This past weekend was my 20-year school reunion and so a maths equation in the title seemed fitting! But there’s a deeper point to it: the more you make your existing customers happy, the more your business will grow. Not only will your existing customers spend more and not churn, but they’ll also share their amazing experience and convert others into customers.
Customer experience is defined by many individual factors
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been involved in value proposition workshops with customers, where I’ve been told that the reason that their company is better than their competitors is that they offer better customer service.
Now, what exactly is customer service? I recently purchased new kitchen cupboards. For me, great customer service was the fact that I could engage with the sales rep entirely over email and did not have to talk once — and I paid online. My wife, however, was disgusted that she could not go into a showroom and talk to someone before making the purchase.
So had the kitchen company said in a value proposition workshop, we offer amazing customer service, I would have asked: to who and how?
For anyone involved in improving customer service and building a customer experience program for their company, I recommend reading Uncommon Service by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss. Until then, here’s some advice you can apply today.
Communication is foundational to customer experience
You’re about to go on vacation, and you plan to stay in one hotel for a few days and then go to another. One of those hotels sends you regular updates and shares more information about your destination as the arrival date nears.
Which one would you rate more highly?
When it comes to service, often the only thing that we need to do is communicate, actually - rather over-communicate! Let your customer know exactly what is happening along the way and what they should expect, so they are not left wondering.
Remove friction to doing business with you
Sometimes it is so difficult to do business with a company, and this is mostly due to internal processes and limitations. Often there are different business units, different sales departments or controls that are in place and it feels like you have to do somersaults through a company’s reception just to buy something from them.
If there are controls and processes, make them invisible to your customers. In many cases, things can simply be resolved through the use of technology such as a group CRM system.
Engineer wow experiences
Instead of leaving your customer’s experience to chance (or fate), rather map out exactly what you want them to experience. What should be communicated and when? How should they feel both pre-sale and post-sale?
During this process, think about what spice can you sprinkle on top to wow the customer. It doesn’t need to be a discount or something for free; as I said before, it could just be an amazing unexpected update. Then scale these engineered experiences — use marketing and customer relationship management software to automate and scale customer happiness. And lastly, measure and continually improve it!
At Huble Digital, we live by this mantra and ensure that everything we do for our clients has their customers at its core. We engineer customer journeys that enable constant, personalised communication. Get in touch today and let's start plotting your customer experience journey together.
