How to Turn Customer Hates into a Competitive Edge

This week, we're going to break down an interesting way to create innovative thinking about your business model, your product, or service. The goal is to try to stimulate some ideas to help you improve your business. One of these ideas might just be the game-changer you've been looking for to build a competitive advantage.

So What's the Big Question?

I want you to start with the question... "what do customers hate about businesses like mine?", and then come up with solutions for each of those pet hates.

This isn't about you necessarily.. it's about businesses like yours. Like if you do pest control, it's about what do they hate about the way pest-control as a service typically works, or how it's priced, or how it's typically delivered.

Their hates might relate to how you charge, about how you show up (or don't) or any number of things.

Then you need to ask yourself... "what's a potential solution that could overcome each of those?". That might be a change to a pricing model, the service delivery model, the technology that underpins the customer interaction or any range of things.

Now I understand that this can seem quite broad, and sometimes it's tricky to get started.. so let me give you a few examples to stimulate your thinking..

4 Great Examples to Look At

AIICT

Several years back I built (with my teams) a college that focused on upskillers and career changers, the idea was to give them the skills and support to help them get IT roles like cybersecurity, web developer, project manager, IT support and so on. The students preferred working in a cohort and we knew that cohorts produced better outcomes than just self-paced models only.

The problem we had to deal with is that students hated the inflexibility that came with too much course structure. Some students would have more hours to commit to study than others. 

So we developed a "start together, finish whenever" model, with trainer attached to each cohort. The trainer starts them all together, so they build relationships and a feeling of safety with each other, but then have the freedom to accelerate and decelerate how fast they work through the course individually. We also put in a maximum limit of 12 months so there was a requirement to progress.

A great way of balancing flexibility, and a cohort-based structure to create great outcomes. 

That part of the delivery model materially helped that business go from 0-3m in revenue in 2.5yrs.

Nudge Group

They doubled down on recruiting for start-ups and particularly those who just got series A funding who would have just been funded and would be prioritising building a quality team, but are typically still tight on cash.

Their biggest "hate" was having big upfront payments to recruiters. This is often pretty standard in the industry, half upfront, half on placement for example. They decided to go against the grain, instead offering a six month payment plan for recruitment fees or, swapping out up to 50% of fees for a piece of equity.

They focused on sales and marketing roles to help the business create more cashflow, which enabled further rapid expansion. Nudge Group went from 0m to 2m in the first 2 years and continues to accelerate. You can listen to the interview with Founder Steve Grace on the podcast here.

Techforce Services

One of the hates of technology services firm models, is the inflexibility of minimum monthly retainers.

Typically, consulting firms in this space who do things like CRM and technology implementations, have a "minimum floor limit" each month for billing. But for the customer, that's frustrating as their needs change over the life of a project or engagement.

TechForce decided to offer a scale-up, scale-down as required model. No minimums, complete flexibility and just a commitment to doing an excellent job. 

As a result these guys grew at nearly 100% YoY between 2019 and 2022 and average 4.9 stars when SalesForce surveys their customers about their experience.

And full disclosure... they are a ScaleHQ client.

Plumber with GPS tracking

When you want any trades service done, I don't know about you... but I personally hate that I don't know when they're coming. They give you these "half day" bands.. like I'll be there between 7am and 12pm and you're like... what am I supposed to do, cancel all meetings and wait around? Very frustrating.

A local plumbing company I engaged with had a solid tech solution to this. They implemented a GPS and AI-scheduling system that tracked the car, announced when they've arrived at the job before yours, announced when they left the last job, and estimated when they'd arrive at my house.

So much easier to work with! They have a 4.9 star rating, which is very high for a plumbing company.

Ok.. Enough examples! How Can You do the Same?

So now you might be wondering, what steps can you take in your own business. First off, its super important you answer these 2 questions as honestly as possible.

• What do customers hate about businesses similar to yours?

• What solutions could overcome those hates?

Now if you're stuck for ideas on this one, it's not the end of the world. Just call some customers! Ask them: "what are the things that irk you about people/businesses in our industry?".

Try to find what everyone says about you behind your back. Customers might say something like "you guys aren't like this but I hate it when…." - bingo.. That's what you want to hear. They're probably just being polite - so take it on the chin, they might be talking about your business! And you've got some great feedback to be able to work on.

Want to Learn More?

If you found this week's edition helpful, and want to learn more about the areas of your business that need prioritising right now to ensure you can scale, get yourself our free 9-page Growth Score report here. And once you've got your report, you'll even get an optional, no-obligation, 30-minute debrief with myself or one of our other experienced CEOs to help you unpack it. What have you got to lose? Did I mention it's FREE?