over time, but if you're a young business, of
Speaker:course, you don't have that information.
Speaker:So what, what should they focus on as a methodology or what would your
Speaker:recommendation be for someone who's in that startup phase of the business before
Speaker:they have that information to better understand the customer experience.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So if you start a business and you know who is more or less your target audience.
Speaker:Start with just a bunch of people asking them about their expectations, their
Speaker:preferences, their needs, et cetera.
Speaker:And based on that, I know that many solopreneurs and many small businesses,
Speaker:they work with personas, which are hypothetical because they don't have
Speaker:resources to do deep market research and gather so much information.
Speaker:And then really, database personas to work with, that's okay.
Speaker:You can have hypothetical personas.
Speaker:This is the persona you think you are serving.
Speaker:What is important is to validate the personas along the way.
Speaker:It's a continuous process because people change, your customers
Speaker:change in terms of needs.
Speaker:And I always give this advice also in terms of pricing.
Speaker:When you start with your pricing model, it's not an end point.
Speaker:The sweet spot is dynamic.
Speaker:It evolves over time.
Speaker:I think you know it, but I think we agree on that . Is that you are moving
Speaker:with feedback mechanism, listening to the market, understanding what your
Speaker:competitors are doing, what customers are expecting, and adjusting, testing,
Speaker:you can do AB testing, et cetera.
Speaker:Until you get to the stable pricing, which will be anyway, slightly
Speaker:moving and changing over time.
Speaker:So there is no one fixed point to find the sweet spot between a price that
Speaker:meets customers expectations and your business requirements at the same time.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:I mean, like you said, it's, it's something
Speaker:like you base so many things in your business.
Speaker:If, in my opinion, if you're doing it well, you base so many things off of
Speaker:the customer, but the customer is always changing and you may choose actually
Speaker:to shift who the customer is at times, or it may naturally shift as well.
Speaker:So it's not, again, it's not a one and done thing either.
Speaker:It's something that you need to keep a finger on the pulse of.
Speaker:This customer experience and understanding your customers.
Speaker:You need to keep a finger on a pulse of that, throughout the
Speaker:full life cycle of your business.
Speaker:Was just saying the best word to be agile in startups.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:okay.
Speaker:Very good.
Speaker:So why don't we wrap this up with a couple more questions.
Speaker:If there's one thing you would like people to remember from our discussion today,
Speaker:what is it that they should take away?
Speaker:I think to focus on value based pricing.
Speaker:So if it's If your question is related to pricing and also be in
Speaker:the mindset to be flexible and agile.
Speaker:So I think it's very important to get ready for those changes and always
Speaker:have this feedback mechanism as I said.
Speaker:Keeping an eye on what the customer is doing and what they
Speaker:think both together to adapt along the way, the pricing, basically.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Excellent.
Speaker:Do you have a book or a tool or something that you would like to
Speaker:recommend to listeners today to help them in their business journey?
Speaker:I think like for startups and solopreneurs, I think
Speaker:of a book of Eric Ries.
Speaker:It's called The Lean Startup.
Speaker:I don't know if you know it.
Speaker:Very good one.
Speaker:It's back here somewhere.
Speaker:It must be somewhere behind you.
Speaker:I find it really interesting because it gives really practical advice,
Speaker:tips and tricks, to actually build up the business and grow with this
Speaker:kind of agile approach, resource efficient and, and customer centered.
Speaker:So this is very important and he's bringing these three elements in
Speaker:the book and it's really good.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And last question, if people would like to find out more about working
Speaker:with you and what you do at Experience Metrics, where should they reach out?
Speaker:I think they can follow me on Instagram.
Speaker:It's @experience_metrics with S. And yeah, so I am available.
Speaker:I am looking forward to follow up on the conversations with them.
Speaker:Super, super.
Speaker:This has been really wonderful, Ghizlane.
Speaker:I absolutely love this conversation and it's right on target, as I said,
Speaker:with our topic of the month, which is understanding our customers.
Speaker:The customer is so important, not just to pricing, but to building
Speaker:a business and growing a business, whatever your business is.
Speaker:So thank you so much for joining us here today to share your wisdom.
Speaker:Thanks to you Janene for having me today.
Speaker:Have a good day.
Speaker:And dear listeners and watchers, if you're watching us live, thank
Speaker:you so much for joining us today.
Speaker:Before we go, I'd like to let you know that I have my Fair
Speaker:Price Formula course coming up.
Speaker:The next cohort starts at the end of January and you can get all the details
Speaker:at thepricinglady.com/setmyprices 'cause that's what we do in the course.
Speaker:I wish you all the best.
Speaker:Everyone have a great day and as always, enjoy pricing.