Moment of Truth

The moment of truth is defined as the time when a guest comes into a contact with any aspect of your company and gains an impression of it.

The key to managing Customer Perception is based on how you manage each moment of truth.

There are 11 elements of customer perception namely,
1) Previous Experience
2) First Impression
3) Decor Ambience
4) Product Design
5) Product Innovation
6)Pricing Policies
7)Advertising & Promotion
8) In store Experience
9)Recommendations
10) Previous Experiences
11) First Impressions

You should try as best as you can to control these elements in order to paint a consistent and desirable picture of your company in your customers minds (Positioning). Amongst these, the element that is hardest to control or even may be out of your control would be in store experience and recommendations. The reason is simply because we are not able to control how people speak about us and what others will recommend. However, what we can do is to ensure that every guests who walks in has an excellent perception of us and thus will deliver positive word of mouth advertising for us, therefore recommending our company. This is what we mean by to "try as best as you can to control these elements in order to paint a consistent and desirable picture of your company in your customers minds (Positioning)."

There are some ways in which you can do so:
1) Identify your target market
2) Identify your core contribution to the target market
3) Decide on what you would like to be seen best at

This 3 steps simply means GOAL SETTING, taking into consideration what your company resources has and who you are serving.

Note: One of the key factors that cause first impression to form, affecting perception is your APPEARANCE. Therefore I would highly reccommend that you read my blog on The Art of Appearance Alteration at http://appearance-alteration.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html in order to manage your appearance and how others perceive you.