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.
