📝 12 Guidelines for Creating a Fantastic Customer Experience
In today's business world, customer experience is everything. Companies that prioritize their customers' needs and satisfaction are more likely to succeed in the long run. However, creating a fantastic customer experience is easier said than done. In this article, we will discuss 12 guidelines that every company should take into account when building their own vision about customer experience.
📌 Work with Small Projects
First and foremost, it's essential to work with small projects. Many organizations come up with a huge idea about customer experience, and during the execution, it doesn't work. What works really well is making a list of many small improvements that you can do for your customers. The impact of 100 small items that you do to improve the service for your customers is much higher than the impact of this intelligence augmented.
📌 Use Simple Technologies
It's important to figure out a way how you can improve the human service thanks to technology. For example, when you go to a hotel, you can expect that a hotel chain has a system that when you type in a name, you can see the history of that client. That is intelligence augmented. Just use simple technologies to make sure that your humans say the right thing at the right moment.
📌 Translate High-Level Strategy
Very often, there is a disconnect between the vision and the enthusiasm from the top management about customer experience and the rest of the organization. It's really important that you figure out a way how you can translate the high-level strategy to the life and the context of every simple employee. In fact, what the goal should be is that every employee knows what their contribution will be to this customer relationship strategy. Figure out a way how to do that, and you know the trick or the thing is there's no shortcut to do that. There's no efficient way to do that. I think the secret of success is literally convincing your employees one by one.
📌 Celebrate Success
This one is really cool. Celebrate success when you have an improvement. Many companies are never happy with what they do for their customers, and that is so sad. They're waiting until they have reached perfection before they celebrate, and they're always like, "Yeah, it's not good enough, and we have to improve this and that." It's fine to have a perspective on how to improve. It's fine to have a view on your journey, but I think it's so important for the energy of the team to celebrate the small successes that you have in improving your customer experience.
📌 Feel the Oohs and the Ahs
Have you seen some of those soccer games in empty stadiums? It's extremely sad, and you also see in the statistics that many teams are suffering from that. It's not the same kind of energy, and the reason is that soccer players are used to getting direct feedback from their customers, the fans, and they hear the oohs and the ahs directly from the audience, and it gives them an energy boost. It gives them an urgency to do better. When they score, they have this huge celebration. Well, I think we need the same thing in every organization. If you work in a company where many employees don't get the direct feedback from customers, that's a missed opportunity. I believe that every employee should have a way to feel the oohs and the ahs from the customers directly, and it will create urgency. It will create a higher level of commitment towards the customer.
📌 Play the Friction Hunter Game
Make sure that every single one gets playing the friction hunter game. This is one of the things that I believe in so much. You turn every employee into a friction hunter, and you invite your team to look for frictions in the customer journey. Don't look for big things. Look for details. Make a list of frictions and look for things that are easy to solve. Then you put a name next to it, and you give that person four weeks to solve the friction. You bring the team back together, and you solve them. Then you solve it again, and you do that game again and again and again. After a while, you will have a culture where people are really sensitive to the details in the customer journey, and that will increase the overall quality towards your customers.
📌 Emotional Convenience
In the last 10 years, when it's about customer experience, we have been focusing a lot on transactional perfection, digital convenience. In my opinion, digital convenience has become a commodity. It's what people expect today. The challenge is now to create emotional convenience. Understand the human behind the customer, understand the movie that people have in their head about their future, about the things they hope will happen, things they hope will not happen, about the dreams and fears they have, about their ambitions, and play an active role in that as an organization to make sure you help them emotionally to create more value in their life as a human. It's about the human behind the customer.
📌 Empower Frontline Staff
To really have a great impact, make sure that your frontline staff is empowered to take decisions on their own in favor of the customer when something goes wrong. Make sure that they don't say, "Oh, I will ask my boss how to solve this." No, make sure that they know that you expect them just to solve that and that you're not worried about the cost or the implications, but that you just want them to solve the problem. That's the key. Give them that freedom, give them that empowerment, and support them in that process, and that will make a tremendous impact on the way how your customers perceive the culture.
📌 No Short-Term Expectations
Many organizations have the tendency to look for the person who made the mistake and ask the question, "Who made the mistake, the customer or us?" Don't do that. It's a waste of time, it's a waste of energy. Just focus on one thing: fix the problem instantly. Because I tell you, if you do not fix the problem instantly and you look for the person who did it and you find out that the customer made a mistake and you tell the customer that, I guarantee you that the customer will say, "Yeah, hey, but I'm a good customer. For this one mistake, can't you still help me?" And you will have a negative discussion, and in the end, you will still solve it but without customer happiness. Skip the annoying part, just fix it, and afterwards, you can look for ways how to improve the processes.
📌 ROI on Customer Expectations
This one is difficult for many organizations because we have the ROI thing that is always being popped up in many discussions, and it's important to have an ROI on the investments that you make as an organization. But I strongly believe in the fact that you need to figure out a customer expectations approach where you do good for the customer but where you don't have any short-term expectations. Do whatever you can to get short-term results as soon as possible, but don't have short-term expectations. If you do a random act of kindness, don't expect customers to buy more because of that. If you do something nice, if you've done a great campaign, if you send them a gift, don't expect them to do something back instantly. Believe that that builds a long-term relationship. Keep on doing that without looking for a short-term impact.
📌 Conclusion
In conclusion, creating a fantastic customer experience is not an easy task, but it's essential for the success of any business. By following these 12 guidelines, you can improve your customer experience and create a culture that prioritizes the needs and satisfaction of your customers. Remember to celebrate your successes, empower your frontline staff, and focus on emotional convenience. By doing so, you can build a long-term relationship with your customers and ensure the success of your business.
🎉 Highlights
- Work with small projects
- Use simple technologies
- Translate high-level strategy
- Celebrate success
- Feel the oohs and the ahs
- Play the friction hunter game
- Emotional convenience
- Empower frontline staff
- No short-term expectations
- ROI on customer expectations
❓ FAQ
Q: What is customer experience?
A: Customer experience is the overall impression a customer has of a company based on their interactions with it.
Q: Why is customer experience important?
A: Customer experience is important because it can impact customer loyalty, retention, and advocacy, which can ultimately affect a company's bottom line.
Q: How can companies improve their customer experience?
A: Companies can improve their customer experience by prioritizing their customers' needs and satisfaction, using simple technologies, empowering their frontline staff, and focusing on emotional convenience.
Q: What is emotional convenience?
A: Emotional convenience is understanding the human behind the customer and playing an active role in their life to create more value as a human.
Q: How can companies celebrate their successes?
A: Companies can celebrate their successes by acknowledging and recognizing the small improvements they make for their customers.
