Imagine handing a customer an itemised receipt for everything we spent trying to create value for them. Every campaign, event, piece of content, digital platform and support programme, with a figure beside it. Before we showed them our version, what would they expect to see?
For a healthcare professional, perhaps clearer evidence to support a treatment decision, a timely answer to a difficult question, or an easier way to get a patient started on treatment. For a patient, perhaps help understanding what happens next, fewer obstacles to accessing care, or someone to turn to when something feels wrong. Each would bring their own expectations of what our investment should have made possible.
Now picture the receipt we might actually produce. We could explain the campaign we developed, the platform we launched, the materials we created and the meetings we held. We would know how much they cost, how long they took and how many people were involved. But how easily could the customer connect those entries to the things they had expected?
We might find that we’ve mistaken the effort required to produce something for the value of receiving it.
That is an easy mistake to make when we've lived through the work. We remember the difficult decisions, the rounds of review and the effort required to get something over the line. The customer encounters the result in the middle of a day already full of competing demands. A programme that took six months to develop may matter less to them than a useful answer delivered in five minutes. Something we regard as a major achievement may give them another login to remember.
Of course, that five-minute answer might depend on years of work behind the scenes. Customers do not need to see every activity for it to be essential, and their preferences can't settle every investment decision. But we should be able to explain how the work contributes to something they value. “We worked very hard on it” leaves that question unanswered.
Imagine asking a few customers what they would expect to see on that receipt, using their own words before showing them our menu of offerings. What if we then gave them an imaginary $100 to allocate across those expectations? How much would they put towards getting an answer faster? Making access easier? Understanding the evidence? What else might they include that we had never thought to offer?
Then imagine putting their allocation beside our own. Where do our budget, time and attention go? Which expectations receive substantial investment, and which depend on someone going out of their way to help? Where have we invested heavily without being able to explain what became better for the customer?
The comparison might raise some uncomfortable questions. Perhaps something customers value enormously receives very little attention. Perhaps something we spend millions producing barely registers with them. Or perhaps we discover that some of our most valuable contributions are the ones customers never see, because they quietly make everything else possible.
None of this means that customers should dictate every investment we make. But their perspective should challenge the assumptions behind our choices, particularly when those choices have become so familiar that we rarely question them.
So before approving the next grand plan, imagine putting those two receipts side by side: the one our customers would expect, and the one our spending would produce.
Which line would be hardest to explain?