Keeping Your Customers Hooked Through Great Customer Experiences

Ever wondered why two people (Mr. A and Mr. B) sell the same product, on the same street and Mr. A seems to be making more sales than Mr. B? In fact, when Mr. A is out of stock, he refers his customers to Mr. B but Mr. A’s customers would insist on waiting for him to restock instead of going elsewhere. I found the secret and it’s not jazz guys, it’s called “Great Customer Experience.” It is the distinguishing factor between you and other competitors in your line of business.  

What is Great Customer Experience?

Great customer experience implies the beautiful experiences a customer gets at every touch point (online, real-time and physical) of your business. Customers are all over the place, yet many businesses find it difficult to get or keep a customer base. This is because they either don’t know what to do or they know what to do and refuse to do it.

Technology has made the world “smaller,” so customers not only know what they want or where to get it, they have several options and would go the extra mile to get it. As a business owner, you cannot afford to fail on customers’ expectations. Today’s customers are no pushovers and if you must meet up with the customer’s wants you must know and imbibe great customer experience. The KPMG 6 pillars of great customer experience gives a great framework for thinking about your customers experience.

KPMG is an independent audit firm known for its specialty in customer experience audit and countless surveys have indicated that if an organization would do well, its customer experience must follow the 6 pillars of customer experience. These pillars are:

Personalization (Know your customer)

These words must make sense to you if you want to have a great customer experience. Your customers must be segmented according to the value they provide, their demography and their psychography. When you know your customers, you provide them with what they want. 

In Nigeria for example if you segment your customers by demography, you’d know that a baby boomer would want more physical interaction and would like to be addressed by a title either Sir, Chief or Madam, etc. while a Gen Z would prefer to be called by a nickname and would prefer online interaction. A mix-up of the service meant for these customers (Gen Z & Baby Boomers) would lead to disaster. 

When you know your customers you begin to deliver personalized service to them, identifying their individual needs and marshalling out resources to attend to these needs. Your employees and interactions must receive adequate training/equipment to delight customers at every touch point (online, real-time and physical).

Integrity

Integrity simply means doing what you say you would do when you said you would do it and how you said you would do it. Imagine ordering a box of pizza and finding Fufu and Egusi soup when you opened it.. I’m sure you’ll be mad at the eatery. What if you had to wait an extra hour beyond the agreed time with the food vendor and you got a pizza but this time it’s ice-cold.

Customers have had numerous bad experiences and this is because most institutions don’t have integrity. Integrity is key if you want to stay in business and grow a brand. Customers understand that sometimes their requests may not be met the way they expect it, and that is not a problem only if they were pre-informed beforehand. Integrity is key but the moment you realize you can’t meet up as promised, the right thing to do is reach out to your customer and inform them of the inevitable delay. I call it “Re-negotiation.” This helps your customer know that you value their time and patronage.

Imagine that you were called 30 minutes before the agreed delivery time for your pizza to say that they had a little challenge and the pizza would be 30 minutes late, how would you feel? Better, right? But how would you feel if they also promised that they would add an additional small size pizza or extra toppings for the wait, I am sure that 30 minutes wait would no longer be a problem. 

Empathy

Empathy has been believed to mean putting yourself in the shoes of the other person. This is in a bid to understand how they feel and to elicit a positive action towards the person. In addition to that, I always say: “Walk a mile in the other person’s shoes, so you know where it hurts precisely.”

To achieve great customer experience, you must make efforts to be empathic towards your customers. A senior citizen shouldn’t have to wait alongside every other person in a long queue of people waiting to get service. Your business must not only be empathic but also be seen to be empathic whether online or physically.

Expectation

Customers have expectations from your business . For example, if I walk into a pizza shop every day for a week and get attended to by the same person every day, I expect that the staff there would know my name and pay attention to my order, such that I could walk in by Friday and just request for the usual instead of going through the motions like a first-timer.

Well, what if I went there and for some reason they knew that it was my birthday, they sang me a birthday song, gave me a little piece of cake and took pictures with me, they would have surpassed my expectations and now that I am wowed and happy, would I come back to them again, would I tell everyone physically and online about them? Yes, I would!!!!! And that’s because I am a happy customer. When you go beyond customers’ expectations, the customer would have a great experience but when you go below your customer’s expectations you would get an awful customer experience.

Time and Effort

The more time a customer spends on getting a product or service, the more effort a customer puts in too; time is directly proportional to effort. If you want your customers to be delighted, always ensure your product and services are adapted to save your customers some time as well as effort.

When your customer can get a product delivered to them in the comfort of their homes, there’s no need  to ask them to come physically. Every business must make efforts to give customers a great experience through consistent process review and improvement to save time and reduce effort.

Resolution

Humanity is not infallible and that means that we make mistakes. We depend on technology, but technology isn’t human and can also fail to be human in its interaction. When this happens, customers aren’t happy, we call it a bad service or poor experience. This can happen to any business but we must make a conscious effort to ensure that we find a quick solution to the customer’s complaint, find the root cause of the problem, and make sure it never repeats itself.

Always engage customers, when there is a complaint, make efforts to listen to understand and solve the complaint. Remember to reward the complaining customer because complaints lead to process improvement, customer retention and overall great customer experience.

Great experiences will earn you a lot of referrals and keep your customers coming back. Remember, the difference between you and your competition is: “How you make your customers feel each time they interact with you.” Let’s do business the smart way this year by prioritizing customers.

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