Crafting the Customer Experience For People Not Like You: How to Delight and Engage the Customers Your Competitors Don't Understand

2. PRODUCT OR SERVICE TWEAKS

To reach people not like you—or not like the customers you already have—sometimes you need to tweak your product or service. Modifying a product or service in this way can mean a great deal to someone of a specific market segment. It can be a small change, such as creating an iPad app for your business that tech-savvy Gen Y customers will want to use, or it can be a bit more involved, such as adding traditional Indian, Vietnamese, or Hispanic foods to a menu. It can also be a big alteration; for example, perhaps you create an entirely new product to serve someone different from your core customers.

For example, a new casino resort called Revel recently opened in Atlantic City. You might be wondering, “What’s so special about a new casino resort in Atlantic City, the largest gambling mecca in the United States outside of Las Vegas?” After all, the city is home to dozens of casino resorts. But what makes Revel unique is that it is the only one in Atlantic City that is a nonsmoking casino resort—and you know how unusual this is if you’ve ever been to a casino. Casinos are typically thick with smoke. But Revel was created for the 81 percent of Americans who don’t smoke, which is an incredibly smart idea. The developers obviously knew that there is an entire (and large!) segment of the population who might like to gamble but are turned off by smoky casinos because they’re nonsmokers—and therefore they just don’t go. Until now, that is.

Revel offers nonsmokers ...