GrowthANSWERS » Defining, Designing and Measuring The Customer Experience (Part 3 of 5)

February 5, 2009

Defining, Designing and Measuring The Customer Experience (Part 3 of 5)

Filed under: customer experience, marketing strategy, General —

The second tactic on how to create a better experience has to do with defining, designing and measuring.

The first step is defining – quantifying and describing what currently exists. You can’t know where to make changes unless you understand what is currently happening. Once you have a grasp of the current experience for customers, you can look to what is important to them.

As you look at creating a better experience, you MUST understand what is important to your customers. It’s imperative for a company to understand what drives the customer’s perceived satisfaction of the experience and not what you think it should be.

For example, if customers want a support call answered by the second ring, then it makes more sense to hire more in-experienced people to answer the phone than to hire a lower number of “experts” since the phone won’t get answered as quickly. Hold time may be longer because the in-experienced people don’t have answers and need to go find them, but the calls are getting answered quickly. IF they want their issue to be solved by the person who answers and not get transferred around, you’d better hire more knowledgeable people. It may mean the answer/hold time is longer, but their issue will get solved by the original agent.

As you look to what those factors might be, remember this simple statement by television’s Dr. House. “People lie.” In this case, they don’t do it on purpose. But while it’s important to ask them, it’s even more important to watch them. Watch how they use your product or service – even if it means going to their office or home. You can always trust what they DO – it’s what they SAY that isn’t always accurate.

Finally, you should build a systematic feedback loop to continually monitor and learn. Checking back with customers as you make changes allows you to ensure that your changes are impacting the experience in the way you want them to. Also, tracking the competitive landscape allows you to make changes as others in your industry do to ensure competitors aren’t delivering something you’re not.

One final note – don’t be afraid of negative feedback. All too often I see companies not want to hear the “truth” about their customer experience. First off, if you don’t know where a problem exists, how can you fix it? Understanding where the problems lie allows you to fix them for future customers. Plus, expressing what you are doing to fix a problem may save a client relationship.

Second, problems can often give you a chance to shine. How many times have you been in a situation where you were not happy and felt like you would never shop or eat at a particular establishment again? You spoke to a manager and he/she managed to fix the problem to your satisfaction. Often, you will give them another chance.

Remember, these changes won’t happen overnight. But they can happen. And when they do, you’ll see increased loyalty and growing revenue.

Next, we’ll tackle “Empowering Employees.”