How to Keep Your Product Promises

Every product you create, market, and sell carries a promise to your customers. You're promising with each value proposition you craft: “When you buy this product, you will get this benefit and have this kind of experience.” This implied guarantee of the experience you’re offering is called a product promise.?

Put simply, a product promise is kept if the customer has an experience that is at least as good as what they expected based on what the company told them beforehand about that product or service.

If you've ever purchased a product that seemed to have great features and everything else you needed, yet you were disappointed with some aspect of the experience anywhere along the customer journey, then you’ve experienced a broken product promise.?

The Three Levels of Product

Notice that in both examples above (a promise that is kept and a promise that is broken), I referred to the customer experience, not just the actual product itself. That’s because a product promise goes beyond the tangible “thing” you consider to be your product and includes promises at all three product levels:

1.CORE Product

Though it may sound counterintuitive, the core product is not the tangible physical product. Instead, the core product is the benefit of the product. It’s what makes it valuable to your customers.

2. ACTUAL Product

The actual product is the tangible, physical product that delivers the benefit. You can get some use out of it. You can often touch it. The actual product is what the average person would think of under the generic banner of “product.” Elements of the actual product include quality, style, packaging, and branding.??

3. AUGMENTED Product

The augmented product is the non-physical part of the product. It’s the quality control standards, installation, integration, services, warranties, financing, customer care, and delivery.

To illustrate, let’s look at how one heating and air company defines its three product levels.

Core Product: Comfort & Security

The core product offered by an HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) company isn’t the air conditioner or heating unit; it’s the sense of comfort and security that comes from adequate access to heating and cooling. When a customer’s service is disrupted, and customers experience a loss of heating service or air conditioning service, the missing benefit is the comfort and security they expect from their HVAC system. When problems occur, that sense of comfort and security can be reinstated with prompt customer service, accurate repair timelines, and working solutions. In the crisp cool of winter or the sweltering heat of summer, folks rely on the HVAC company to deliver on the core product, no matter the outdoor temperature.

Actual Product: Heat Pumps, Condenser Units, Thermostats, Ductwork, Registers, Returns

When the HVAC company speaks with a new customer about installing working units to provide ventilation, heating, and air conditioning, the menu of physical items is their actual product. Note that the actual product does not include installation, integration, or service, but does include:

• Design (How big is the unit? Where will it be placed?)
• Style (Will the visible parts of the unit match the buyer’s current home?)
• Quality level (How often will the unit need replacing or repair?)
• Packaging & Branding (Is the brand one that the buyer knows, likes, and trusts?)
• Features (What features does the buyer need or want? Are they included?)

Augmented Product: Customer Experience, Install/Repair, Trust

The augmented product that an HVAC company offers is the custsomer experience. This journey begins with the first call to the sales representative or scheduling service (or website experience if the buyer begins shopping online). The augmented product continues with the experience and rapport the buyer builds with the tech, the follow-up dispatch calls, and any follow-up customer service calls. Also included in this stage of the product are installation and repair experiences, including time and convenience, efficiency, and quality. Finally, the augmented product encompasses the level of trust built between the buyer and company through these experiences. A buyer purchasing HVAC units, installations, or repairs is inviting someone into their home, so friendliness, trustworthiness, and safety should all be a part of the equation.

To completely fulfill its product promise, the company must deliver at every level. If the furnace or air conditioning unit is defective or susceptible to breakdown and costly repairs, the product promise is broken at the actual product level (and hence, the core product level). Suppose the actual product is perfect, but the installation tech is rude, or the customer needs help reaching the service department when needed. In that case, the promise is still broken, this time at the augmented product level.

As many business owners have learned, even the most appealing and high-end actual products cannot overcome broken promises at the augmented product level. You must consider the total customer experience when considering how you’ll keep your product promises.

Product Promises vs. Brand Promises

A brand promise is similar to a product promise but applies across your entire brand, including every product or service, rather than just one specific product. A brand promise is a value or experience your customers can expect to receive every time they interact with your company. The more you can deliver on that promise, the stronger the brand value in the minds of customers and employees.

Both product and brand promises are relevant to the overall customer experience, dependent on sustainable delivery across all three product levels. In either case, you can use the three product levels to consider all aspects of the customer journey and develop processes that align with your promise.

Creating Systems to Match Your Promises

When you understand and are deliberate about all three levels of products you make or the services you provide, you can better align your systems and processes to deliver on those product promises. Because your product promises are not limited to delivering the actual product/service or providing the core benefits, you must also develop key organizational capabilities at the augmented product level.?

For example, what quality control process will you use? How will you handle financing? What’s the process for installing and integrating your product or service? What are your customer service procedures, and how will you train your employees to deliver top-notch customer care??

If you expect to keep your product promises, you must have precise, efficient, and sustainable processes in place. If those processes fail, then promises are broken. Map out your customers' journey, and you can identify the critical processes associated with each step that will correlate with your three levels of products.

Processes Drive Profitability

One common error of entrepreneurs is focusing on revenue rather than profit. They emphasize sales sales sales, believing that more sales will solve all their problems. The trouble with this mentality is that all the sales in the world won’t help you if your systems aren’t lean, efficient, and sustainable. It’s those efficient systems that turn revenue into profit. Without them, you’ll be hemorrhaging money (bye-bye, profit!) and failing to keep your product promises. Furthermore, broken promises don’t keep customers around.

Your organizational vision must include a clear-eyed analysis of what you’re promising and how you’ll deliver on those promises, not just how you’ll sell your product and increase your revenue. If you seek to scale revenue without strategic, vision-driven systems and processes, you will likely be unable to sustain your product promises and fail to achieve your desired future state.?

However, if you create product promises aligned with your overall vision and optimize your operations to consistently deliver on those promises, your future state is well within your grasp.

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