In today’s easy to replicate world where there really isn’t any such thing as a unique selling point, well at least none that last longer than the time it takes to announce it on your smart website; the thing that differentiates you from your competition is your customers’ experience of your company.
Customer experience is made up of all the interactions a customer has with your plan – for as long as they are connected with you.
If you are still working on the premise that you can innovate or price your way ahead of your competition it is time to wake up and face facts – 86% of customers when asked said they would pay more for a better customer experience.
An example of this is Apple computers. Apple computers, technologically speaking match one-for-one with a Windows PC. Indeed despite the public rivalry Apple and Microsoft worked closely to ensure that what you can do on one; you can do pretty much on the other.
How Apple sets itself apart is through its customer experience.
From the customer’s reception at the Apple store to an app enabling you to seamlessly book appointments at the Genius Bar or get support; it’s clear that every one in the corporation is schooled in the customer is paramount philosophy. Apple has optimised their market share and their margins by providing consistent, compelling experiences; before, during and after their customers make their purchases – across all possible channels.
Getting it right
However, just as getting it right gets you more profits and customer loyalty, getting it wrong can have a negative impact on your business performance. In 2012 a customer who has had a bad experience doesn’t only complaint about it to you; if they decide not to keep it to themselves, social media gives them instant access to a global audience. The snowball effect of one person badmouthing your business (on a platform where it is easy to express yourself without much sanction) means that unless you can nip it in the bud immediately you don’t just lose one customer you lose loads! Word-of-mouth has become a highly cost effective form of advertising in our global connected economy; losing your word of mouth, positive brand value can be difficult to recover from.
So what things do you need to do to provide an awesome customer experience, which makes your customers go Wow? So much so that they are prepared to rave about you in public to their friends, family and anyone else they come into contact with. Here are some suggestions that have proved to work:
- Respond quickly to customer requests
- Ensure that your business’s interactions with its customers are highly personalised whenever possible
- Deliver the right information, at the right time, in the right place and in the right way.
Now that you know what you must do to deliver that Wow customer experience the next step is how.
Focus on the customer
Start by taking a holistic approach. Customer experience is closely linked to your company’s culture and mission. An organisation whose culture is dominated by the need to maximise revenue over everything else will struggle when it comes to investing resources in things that improve their customers’ experience but show little increase in revenue in the short-term.
Being holistic also means looking at the whole life cycle of the customer interaction with you. By focusing on the customer you ensure that every aspect of your organisation’s operation can be optimised to have the greatest positive impact on a customer’s experience.
Get inside your customers head. There isn’t any point in trying to improve your customers’ experience without involving the customer in the process. How your customers experience your brand at the different touch points where they connect with your business may be completely at odds with how you intended, even if you asked your prospective customers initially. Therefore it is important to regularly gather customer insights using focus groups, customer interviews and monitoring the conversations taking place on social media.
In addition to your customers, you also need to gather information from the points of your company that have the most direct contact with customers as they will have a different perception to add into the mix.
Use Customer Insights
Today, companies have at their disposal access a vast amount of unstructured data like blogs, online forums, social media platforms, and call centres/customer service teams. Being able to exploit this unstructured data is critical for improving your customers’ experience and creating that Wow factor. Evidence shows that companies that make the effort to identify the most relevant customer insights available in the data using customised CRM systems are able to create the most effective customer experience both on and off-line.
Finally, test, analyse and learn. Creating the Wow factor in your customers’ experience is just as much and art as a scientific process; hence you acquire both quantitative and qualitative data to make the best decisions. The starting point for making changes to improve your customers experience should be clearly articulated so that you know in advance what you are going to achieve. Results can then be tested and analyse against this criteria. Whether or not the desired result is achieved you can learn from experience and adapt accordingly. The process is a reiterative one; you can always create a better customer experience and this ultimately will be what keeps you one step ahead of your competition.
