Coaches Corner: 5 Steps to an Excellent Customer Experience

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 5 easy steps you can take to ensure your company is providing an excellent customer experience:

1. Know your brand promise

Your brand promise is the foundation of your reputation in business.  Does everyone in your company know your Mission, Vision, and Values statements?  Have someone read them aloud at your weekly and monthly company meetings.

2. 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.

3. Identify your key touchpoints

Identifying these touchpoints and focusing on them 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, well identified vehicles, polite uniformed personnel and use of floor protection.

4. Review your internal processes

Your internal processes should be customer focused.  Effective, efficient scheduling is important, but do not neglect the customer experience in the process.  Again, put yourself in their shoes when making decisions.

5. 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.