Do Your Customers Need An MOT?

The MOT concept comes from a book called ‘Moments of Truth’, written in 1986 by Jan Carlzon of Scandinavian Airlines. Essentially, customers have countless ‘touch points’ with your company, products or services. Any one of these has the potential to either make or break the relationship.

 

The first example that Jan gives is of a passenger who arrived at an airport, but he’d left his plane ticket at the hotel. Instead of refusing the flight, SAS issued a temporary ticket and arranged for the original to be picked up from the hotel and sent by taxi to the airport. That passenger was astounded and became an advocate for SAS.

 

The same principle can be applied to bad experiences, where mistakes and badly handled issues can lead to anger and frustration and the loss of a customer. Each instance is therefore a Moment of Truth (MOT). The key to any positive or negative experience is an unexpected outcome.

 

There are three steps in an MOT analysis:

 

These aren’t just standard ones where a relationship is uneventful and smooth, but also those exceptions where needs change or problems occur. Almost any research or analysis project could provide information about one or more touch points. MOT analysis doesn’t just involve a single specific project, but is about establishing a framework which is constantly updated by all ongoing work.

 

2. Analyse the frequency and repercussions of these events.

How many people experience them, how many have unexpected outcomes, and how much impact do these have upon the customer’s view of your company? Measurement of the positive or negative implications of an event can be carried out in different ways. For instance, for a negative event, you could use a scale from ‘mild irritation’ through to ‘business taken elsewhere’. For a positive event, the scale could range from ‘inwardly pleased’ through to ‘surprised, delighted, and will tell everyone’.

 

How can you eliminate the negative experiences, or enable and encourage the positive ones? After weighing up the repercussions of the positive and negative events, you can work out a potential value in terms of retention, up-sell and advocacy. You can then balance that against the costs and difficulty of addressing the issues. This will determine the priorities for change.

 

Try these sites if you’d like more information: http://ezinearticles.com/?Customers-and-the-Moment-of-Truth&id=1261423; http://1001waystowowyourcustomers.blogspot.com/2007/03/moments-of-truth-misery-and-magic.html; http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0060915803/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link; http://www.canadianmarketingblog.com/archives/2007/04/moments_of_truth_in_the_custom.html

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