Improving the Customer Experience

Apr 19, 2017 Improving the Customer Experience

Most people understand that having a great customer experience for their customers is the key to customer satisfaction and positive word of mouth.  The customer experience is not just the buying process but starts with the awareness phase and continues past the actual purchase to loyalty and advocacy.

The first thing to understand is that customers have different needs and desires and are different in many, many ways.  They may have children or not, be older or younger, be of different ethnic or linguistic backgrounds, have different core values, etc.  Their priorities, values and experiences inform their perspective (how they see the world).  This means that different customers want different things, at different times and provided differently.  So you need to be aware of each situation and be prepared to meet this differing expectation.

Someone who has little time may prize fast service.  Others may want to understand all the options and then choose.  A starting point to improve the customer experience is to identify the characteristics of your most valuable customers and craft service strategies to meet their needs.  I will explore more on this topic over the next several weeks.