How to Succeed With the Customer Experience Journey
The good news about focusing on customer experience is that it can make you very successful. It doesn’t have to cost more to deliver a great experience than it does to deliver a lousy experience. Yet, you can charge more for a great customer experience journey. Plus, it could reduce your costs through higher retention and increased referrals.
The challenge in focusing on customer experience is that it’s not easy and it’s not fast. It takes a lot of work and a lot of time. It requires that we constantly and diligently connect with our customers to discover what they want and how we’re doing. It’s an ongoing, never-ending process.
Oh, one more thing. When we focus on selling experience as our value add, we have to be very good. Average does not cut it.
Average performers will lose in the experience economy.
If our customers come to us and stay with us because of the experience we deliver, they will tie emotion to that experience. In fact, in the experience economy, we are selling emotional content more than physical goods or intangible services. For people to remember us, those emotions need to be memorable.
Think about your own experiences. If you eat at a restaurant and everything is pretty much as you expect it to be, then what’s memorable about it? Nothing. So meeting our customer’s expectations means we become a blank space in their memories.
For our customer’s experience to be memorable it has to be positive but also unexpected.
A few years back my wife and I visited Hoover Dam. It was the first time for both of us. If you’ve been there, you’ll understand why it’s a memorable experience no matter what. But beyond the usual “wonder of the world” type memory, we both have two other memories of our visit that make it stand out in a positive way.
Hoover Dam,
One is the McDonald’s in Boulder City. It the most unusual McDonald’s I’ve ever seen. Crystal light fixtures, marble, glass, steel, and tile abound in the trendy decor that befits a west coast bistro more than a small town fast food joint. And the landscape around the building is filled with metal figurines of children playing. They were created by a local artist.
It was fun. It was aesthetically pleasing. It was completely unexpected. Therefore, it will stay in my memory for a long time as an important part of our Hoover Dam experience.
The other memorable part of our Hoover Dam visit were the chipmunks.
By the cafe/gift shop at the dam site, are dozens of cute little chipmunks that earn their keep entertaining the guests. They are wild but friendly and comfortable with people. If you have food, they’ll eat it out of your hand.
By the time we left the chipmunk area, a sizable crowd had developed. They were clearly a hit.
So like the cool McDonald’s restaurant, the friendly chipmunks will also be a memorable part of our visit to the Hoover Dam, for the same reason: they presented us with a positive and unexpected experience.
To win in customer experience you have to help your customers have the experiences they desire plus more. The average is not memorable. You have to be unexpectedly good on a regular and consistent basis. Do this and you’ll have people talking about your business and coming back again and again.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing created by remarkable customer service. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing strategies. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
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More reading on customer experience from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of a small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
