5 Steps to an Excellent Customer Experience
JASEN LAWS
BDR Head Coach & Trainer
Many don’t know this, but customer service and customer experience are quite different. Customer service is reactive. We react to a request for services or a complaint about our services. Customer experience is proactive. We look ahead at the overall journey of the customer and work to excel at each touchpoint along the way.
Many companies pride themselves on their customer service. However, only a few go the extra mile to provide their customer with an experience. Providing this experience helps you to stand out among your competition and further reinforces that doing business with you was the right choice. Here are five easy steps you can take to ensure your company is providing an excellent customer experience:
Know Your Brand Promise
Your brand promise is the foundation of your business reputation. Does everyone in your company know your mission, vision, and values statements? Have someone read them aloud at your weekly and monthly company meetings.
Understand the Customer’s Journey
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and understand that it is an emotional journey. There is a lot of fear:
- Fear of the cost
- Fear of safety
- Fear of the unknown
- Fear of a bad experience
Identify Your Key Touchpoints
Identifying and focusing on these touchpoints may be the most important step in creating the customer experience. Examples of key touchpoints include:
- How you answer the phone.
- Showing up on time.
- Clean and well-identified vehicles.
- Polite uniformed personnel.
- The use of floor protection.
Review Your Internal Processes
Your internal processes should be customer-focused. Effective, efficient scheduling is important, but do not neglect the customer experience. Again, put yourself in their shoes when making decisions.
Interview Your Customers
Follow up, follow up, follow up! Reach back out to your customers and ask how their experience was. How do you improve if you don’t ask your customer what you need to improve upon? Follow-up appointments for installation and happy calls for service are a couple of examples.
To lead in your marketplace today, you need to be in the customer experience business. The experience the customer has with your company is rapidly becoming just as important as the services you provide.
Wahoo!
About the Author
Jasen Laws brings 25 years of HVAC, Electrical, and Refrigeration industry experience to BDR’s business coaching clientele. Through on-the-job training and continuing education classes, Jasen’s career path mirrors many of the BDR Profit Coach Clients. First, he came up through the field, then earned his way to lead installer, lead service technician, lead refrigeration technician, service manager, and eventually business owner. Jasen successfully transitioned from his field roles to business owner by successfully implementing processes and procedures that drove revenue and improved internal efficiencies.
Jasen believes that ongoing mentorship and coaching provide motivated business owners with the tools to support long-term growth and profitability in their companies.